"Mercedes Lackey - Firebird" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

the girl, Ilya would naturally admit the fact, and she would have a better job than she
had before, one with all sorts of advantages attached. For a girl used to spending the
winter in a peasant hut, huddled at night in a box of straw under a single blanket, the
prospect of a winter in the palace was often incentive enough to make her eager for
Ilya's embraces.
 It really didn't matter to the steward if a girl lied about being with child. If no baby
appeared in eight months, well, things happened. According to the steward, the serfs
were only slightly more intelligent than the cattle, and just about as reliable. The
steward's answer to the lack of a baby was simple: Girls miscarried all the time, or
sometimes girls just didn't count properly and thought they were pregnant when they
weren't. His contempt for the intelligence of the serfs was rivaled only by his
contempt for the intelligence of the female serfs, although he should have known
better, considering the sly tricks that were often played on him. To him, the girls
were not only untutored serfs, they were female, and couldn't be expected to
calculate anything as complicated as the number of days from one moon-phase to
the next.
Ah, with this little rosebud, Father will probably set a claim on her himself as
soon as he sees her. He sighed, for it was a vexing thing constantly to lose lovers to
his father. Still, it couldn't be helped. He would enjoy this one as long as he had her,
and hopefully when she was ready to move up in the world she'd be honest about it
to him.
IT was past midnight by the moon when he left his little Ludmilla drowsily content
beneath the willow and picked his way back across the meadow to the palace. To
his surprise and gratitude, the city had capitulated with only token resistance, and the
gates had been thrown wide open to the conqueror. As it turned out, she was already
conquered, for Yuri had broken the gates and pillaged the city ahead of him, which
accounted for her pliancyтАФ Not that it matters to me. The difference between us
has made her so very sweet, yielding, and grateful I hardly needed to be more
than usually charming!
And unlike real cities, girls could be pillaged many times over with the same level
of satisfaction. He did wonder, though, why she hadn't gone to the steward rather
than showing up at the dairy. Perhaps the position in the dairy was her reward, and
she had singled him out with an eye to rising higher. Well, good for her; she was a
toothsome little thing, and she had given him as much satisfaction as he had given
her.
Actually, with far more satisfaction on her part, given that it's me instead of
Yuri. Not only is his siege-engine rather pathetic, but he has no idea of how to use
it. He smiled smugly to himself, for he had played her like his balalaika and wrung
the sweetest music out of her before he took his own full pleasure. She'd seemed
pleased enough with the string of red glass beads he'd gifted her with afterward. No,
she had nothing to complain about from him... and he wasn't going to suffer the
twinges of guilt he often suffered if a girl turned out to be a virgin.
All that crying and carrying onтАФeven if more than half of it is an act, it still
makes me feel as if I've stolen something. He knew why they did it: The guiltier they
made him feel, the better the presents they could coax out of him. That still didn't
keep him from feeling guilty.
So a girl like Ludmilla, already "spoiled" and now perfectly happy to give up any
pretense of reluctance, was nothing short of perfect.
 He was so wrapped up in satisfaction that he wasn't paying much attention to his
surroundings as he sauntered past the chapel to replace his balalaika in Mikail's