"Jay Lake - The Sky that Wraps the World Round, past the Blue and Into the Black" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lake Jay)

honor.

Even my honor, it would seem.

All of this was a very thin thread of logic from which to dangle. I could just keep painting
shards until any one of several things killed me тАФ radiation sickness, cancer, the old cook. Or
I could tell Huang to break the deal he and I had made, and pass me back out of this house
alive.

Given how much trouble I'd taken in order to surrender all control, there was something
strangely alluring about being offered back the chitty on my life.
That night when the cook brought me the tea, I poured some into the tiny cup with no
handles. He gave me a long, slow stare. "You go out?"

"With Mr. Huang, yes," I told him.

The cook grunted, then withdrew to the kitchen.

The tea was so bitter that for a moment I wondered if he'd brewed it with rat poison. Even as
this thought faded, the cook came back with a second cup and poured it out for himself. He
sat down opposite me, something else he'd never done. Then he drew a small mesh bag on a
chain out from inside his grubby white t-shirt.

"See this, ah." He tugged open the top of the bag. Out tumbled one of my little blue caltrop
fragments. I could almost see it spark in his hand.

"You shouldn't be holding that."

The cook hefted the mesh bag. "Lead. No sick."

I reached out and took the caltrop arm. It was just that, a single arm broken off below the
body. I fancied it was warm to my touch. It was certainly very, very blue.

"Why?" I asked him.

He looked up at the ceiling and spread one hand in a slow wave, as if to indicate the limitless
stars in the Deep Dark far above our heads. "We too small. World too big. ThisтАФ" He shook his
bag "тАФthis time price."

I tried to unravel the fractured English. "Time price?"

The cook nodded vigorously. "You buy time for everyone, everything."

I sipped my tea and thought about what he'd told me. I'd been out in the Deep Dark. I'd
touched the sky that wraps the world round, past the blue and into the black.

"Blue," he said, interrupting my chain of thought. "We come from sea, we go to sky. Blue to
blue, ah?"

Blue to blue. Life had crawled from the ocean's blue waters to eventually climb past the wide