"Glenda Larke - Heart of the Mirage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Larke Glenda)

further need of informants... 'That could earn you a spell in the Cages, my
friend,' I said. 'But you're lucky. I'm in a merciful mood today. Get going.'
I released him abruptly, and stood up. He scrambled to his feet, nursing his
injured fingers. He opened his mouth to curse me, saw the look on my
face and changed his mind, then scuttled away down a side alley without a
word.
I walked on, rubbing my aching head, wondering why my distaste for what had
happened was so pronounced. Usually that sort of incident didn't worry me.
This time, though, as the man's acidic hate for me lingered in the air after
he had gone, I found myself wondering if my talents, especially those that
gave me an awareness of other people's emotions, were worth having.
As a child I had been hurt again and again by my uninvited knowledge, until
I'd learned to build a wall around my too-soft core. When I'd been very young,
I'd thought everyone felt things the same way I did, and I'd gone on thinking
so, until Aemid, my Kardi slave-nurse, had disabused me. She had drawn me
aside one day, making sure no one overheard us, to say, 'You feel things
others don't. You know things you shouldn't. And until you learn to control
those feelings, to push aside that knowledge, to ignore all that comes to you
unbidden, to squash it тАФ until then, you will continue to be hurt. None of
this inner knowledge of yours will do you any good, Ligea; don't listen to it.
That way it will eventually stop coming to you.'
At first I'd tried to follow her advice. Then, one day I'd been saved from
unpleasantness by knowing beforehand that some bullying young playmates of
mine were waiting in ambush for me in our villa garden. Aemid, I decided, was
wrong. The knowledge coming to me unbidden might often have hurt, but it also
provided invaluable insights. Instead of crushing it, I nurtured it. I
practised, I trained myself to listen, to be aware, to feel things others
couldn't feel, to know what should have been unknowable. Slowly I learned to
coax more nebulous intuitions into a coherent form
of awareness, to recognise vague feelings about the emotions of others as
information to be read and interpreted. The extent of my abilities was my
secret, and one I kept well. Aemid may have guessed I hadn't taken her advice,
but she never said. Gayed, and later Rathrox, sensed I was different, that I
was more perceptive than others, but I never explained my gift to them; I
never let them know just how good I was.
Even so, it seemed Rathrox knew too much, and now, because of my abilities, I
was being sent to Kardiastan. Worse, the Oracle was aware of my abilities too.
What was it Esme had said about me? With powers to see behind the face. And
with her blurting that out, the temple authorities тАФ Antonia and her ilk тАФ
would know there was something odd about me too, blast them. The fewer people
who knew what I could do, the more valuable my power was.
I sighed. No matter what, exile was far too high a price to pay for my talent.
The tangle of alleyways I followed led me into the heart of the Snarls, to
what passed for a prison in Tyr: the Cages. Lesser criminals were sold into
slavery and usually never found themselves here. The Cages were for the more
violent felons, for those awaiting execution, for traitors and insurgents.
The place had a stink all its own: sweat, excreta, disease, dirt and
hopelessness combined in a sour foulness permeating the air, a gangrenous
stench that always clung to my clothes and hair even after I'd left the place.
I should have been used to it тАФ my job took me there often enough тАФ but I