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

The moment I entered the front hall of my villa on the fashionable side of
town, I was greeted, as usual, by a slave. This time it was Aemid, once my
nurse and now my personal handmaiden. Glad to be out of the desiccating heat
of the desert-season, I sat on the entry stool in the cool while she undid my
sandals and knelt to wash the dust from my feet with water smelling of lemon
blossom.
I tried to relax and let the tensions of the day slip away along with the
grime. It wasn't easy. When I gazed around it was to look on something I was
about to lose. I loved this house; I had been brought up here. I had played my
first games on the terrace, read my first books in the library, ridden my
first horse in the garden, taken my first lover in one of the bedrooms. After
the death of my adoptive parents, I rid the rooms of much of the ostentation
that had irked me as a child, so now it was all I desired. I liked to think I
had chosen the best of Tyranian style and rejected the more florid
embellishment that Salacia, my adoptive mother, had so admired.
CHAPTER THREE
The cool marbled hall, the elegant statuary decorating the wall niches, the
great fireplaces that burned whole logs in the snow-season, the way rooms
opened out on to fountained courtyards тАФ 1 loved it all. If I listened, I
could hear the splash of water mingling with the soft murmur of pink and grey
mellowbirds. If I glanced through the archways to my right, I would see the
vines, now rich with fruit, that covered the atrium. If I drew breath, it was
to smell the trumpet flowers and lemon blossom, and just a wisp of freshly
baked bread from my own kitchen ovens. If I reached out my hand, I would touch
the soft velvet of the cold-weather drapes we drew closed to keep the room
warm when the fires were lit and the wall fountains were heated.
This was the only home I could ever remember having.
And I had to leave it.
I looked back at Aemid and waved a hand at the foot basin. 'Since when has
this been your job?' I asked, using the Kardi language, as I always did when
talking to her. 'Where is Foressa тАФ or Dini?'
She gave a grunt. 'They're busy.' It was a lie and both of us knew it. Before
I could chide her, she blurted, 'What did the Exaltarch want with you?'
I smiled softly, touched that she had been worried. 'Something I never
expected: he wants me to go to Kardiastan. With the rank of Legata, what's
more.'
I was totally unprepared for the effect of this news on her. She jumped to her
feet, dropping the sponge she had been using, and stood swaying, her fists
clenched, her breath loud and rough. The normal olive-brown tint of her skin
blotched unevenly, the lines on her face burrowed deeper.
'Aemid! Are you all right? What in Vortex has come
over you?' I was awash in her emotions: joy and fear and panic in equal parts.
-
She didn't answer. Her eyes dropped to the sponge, but she didn't pick it up.
Water ran in rivulets over the marble tiles. 'When?' she asked at last, the
word a strangled sound in the back of her throat.
Seeing she was not going to fall, I released the supporting hold I had taken
on her arm. 'I don't know; as soon as I can wind up my affairs here and obtain
a sea passage. A week perhaps. I will have priority on any coastal vessel.'
'Wind up your affairs тАФ?'