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

artisans, strolling scholars debating a theory. Fountains jetted spray into
the air in the centre of the marbled concourse and water channels bordered the
edges. They even warmed the water when the weather turned cold ...
Damn you, Rathrox Ligatan. I am to lose all of this.
I thrust back the rising bubble of anger and made instead a conscious effort
to absorb all I could see, as if by carving a bas-relief of images into my
memory, I could ensure that at some time in the future I would be able to
recall them to assuage the emptiness of loss.
On the far side of the square, the massive Hall of Justice brooded, its white
columns catching the sun. White-robed lawyers were just emerging from a
morning session with their lictors, arms full of ribboned scrolls, hurrying
behind. Only two days before, I'd stood in the Praetor's chambers there to
give evidence in camera at a treason trial; the accused had led a rebellion
against tax collection in one of the outliers of Tyrans. Two hundred people
had died as a result of his ill-considered revolt. He'd been condemned, as he
deserved, and I'd felt the satisfaction of a job well done. Our court system,
where even a common man could argue his case, was one of the finest
achievements of the Exaltarchy.
The next building along was the Public Library, separated from the Public
Baths by the tree-lined Marketwalk. If I entered the quietness of the library
reading room, doubtless I'd find Crispin the poet or Valetian the historian
working on their latest creations; if I decided to bathe in the building
opposite instead, I would be bound to meet my childhood friends, most of them
now idle young matrons more inclined to eye the legionnaire officers in the
massage room than to spend their time at the baths swimming, as I did. If I
wandered down the Marketwalk, I could buy fruit from Altan, or ice from the
Alps, or a talking bird from Pythia to the west. Jasper or jade, silk or
sackcloth, peppercorns or pheasant livers: there was a saying in Tyr that the
stalls of Marketwalk sold everything worth buying in the known world.
On my right, across the square opposite the baths, was the arched entrance of
the Advisory Council Chambers, used as gaming rooms ever since the Exaltarch
had dismissed his recalcitrant Councillors, never to recall them; and beyond
that was the paveway to the Desert-Season Theatre, where two weeks previously
I'd seen Merius immortalise himself with his powerful portrayal of the
manipulative Cestuous, whose tainted love for his sister Caprice had almost
doomed the fledgling Tyr, and whose name was now synonymous with the despised
perversion of incest.
I shifted my gaze to the Academy of Learning on my left, where, as a citizen
of Tyrans, I had often enjoyed the privilege of listening to the scholars'
debates. It had been an Academy scholar who'd been in charge of my education
from my seventh anniversary day until I'd turned sixteen, a privilege not
often granted to girls. I sometimes wondered why my father, a man much given
to talking disparagingly of 'a woman's place', had allowed тАФ no,
had encouraged тАФ my formal education. 'You have a mind, Ligea,' he was fond of
saying. 'Use it. Rely on it. Your emotions are those of a woman: foolish,
unreliable and ruled from the heart. Ignore such stupidities. The heart is the
foundation of ill-made decisions; the mind is where victories are forged.' I
smiled to myself: I could hear him still, stern tones deliberately softening
when he spoke to me. Others may have feared General Gayed, the man they called
the Winter Leopard after his snow-season victories quelling the fractious