"Lisle,.Holly.-.Vincalis.The.Agitator1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lisle Holly)

УGo,Ф he heard Wraith tell Velyn, and he sat up in time to see guards moving toward the car from two different directions, their stop-sticks drawn and suspicious expressions on their faces. Did they not see the insignia on the sides of the car? This aircar couldnТt be stopped; Solander knew neither he nor Velyn could offer adequate registration for the state carriage they were inЧand they certainly couldnТt provide documentation for the two scruffy children hiding in the back.
УIТm going,Ф Velyn said. She veered the vehicle out onto the street and accelerated it almost straight up. In the backseat, Jess screamed.
УRooming house first,Ф Velyn said, looking back at Solander. УWeТll drop her and Wraith off to let them shower, and then I will get rid of this aircar, and then you and I will go out and buy them some clothing. Something loose and casual and expensiveЧmaybe a little out of fashion. After all, they are supposed to be from the backwaters. You have your cards with you, donТt you?Ф
Solander nodded. He was going to buy both of them expensive clothing? Wellа.а.а. yes, he was. The price of fame, he told himself. The price of immortality, of making his mark in the science of magic, of changing the way the masters in the field understood the workings of their universe. Stolti clothing for two Warreners versus the whole of a world in his hand, to create and reshape in his visionа.а.а. yes. He would buy them clothes. Rent them a couple of rooms for a few days. Pay for their false documents. His parents gave him a generous allowance, and he never really spent it on much except for research books and gadgets. He had money saved away that he would never miss.
Velyn took them not through but over the gateЧthey went sailing through an arc shield that sputtered and played light across the surface of the aircar as they blasted through itЧbut the car did have clearances for every place in the city. It passed through without damage, and Velyn headed them directly for a good neighborhood in the Belows.
УRainsbury Park has some excellent little rooming houses,Ф she told Solander. УIТve been to a few of them.Ф
Solander noticed that the back of her neck turned bright pink when she said that, and he wondered if Wraith had noticed.
She brought the aircar to a stop at the side of an attractive house artistically hidden beneath a canopy of ancient oaks. УWait here, all of you,Ф she said, and then glared when Solander didnТt move. УNot you. You have to go in and pay.Ф
The manager of the house, a bored young man with his attention focused on a triphase display of the ongoing Oel Artis/Chamilleri phaeton races, barely even looked at either of them as they took keys and signed in for two rooms at the back of the house.
УHe gets paid extra not to pay too much attention,Ф Velyn told Solander as they hurried to the aircar.
They moved Wraith and Jess into their rooms, made sure the dividing door between the two rooms was working, then they took the aircar straight back to the house car pool. Velyn hurried over to a young man in uniform, who gave her a smarmy smile that Solander didnТt like.
Velyn, in a foul mood, came back and led Solander to another vehicleЧa little red all-terrain sportster with water wings and a bubble hood. УLetТs go,Ф she said, and refused to speak to him for most of the rest of the trip.

The pounding water of the shower soothed Jess. Apartments in the Warrens had showers, but none with warm or hot water, none with any real water pressure, none with the glorious array of perfumes and soaps that sprayed from the nozzle when different buttons on the console were pushed. Jess had a hard time forcing herself out from beneath the clean-scented spray, and only WraithТs worried voice finally moved her to try one of the thick towels. When she was done, she wrapped the towel around herself and headed out to the main room; she couldnТt bear to put on the stinking Warrener rags.
Then she waited, sitting on the edge of one of the two enormous, wondrously soft beds in the room. Wraith sat with her. Neither of them moved; they werenТt sure what they were permitted to touch and what was forbidden. Jess tried to realize that she was out of the Warrens, that this beautiful roomЧwith so many colors that her eyes had a hard time seeing them allЧwas her room alone, not even to be shared with Wraith. But none of it seemed real. The guards loading Warreners by the hundreds into the back of trucksЧyes. That seemed real. But this felt like an impossible dream.
Then Wraith opened a large copper box that sat against one wall of his room and said, УJess, thereТs food in here!Ф
Jess walked over to take a look. Cold air washed over her, air that smelled deliciously of winter and snow. She saw all sorts of foods and drinks she didnТt recognize, with perfect fresh fruits, delicious sweets wrapped in lovely colored papers, and things she couldnТt begin to recognize by their look or their smell.
УCan we eat them?Ф she asked.
УJust a few bites, perhaps,Ф Wraith said.
Tentatively, he unwrapped one of the bright papers and took a little bite of the brown sphere inside. УOh,Ф he whispered, and handed the rest to her.
She took a bite, and the flavor hit her like a shock. She closed her eyes and let the sweetness and the richness and the faint bitterness all melt into her mouth at the same time.
УWhat is it?Ф
УI donТt know.Ф
УIs there more?Ф
Wraith unwrapped another of the colored papers. УThis one looks a little different. You want to try it first?Ф
She nodded and took a bite. It was different. The same rich brown stuff, but this time with a fruit-flavored filling. УOh. Wraith.Ф She handed him the other half. УWeТve died and gone to the God-home.Ф
The knock at the door froze themЧit wasnТt the right tap. Not two quick, soft knocks and a finger scratched from the left of the door to the right. Just a flurry of loud raps. They looked at each other, wild-eyed with terror, and Jess grabbed Wraith and fled for the bathroom in her suite. SheТd seen a lock on that door.
But Solander walked into the room carrying a stack of boxes almost as tall as himself. УWraith? Jess? Where are you?Ф
УYou didnТt use the knock I showed you,Ф Wraith said. He looked a little pale still.
Solander shrugged. УI forgot. And my hands were full.Ф
They edged out of the bathroom and looked at Solander and his stack of boxes. JessТs heart continued to pound in her chest; this place was too different, too alien for her to feel safe. She wondered if she would ever be able to feel safe.
УWe brought clothes and food,Ф Solander was saying, and behind him, the golden-skinned girl with the copper eyes came through the door, studied them, and shook her head.
УOh, gods! They look even thinner wrapped in towels,Ф she said. УWeТll have to hide them here until they put on a bit of weight.Ф
Jess looked from that girlТs sleek, rounded body to her own sharp angles, and felt her cheeks go hot with shame. Her thighs were thinner than her knees, her upper arms thinner than her elbows. She could clearly make out every bone in her own ribcage, and could clearly see both the bones and the tendons outlined on the backs of her hands. Wraith was the same. But the white Warrener robes hid a lot of thatЧnot even she had noticed how very thin they were until she compared them to SolanderТs cousin Velyn.
УWe got food,Ф Solander told Velyn. УTheyТll look a little better soon.Ф
УTheyТll have to. I donТt think we can pass two starvelings off as the children of colonistsЧnot even colonists from Ynjarval.Ф
Wraith sighed.
Velyn said, УDonТt worry about it. WeТll manage. In the meantime, Solander and I found the two of you some clothes. These are guaranteed to fitЧtheyТre spelled, so that no matter which of you wears them, theyТll look like they were tailored just for you.
УTomorrow,Ф she continued, УIТll come back here and take you to different salons to get your hair cut and styled, your skin colored, and your hands manicured.Ф She turned to Solander. УYou can find your own way home unless youТre coming with me now. I have things I have to do.Ф
Solander and Wraith conferred for a moment, and then, with a slight nod of the head to all of them, Solander and Velyn left.
Jess was relieved when they were gone. SheТd liked Solander well enough, but she hadnТt liked Velyn at all. SheТd seen the way Wraith looked at the other girlЧwith his eyes all wide and wondering. That was the way she wanted him to look at her. But he didnТt. She was too scrawny, she thought. To skinny, too plain, too youngЧand he had saved her from the Way-fare twilight, from being a horrible fat lifeless slug. How could he ever see her as anyone but someone he had rescued?
Velyn would never look like that to him. He would see her perfect, as she was the first time he met her, and not hideous, helpless, someone who needed to be saved.
Jess, in that moment, decided that she hated VelynЧfor everything Velyn was, for everything that Jess could never be.

A week of searching for someone to make papers for them. A month beyond that to learn to speak with a bit of the accent of the colony from whence they supposedly cameЧone carefully obscure, with few ties to Oel Artis, a colony clear across the Bregian Ocean, in the southern hemisphere, on the Strithian continent, in lands only held with difficulty by the Hars. Beyond that, another two months for the Warreners to fill out to a point that Velyn announced was acceptable.
And then the move; the day Wraith and Jess had come to both yearn for and dread, when, carrying their false Letter of Presentation sealed with the signet of a real, if very minor, Dragon from the far city of Cachrim, they appeared on the front porch of the great house in the Aboves at Oel Artis. They brought carefully collected bags filled with clothes meant to look like styles from a colony behind the timesЧa bit shabby around the edges but still respectable; and they offered their papers to the Master of the House, an old patriarch who still maintained his Dragon ties, even though he had for all purposes given over all responsibility except for the greeting of newcomers to the house and the verification of their status to younger and stronger men.
Solander greeted Wraith and Jess as cousins whom he had met and was expecting, with an enthusiasm greater than he usually displayed, and the old patriarch, who knew Solander as the son of a major Dragon of the Council, gave their papers a polite, perfunctory glance and filed them, giving them not another momentТs thought.
We shed lives the way snakes shed skins, Wraith thought, remembering the nest of snakes heТd discovered in one of his early hiding places. We peel away old people, and emerge with new ones. New names. New faces.
He stood just inside the door, a heavier boy now, though still thin, with his dark hair neatly cropped and the beginnings of a fashionable braid down his back. He had a new nameЧGellas TomersinЧa good story about a family far away who cared about him, a friend who had been born into freedom and who knew the joys of comfort and the pleasures of wealth and security. He had a chance to live a wonderful life.
Why should we ever go back and pick up those dead skins? he wondered. When weТre free of them, canТt we simply put them behind us and forget they ever existed? CanТt we simply be happy and beautiful in our new skins?