"R. A. MacAvoy - Damiano" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacAvoy R A)

Marco spun about, vermilion-faced. "Tell you? That
would give you something else you could explain to
General Pardo." Without warning he swung the clay
bottle at Damiano. The staff took the blow, and the
bottle fell in purple-stained shards at his feet. Only a
swallow had been left in it.
"Your father," called Marco, stomping down the
street in the direction from which Damiano had come,
"was an honest witch. Though he burns in hell, he
was an honest witch."
 Damiano stood staring at the drops of wine bead-
ing the dust, till Macchiata laid her triangular head
against his leg. "He shouldn't have said that about
your father," she said.
Damiano cleared his throat. "He wasn't insulting
my father. He was insulting me.
"But I can't believe Marco thinks I would betray
my friends, let alone my city. He is just old and angry."
Damiano shook his head, took a deep breath, and
jerked his sleeves from his hands and his hair from his
eyes.
"Come," he said. "General Pardo is expecting me."

Damiano hated being reminded about his father,
whom he had last seen dissolving into a green ichor.
Guillermo Delstrego had died in pain and had stained
the workroom tiles on which he lay. Damiano had
never known what spell or invocation his father had
been about, for there were many things Delstrego
would not let young Dami observe, and that particular
invocation Damiano had never had any desire to know.
Guillermo Delstrego had not been a bad father,
exactly. He had certainly provided for Damiano and
had taught him at least a portion of his arts. He had
not beaten Dami often, but then Damiano had not
deserved beating often, and now it seemed to Damiano
that his father would have liked him better if he had. A
mozzarella was what Marco called him. Delstrego prob-
ably would have agreed, being himself a ball of the
grainiest Parmesan. But after their eighteen years to-
gether, and despite Damiano's quick sensitivity to peo-
ple, the young man could say that he'd scarcely known
his fatherтАФcertainly not as well as old Marco knew
him.
Damiano was like his mother, whom Delstrego had
found and married in Provence (it was said no woman
in the Piedmont would have him), and who had died so
long ago she was not even a memory to the boy. He
had her slimness, small face, and large eyes. And
though his nose was rather larger than hers had been,