"George R. R. Martin - Dying of the Light" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

"Yes, Arkin," she said. "Dirk, he doesn't know High Kavalaan, doesn't understand the culture or the people. Like
all Kimdissi, he'll tell you only the worst, but everything is more complex than he would credit. So remember that
when this glib scoundrel starts working on you. It should be easy. In the old days, you were always telling me that
every question has thirty sides."
Dirk laughed. "Fair enough," he said, "and true. Although these last few years I've begun to think that thirty is a bit
low. I still don't understand what this is all about, however. Take the car-does it come with your job? Or do you have
to fly something like this just because you work for the Ironjade Gathering?"
"Ah," Ruark said loudly. "You do not work for the Ironjade Gathering, Dirk. No, you are of them, you are not-two
choices only. You are not of Ironjade, you do not work for Ironjade!"
"Yes," said Gwen, the edge returning to her voice. "And I am of Ironjade. I wish you'd remember that, Arkin.
Sometimes you begin to annoy me."
"Gwen, Gwen," Ruark said, sounding very flustered. "You are a friend, a soulmate, very. We have tussled great
problems, us two. I would never offend, do not mean to. You are not a Kavalar though, never. For one, you are too
much a woman, a true woman, not merely an eyn-kethi nor a betheyn."
"No? I'm not? I wear the bond of jade-and-silver, though." She glanced toward Dirk and lowered her voice. "For
Jaan," she said. "This is really his car, and that's why I fly it, to answer your original question. For Jaan."
Silence. The wind was the only noise, moving around them as they fell upward into blackness, tossing Gwen's
long straight hair and Dirk's tangles. It knifed right through his thin Braqui clothing. He wondered briefly why the
aircar had no bubble canopy, only a thin windscreen that was hardly any use at all.
Then he folded his arms tight against his chest, and slid down into the seat. "Jaan?" he asked quietly. A question.
The answer would come, he knew, and he dreaded it, just from the way that Gwen had spoken the name, with a sort
of strange defiance.
"He doesn't know," Ruark said.
Gwen sighed, and Dirk could see her tense. "I'm sorry, Dirk. I thought you would know. It has been a long time. I
thought, well, one of the people we both knew back on Avalon, one of them surely has told you."
"I never see anyone anymore," Dirk said carefully. "That we knew, together. You know. I travel a lot. Braque,
Prometheus, Jamison's World." His voice rang hollow and mane in his ears. He paused and swallowed. "Who is
Jaan?"
"Jaantony Riv Wolf high-Ironjade Vikary," Ruark said.
"Jaan is my . . ." She hesitated. "It is not easy to explain. I am betheyn to Jaan, cro-betheyn to his teyn Garse." She
looked over, a brief glance away from the aircar instruments, then back again. There was no comprehension on
Dirk's face.
"Husband," she said then, shrugging. "I'm sorry, Dirk. That's not quite right, but it is the closest I can come in a
single word. Jaan is my husband."
Dirk, huddled low in his seat with his arms folded, said nothing. He was cold, and he hurt, and he wondered why
he was there. He remembered the whisper-jewel, and he still wondered. She had some reason for sending for him,
surely, and in time she would tell him. And really, he could hardly have expected that she would be alone. At the
port he had even thought, quite briefly, that perhaps Ruark , . . and that hadn't bothered him.
When he had been silent for too long, Gwen looked over once again. "I'm sorry," she repeated. "Dirk. Really. You
should never have come."
And he thought, She's right.
The three of them flew on without speaking. Words had been said, and not the words that Dirk had wanted, but
words that had changed nothing. He was here on Worlorn, and Gwen was still beside him, though suddenly a
stranger. They were both strangers. He sat slumped in his seat, alone with his thoughts, while a cold wind stroked his
face.
On Braque, somehow, he had thought that the whisperjewel meant she was calling him back, that she wanted him
again. The only question that concerned him was whether he would go, whether he could return to her, whether Dirk
t'Larien still could love and be loved. That had not been it at all, he knew now.
Send this memory, and I will come, and there will be no questions. That was the promise, the only promise.
Nothing more.