"Robin McKinley - Damar 1 - The Blue Sword" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinley Robin)

confirming his fears about her, but she wasn't going to yield about that of all things. The realization that
she would insist on being called Harry seemed to silence him, because he did not try to reason with her
further, but withdrew into his corner seat and stared out the window.
She could tell by his voice that he did not want to hurt her, but that he was truly apprehensive. She
and Richard had been wild animals together as small children; but when Dickie had been packed off to
school, their mother had dragged her into the house, mostly by the ears or the nape of the neck, and
begun the long difficult process of reforming her into something resembling a young lady.
"I suppose I should have started years ago," she told her sulky daughter; "but you were having such a
good time, and I knew Dickie would be sent away soon. I thought it hardly fair that your lessons should
start sooner." This lifted the cloud a little from her daughter's brow, so she added with a smile, "And,
besides, I've always liked riding horses and climbing trees and falling into ponds better myself." After
such an open avowal of sympathy from the enemy, lessons could never be quite awful; on the other hand,
they were not perhaps as thorough as they might have been. On particularly beautiful days they often
packed a lunch and rode out together, mother and daughter, to inspire themselvesthe mother saidwith a
little fresh air; but the books as often as not stayed in the saddlebags all day. The daughter learned to love
books, particularly adventure novels where the hero rode a beautiful horse and ran all the villains through
with his silver sword, but her embroidery was never above passable; and she only learned to dance after
her mother pointed out that such grace and balance as she might learn on the dance floor would
doubtless stand her in good stead in the saddle. She learned the housekeeping necessary in an old
ramshackle country house well enough to take over the management of theirs successfully during her
mother's last illness; and the first horrible months after her mother's death were made easier by the fact
that she had something to do. As the first pain of loss wore away, she realized also that she liked being
useful.
In the shock five years later of her father's death, and with the knowledge that she must leave her
home, and leave it in the indifferent hands of a business manager, it had occurred to her to be relieved
that the little eastern station at the farthest-flung border of the Homelander empire where Richard had
been posted, and where she was about to join him, was as small and isolated as it was. Her mother had
escorted her to such small parties and various social occasions as their country neighborhood might offer,
and while she knew she had "conducted herself creditably" she had not enjoyed herself. For one thing,
she was simply too big: taller than all the women, taller than most of the men.
Harry could get nothing more useful out of her brother about his private misgivings as the small rickety
train carried them north. So she began to ask general questionsa tourist's questionsabout her new
country; and then she had better luck. Richard began visibly to thaw, for he recognized the sincerity of
her interest, and told her quite cheerfully that the town at the end of their journey, where Sir Charles and
Lady Amelia awaited them, was the only town of any size at all within three days of it. "There's a wireless
station out in the middle of nowhere where the train stopsit exists only for the train to have someplace to
stopand that's all." The town's name was Istan, after the natives' Ihistan, which was deemed too hard to
pronounce. Beyond Istan was a scattering of small depressed cottages in carefully irrigated fields where a
tough local tassel-headed grain called korf was grown. Istan had been a small village before the
Homelanders came, where the farmers and herders and nomads from the surrounding country came to
market every fortnight and a few pot-menders and rug-weavers kept shops. The Homelanders used it as
an outpost, and expanded it, although the native marketplace remained at its center; and built a fort at the
eastern edge of it, which was named the General Leonard Ernest Mundy.
Istan had lately become a place of some importance in the governmental network the Homelanders
had laid over the country they had conquered eighty years before. It was still an isolated spot, and no one
went there who didn't have to; for it was at the edge of the great northern desert of the peninsular
continent the Homelanders called Daria. But thirteen years ago the Aeel Mines had been discovered in
the Ramid Mountains to the northwest, and in the last eight years the Mines had been officially declared
the most profitable discovery on the entire Darian continent, and that was saying a great deal. The profits
on oranges alone paid the wages of half the civil servants in the Province.