"Shirley Meier & S. M. Stirling - Fifth Millenium 01 - Shadow's Daughter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Meier Shirley)

hand when she ran and hugged his legs. "Come on, bylashka,
little princess, help me put this in the cupboard and come for a
walk with me."

Megan would stretch her legs and trot to keep up to her papa
whenever they went on these walks, while he told her stories.
Mama always said that if he weren't a Gospozhyn, a Great
Master in the Weaver's Guild, he'd be a storyteller. Megan
always liked listening, though she didn't always understand.

They walked past the lawyer's house, with its red brick and
worn black gargoyles. It leaned and always looked like it wanted
to fall on their house, but never did; past the baker's house, that
smelled so good, past the drovers' houses and the empty space
that had nothing in it but broken, burned stones and grass taller
than Megan; past the brewers' houses and the nigh grey wall of
the Sysbaet School.

They were good teachers as well as healers, almost as good as
Haians, and she might be able to go to the school and learn to
read. Megan wanted to learn, but her parents said that it cost a
lot of Dragonclaws and they didn't have time to teach her more,
though they tried. She knew her letters already because Papa
said that it was a good thing to know. He knew because his
family had had enough money for schooling before the Great
Fire took most of his family, and Ness had learned from her
mother, Grandma-who-was-with-Koru. If you couldn't read, you
couldn't be apprenticed in the Guild and would have to be a
beggar or a thief.

The cobblestones were old; worn by the tread of generations
of people. Because the year had been dry so far the sewer in
mid-street was cracking mud and didn't smell, which to Megan's
mind was almost as nice as when the fall rains came and washed
the mud and odor away. Her papa nodded hello to the neighbors
who sat on their front steps or walked along Szyzka Lane.

The bare trees' branches reminded Megan of old people's
gap-teeth. The buds were just big enough to make small
shadows to step in. She skipped from shadow to shadow,
pretending the sunny spaces were the rat pits in the Va Zalstva,
the Arena, where she mustn't step or she'd be devoured. Her
papa got ahead of her a little and she gave up her game, running
to catch up. Even this far down the street she could still hear the
vats in the brewery groaning and sighing, like sleeping men
snoring.

"Megan, you mustn't let go my hand until you're bigger,"
Papa said and stroked her hair back out of her face. "Bylashka,
my little shadow, in a crowd, anyone can get lost. I want you to