"Shirley Meier & S. M. Stirling - Fifth Millenium 02 - Saber and Shadow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Meier Shirley)

port, and get back home before everything's in ruins. The man who had drugged
her and sold her off was not the sort to keep a shipping firm in good order.

The village was on the edge of a dredged canal, houses set up on long pole
legs. The animal pens were clustered below, and from one house came the voices
of the villagers, talking, singing. As the night deepened, they went their
ways in ones and twos, the hum of their talk comfortable as hive-bees on a
hot, drowsy day. She waited till the moon was up, looking to see Shamballah,
the god's moon, then shook her head. She'd read enough sailor's rutter-books,
and all reported if you went far enough west, or east, Shamballah wouldn't
show in the sky at all. This country must be at least seven or eight thousand
chiliois west of F'talezon, the full length of the Mitvald and the full width
of the Lannic Ocean as well.

She avoided the pens full of geese, because they were better watchers than
dogs. A tunic seized from a clothesline made her feel more human. Someone's
left a pie of some kind on the windowsill up there. When the scratch of her
claws on the wood roused no one inside, she paused just under the window.
Suspicious of something so easy to take, she stilled herself, listening. She
could only hear two sounds, and knew that the dog was below at the pigpen.
Megan wrinkled her nose at the stray odor. Just as coffee smelled better than
it tasted, live pigs smelled much worse than pork.

When she lifted the pie from the sill, careful not to scrape it across the
wood, she bit her lip slightly because it was still hot enough to redden her
hands. From inside came a fluttering snore and she froze. Another snore.

She clambered down carefully, changing her grip on the pie, saliva in her
mouth as she smelled the warm fruit odor of blackberries. The first bite was
Koru's Lap itself, and she closed her eyes blissfully, stopping herself from
trying to cram the whole thing into her mouth at once, holding back the urge
to gorge.

Now. Well see how well the canoes are tied and what town that coaster was
making for. A big freshwater estuary like this meant a river, and settlements
usually clustered where river and sea met.
A long day later she looked across the water at the largest dry she'd ever
seen in her life. Even at a distance the low, wide golden dome bulked in the
eastern quarter like a mountain, the long tongue of flame at its apex licking
at blue-black undersides of clouds rolling in from the north. The setting sun
picked out the tops of the towering clouds in orange and gold. The hectares of
city below gleamed in the hazy sun, white seawalls tinted pink. Distantly, she
could see the bulk of a fort at either end of the wall. Two more in the middle
broke up the pattern of warehouses, docking basins and gardens, then more
warehouses, more docks. She whistled to herself. This city sprawled, where
every city she'd ever, known coiled in on itself. There was nothing like this
back in the Mitvald, except perhaps Arko the City Itself, the Imperial
capital.

She paddled across the river, avoiding the wash of a four-masted warship,