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

crack heads if necessary. This was not the quietest section of town.

"I noticed the harbor wasn't crowded," she said.

"War talk, and traders waiting till things settle down before they spend,"
Junno said. He refilled her cup again and took a drink himself. "Just when
everyone was finally making a little coin, enough to pay their taxes and eat
meat once a week -" Shkai'ra looked ironically at his well-padded stomach
"-the Iron House has nothing better to do than think up a new war. Soldiers!
Murdering scum-no offense."

"None taken," Shkai'ra said. In her native tongue murderer was a complimentary
term, anyway. Junno chuckled and heaved himself erect; she snaked out an arm
to ensure he left the jug.

The warm air smelled pleasantly of hot stone, soap and the screens of woven
cedarwood strips between the tubs; the others were all full, to judge by the
splashings and low sounds of conversation, but nobody had disputed her
possession of a tub large enough for three-four, if they were Fehinnans. There
were some advantages to being a foreigner here. Relaxing into the heat, she
considered reaching for the wine cup on the floor beside her, then settled for
reaching her hand down to Ten-Knife-Foot. A furred head butted against the
fingertips; she rubbed and was rewarded with a deep rumbling purr.

Ahi-a, she thought. What to do? Feasting, fornication and fighting were the
choices. . . .

Feet stepped into her field of vision. Woman's feet, small, well-Formed but
battered and callused, with half-healed circular scars around the ankles. Long
legs . . . no, only in proportion. Good build; she noted the way the buttocks
curved at the back but flattened even with the thighs at the sides-hard
exercise. An old scar angling up along the muscles of her belly, breasts high
and rounded, strong neck, shoulders sloping from the deltoids. Scars: knife
fighter's scars. A good knife fighter, to have lived a score of years with a
disadvantage in reach.

The face was alien here in Fehinna. It would have been more so in the bleak
stone keeps and huddled villages of the watcher's northwestern home.
Triangular, the eyes enormous and as black as the hair that tumbled almost to
her calves. Strange, she thought. And beautiful.

"Mo'kta moi-trutka azhyt," Shkai'ra said suddenly, in her own language: "Well,
dip me in dung."

"I've seen you before."

The small woman tensed slightly. Shkai'ra smiled, lying back with her arms
along the edge of the tub and reaching for the carved hickory wine cup.

"Don't worry; if I saw that shipload of bandits dying of thirst in a desert, I