"Shirley Meier & S. M. Stirling - Fifth Millenium 03 - The Cage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Meier Shirley)

a little like the Yeoli kraila, but different. Careful eyes noted the
way she held it, left hand tilting the scabbard for the
draw-and-strike.

A reaver, he thought. Her pale grey eyes were scanning his
Benai with the automatic looter's appraisal of one born to raid
and foray. One of the many I've spoken with, lately. These were
troubled times, along the river and in the great world beyond.
An age is coming to an end, the abbot mused. An age of peace
and prosperity, when wars were scuffles between neighbors
and we thought the years would go on forever in their
accustomed path. A new era dawned for the peoples about the
Mitvald, and whether the change was for the better or the worse,
its birth would be bloody.
 Unless an old man mistakes the creaking of his bones for
earthquakes, he thought wryly. Then, aloud: "What magic did
you use, Teik, to befriend this one who is as comfortable as a
night-siren?"

"Oh, almost got her killed in various gruesome fashions. After
that we were firm friends," Shkai'ra said lightly, with a flash of
white teeth. Her Zak was fluent but careful, sprinkled with terms
from the trade-pidgin; a F'talezonian accent, obviously learned
from Megan. "Not a day's peace since we met, a true gift for
trouble."

Trouble, hah." Megan snorted. "Ivahn, it follows her shadow,"
the Zak said, as they passed the polished wood of the door to the
Abbot's study. It was plain, but the grain shone with a swirling
grace that spoke of hours with cloth and wax.

"You will pardon me while I change my robe," the monk said,
motioning toward the seats. They were of a piece with the rest of
the corner room: simply made. For the rest there was a high
desk, cluttered with papers; one wall held books, locked and
hung from pegs in cases of oiled leather; on the other a tall,
slender mandala was painted in bright colors against white
stucco, crowned with the ever-present onion arch. South and
east were pointed windows, open to the cooling air.

Shkai'ra went to one, looking down over sloping land.
Growing over slow centuries, the Benai had sprawled over the
promontory that gave it birth; blue walls, white stone domes,
slender minarets reached toward a sky darkening into night. The
river and the city that had grown up under this buildings
protection were at her back; ahead, land sloped downward more
gently than the cliff they had climbed from the ferry. Along the
horizon loomed the wildwood and swamp of the Brezhan delta.

She shifted her gaze southward. The sea was still the dark