"Miller,.Steve.And.Lee,.Sharon.-.Liaden.Universe.01.-.Conflict.Of.Honors.v1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Miller Steve)

"So mote it be," echoed the larger speaker.

"So mote it be," the crowd cried, full-voiced and on familiar ground.

The slim watcher said nothing at all, though she ducked a little
farther back into the byway. The dust devil found her there and
made momentary sport of her newly shorn hair before going in
search of other amusements.

A tall woman at the edge of the crowd made a sharp movement,
quickly arrested. The watcher leaned forward, lips shaping a word:
Mother. She dropped back, the word unspoken.

It was useless. Moonhawk was dead, by order of she who was
Moonhawk's mother during this turn of the Wheel. The funeral pyre
of her possessions had been ignited at Midsong while the mother
looked on with icy face and sand-dry eyes. The watcher had been
there, too. She had criedЧperhaps enough for the mother, as well.
But there were no tears now.

In the bag over her shoulder were such belongings as she had
been able to bring away from her cell in the Maiden's wing of Circle
House. The clothes she wore were bought in a secondhand store
near the river a dark, soft shirt with too-long sleeves that chafed
nipples unused to confinement; skintight leggings, also dark,
except for the light patch at the right knee; and out-worlder boots
with worn heels. The earrings were her own, set in place years ago
by old hands trembling with pride of her. The seven silver bracelets
in the pack were not hers. In the shirt's sleeve pocket was a single
coin: a Terran tenbit.

The two of the Inmost Circle left the stairs; the crowd fragmented
and grew louder. The watcher quietly faded down the skinny by-
street, trying to form some less desperate plan for the future.

Moonhawk is dead. So mote it be.

At the end of the by-street the watcher turned left, toward a distant
reddish glow.

You might, she thought to herself diffidently, go to the Silent
Sisters at Caleitha. They won't ask your name, or where you're
from, or why you've come. You can stay with them, never speaking,
never leaving the Sisterhouse, never touching another human
beingЕ

"I'd rather be dead!" she snapped at the night, at herselfЧand
began to laugh.