"Recluce - 07 - The Chaos Balance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Modesitt L E)

аа Hides from himself... yes, you do. The engineer licked his lips,
ignoring the chill ice that coated them, then sublimated away. "I have a
lot... to learn."
аа "So do I. Will you learn it with me?"
аа "If you're gentle with me ... that kind of honesty is hard," he
admitted.
аа "All honesty is hard. So is love." Her eyes were brown soft, and deep,
and he felt lost in them, lost in wondering what he had not seen, what
must have been so obvious. His hands reached for hers as they stood on
the stones of the bridge he had built, in the cold spring of Westwind.
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XII
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THE WHITE-ROBED wizard stood near the front of the barge, on the raised
section of deck right behind the three-cubit-wide bronze cleats, each
shaped like a horned ox, around which the two ropes had been wound.
"Gee-ah..." The low sounds of the boat drovers whispered across the canal
surface in the gray before dawn as the four oxen pulled the gilded White
Lily northward from Fyrad, their hoofs clicking faintly on the worn
paving stones originally laid for the ancient steam tugs that long ago
pulled the barges from the city of the Winter Palace, propelled by the
same chaos engines that the Second Company of White Engineers was
laboring to re-create for His Mightiness's fireship under construction at
Cyad.
аа Themphi frowned. These days, oxen were more dependable, far more
dependable. As for building a replica of an ancient fireship ... he shook
his head. Maintaining the steam device for the palace doors was tiring
enough, yet Lephi wanted a fireship, with an ancient fire cannon,
regardless of the cost and the impact on that precarious balance between
order and chaos.
аа He glanced back at the low superstructure that held the privileged
passengers, and the seven remaining guilty Mirror Lancer officers, then
at the canvas awning under which the other passengers slept. One of the
officers had attempted to assault the wizard. Themphi had turned the
proceeds from the resale of that officer's household and concubines over
to the wronged peasant girl along with a year's pay from each officer. In
that, Lephi had been right. Erratic as the Emperor was, he was more often
correct than not. The white wizard shook his head as he glanced westward
in the general direction of Cyad.
аа "A peasant girl . . . and she will be the richest woman in ... what is
that wretched place . . . Nystrad." Themphi stretched and looked at the
deckhouse where young Fissar still slept. The young always slept, unaware
of the continual balancing acts required of their elders.
аа Far behind the deckhouse were the piers of Fyrad where the swift
coaster had brought him from Cyad, far more swiftly than taking the North
Highway.
аа Then his eyes dropped back to the glasslike surface of the canal.
аа Water bugs, almost as large as the wizard's clenched fist, skimmed
across the shimmering surface, darting between the stalks of the reeds