"Elizabeth Moon - Fool's Gold" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moon Elizabeth)

"And why'd you go off in that snit?" asked Krystal, flipping the beaded fringe on her vest.
"See this? I lost three strings, two of them with real lapis beads, trying to track you
through that white-thorn thicket. You could just as easily have gone around it, rather than
making me get my knees all scratchedтАФ"
"Shut up, Krystal," Siobhan said. "Though she has a point, 'Bel. What got into you,
anyway?"


Mirabel sniffed, and hated herself for it. "Bella said if I was just investigating, I could go
aloneтАФnobody should botherтАФ"


"Bella's having hot flashes," Siobhan said. "Not herself these days, our Bella, and worried
about having to retire. We unelected her right after you left, and then we came after you.
If you had just waited a day, 'stead of storming out like thatтАФ"


"But you're so impetuous," Krystal said, pouting. She pulled the end of her silver-gilt
braid around, frowned at it, and nipped off a split end with her small, white, even teeth.


The third member of the party appeared, along with a shaggy pack pony, its harness hung
with a startling number of brightly polished horse brasses.


"I needed a holiday," Sophora said, her massive frame dwarfing everything but the
mountains. "And a chance for some healthy open-air exercise." The Chancellor of the
Exchequer grinned. "Besides, I think that idiot Balon of Torm is trying to rob the realm,
and this will give him a chance, he thinks. The fool."


Mirabel's mood now suited a sunny May morning. Not even the next squall off the
mountain could make her miserable. Krystal, though, turned her back to the blowing rain
and pouted again.


"This is ruining my fringes."


"Shut up Krystal," said everyone casually. The world was back to normal.
***
Cavernous Dire had subsisted on rockrats, rock squirrels, rock grouse, and the occasional
rock (mild serpentine, with streaks of copper sulfate, eased his draconic fire-vats, he'd
found). In midwinter, he might be lucky enough to flame a mountain goat before it got
away, or even a murk ox (once widespread, now confined to a few foggy mountain
valleys) . But autumn meant hunger, unless he traveled far into the plains, where he could
be hunted by man and dragon alike.


Now, as he lay on the cold stone floor of his cave, stirring the meagre pile of his treasure,