"Larry Niven - Limits" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

platter was quite clean now. "Oh, to hell with the problems of were-folk. Tell
me how you lost your eye."

Karskon jumped, but he answered. "Happened in the baths when I was
thirteen. We were having a fight with wet towels and one of my halfbrothers
flicked my eye out with the corner of a towel. Dull story."

"You should make up a better one. Want some help?" Karskon shook his
head, smiling despite himself. 'Where are you from?"

"Inland. It's been years since I tasted fresh fish. You were right, it's
wonderful." He paused, but the silence forced him to continue. "I'm half
Torovan, half Minterl. Duke Chamil of Konth made me his librarian, and I teach
his legitimate children. Lady Durily descends from the old Minterl nobility.
She's one of Duchess Chamil's ladies-in-waiting. That's how we met."

"I never understood shoreside politics," Merle said. "There was a war,
wasn't there, long ago?"

Karskon answered for fear that Durily would. "Torov invaded after the
quake. It was an obvious power vacuum. The tales tell that the Torovan armies
never got this far south. What was left of the dukes surrendered first. You'll
find a good many of the old Minterls hereabouts. The Torovans have to go in
packs when they come here."

Merle was looking disgusted. "Whales don't play at war."

"It's not a game," Karskon said.

Rordray added, "Or at least the stakes are too high for ordinary
people."

There was murky darkness, black with a hint of green. Blocky shapes.
Motion flicked past, drifted back more slowly. Too dark to see, but Karskon
sensed something looking back at him. A fish? A ghost?

Karskon opened his good eye.

Durily was at -the window, looking out to sea. Leftward, waves washed
the spike of island that had been Crown Hill. "There was grass almost to the
top," Durily said, "but the peak was always a bare knob. We picnicked there
once, the whole family -- "

"What else do you remember? Anything we can use?"

"Two flights of stairs," Durily said. "You've seen the one that winds up
the outside of the tower, like a snake. Snake-headed, it used to be, but the
quake must have knocked off the head."
"Animated?"