"Thieves World v2 4 - 1987 - Shadowspawn - A J Offutt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Offutt Andrew J)

"Hmm?" She kept her face directed ahead, to hide her tears.
"How old are you?"
"Eighteen."
"Really! I thought you were seventeen. I thought I remembered Moonflower's saying you were seventeen, just a few months ago."
"Well . . . I'll be eighteen in three months. A little less than three months. That's the same as being eighteen," she added, thinking that maybe he was thinking about making love to her tonight.
She didn't know what that was like, didn't know how, and she was nervous about it. She knew that Hanse knew how. She knew he had done it before. That both helped-he can teach me what 1 don't know-and added to her nervousness: he's an experienced man of the world and what if I'm an incompetent dummy when it comes to-to carding wool?
At least her mother had never committed the cruelty of trying to frighten her about It. She knew that her parents had liked It a lot, this thing between men and women that was called, among other things, by the euphemism "carding wool." Mignureal assumed that she would like It a lot too, and she was sure that Hanse already did. Besides, she wanted to. With Hanse.
"How old are you, Hanse?"
"What?" he said, to buy a little time. He didn't like .admitting what he had to admit in response to such a question, because it told too much about him.
She said, "How old are you?"
Staring ahead at nothing in particular because that was what there was to stare at, she squeezed her eyes shut, real hard, to force out what she thought were the last of her tears. For now.
"I don't know."
"Oh Hanse," she said, for she knew he was from the wrong part of town, that area called Downwind, and that he had hardly known his mother, who had apparently been only
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casually acquainted with his father. "You have to have some idea. Are you older than twenty?"
"About that," he said, fidgeting in sudden discomfort. "Maybe a little older. Damn. The only thing worse than riding a horse is when you have to get down and try to walk!"
Hanse's age was a subject on which Mignureal had long been as silent as the g in her name. Now, for some reason, she could not avoid persisting. After all, they had cloven to one another. Here they were alone, riding north alone, just the two of ..hem. She and her man. She wanted to know everything about him. Wasn't that right? Wasn't that the way it should be?
She said, "Maybe a little younger?"
"Maybe. A little. I've counted off seventeen years, see. I can account for those, but I don't know how old I was when I stole the fig."
Abruptly he twisted around in his saddle, a sort of cradle of leather over wood, high of front and back-pommel and cantle. When he put his hand up to his brow as if to shade those nearly black eyes of his to see better in the glare of sun off sand, Mignureal sighed. He was just avoiding her question, she was sure-but naturally she had to look back. She didn't see anything. She glanced nervously over at Hanse.
"Hanse?"
He shrugged. "Thought I saw something a little while ago. Thought I'd just not say anything but suddenly wheel around this way to take it by surprise, if there was something."
"You mean-people? Those desert raiders Tempus's drover told us about?"
He shook his head. "No, not that. Something small. Just a little dark blob, moving. I mean I thought I saw that, before. Like a little animal, you know. As if it was maybe following us. I don't see anything now, though. Really."
A shiver went through her and Mignureal squinted, lifting her own hand to shade her eyes. She too stared back along then-wake.
She saw sand, and sand. Nothing else. No animal, small or otherwise. No vegetation, not even any of the junky-looking desert version of grass or imitation "grass" they had noticed from time to time. Even the onager was only mildly interested in that stuff. She saw not even big stones or rocky outcrops;
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those were just smooth mounds, almost eerie lumps of varying size under the yellow-tan sand, which was ripply all around them, like the train of a dull gown. Beyond, the sky was the same old molten copper shot through with silver and traces of orange. It should have been pretty. It wasn't. It just looked hot. A faraway speck of blue "real" sky made her sigh. She glanced at Hanse again.
"Do you see anything now?"
"No, nothing," he said, swinging back around and adjusting the forefront of his robe's hood. It was folded back on top, like hers, but could be lowered so as to cover the face completely. It was called a sand-hood, they'd been told, and in case of a sandstorm the best thing to do was just stop dead still and keep that hood all the way down. None of that had made them happy, although they were grateful for the gifts of the robes in addition to the horse, Inja. Sandstorm? A storm-of sand} Hanse and Mignureal devoutly hoped that was something of which they could remain pleasantly ignorant.
"Probably didn't see anything before, either," Hanse said, nibbing his thigh and making a chk-chk noise to his horse. "I'm sorry I had to let you know about it. We just saw a long way back. Obviously there's nothing. Just . . . sand." His voice turned sour on the last word.
"Don't be sorry, Hanse. Don't try to be heroic or something and keep things from me, 'for my own good' or some such. All right? I'm not that kind of woman. If something's bothering you, you just let me know too, all right? I don't have to be protected from knowing things."
He nodded without saying anything. She couldn't help another apprehensive backward glance. Nothing. "First you saw something and now we can see a long way back, and there's nothing. I don't like that!"
Hanse didn't like it either but would not tell her so: "I said I thought I saw something. We were told that the sun and the desert can play tricks on your eyes, remember?"
"Yes. I've also been told that some things can be visible and then invisible and then-"
"Stop!" He threw up his head. "Ah god, O Father Ds! Not that; not sorcery. Gods, how I hate sorcery!"
They rode in silence for a few minutes, with Mignureal
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trying to think of something altogether different to talk about. Oh, of course; she remembered where they'd been, in their conversation.
She said, "Did you say 'when you stole a pig'?"
He jerked his head to stare at her with those dark, dark eyes. "What? Why would I accuse you of stealing a pig?" He cocked his bead. "Still, it might taste good; did you?"
"No no, not me. You. I mean, uh, back there. Before we stopped. You know, when we were talking. You said you could account for seventeen years, but then . . . something about stealing a pig?"
"Oh!" A smile flashed over his dark face, brief as a glimpse of sun on a cloudy day in winter. "No-fig. Fffig," he emphasized, and then looked away from her, and his voice went low and sort of dreamy again, with memory. "He made me drop it, too."
Sure that her eyes and face were clear of tears, she looked over at him. "Who made you-I don't understand. What's that have to do with how old you are?"
He gave her a look, but when he saw her face turned his way that expression of exasperation became a little smile, almost apologetic. Definitely not like Hanse called Shadowspawn.
"It's my first memory, see. I was five or three or four or whatever I was, and I've spent a lot of time thinking, tallying up the years since then. There've been seventeen. I was young. Real young, I mean; just a boy, just a child. And I was hungry. I'd been hungry for quite a while. It seemed forever. . . . What's forever, to a child? My stomach wasn't a hole in me; it was a knot, so tight it was sore. I was in the market, and everyone looked about eleven feet tall."
Hanse gestured loosely, as if in pain at remembering. "Just me down there, with the stalls and the counters and all the people towering over me, and all of them moving a lot. What seemed to me millions of legs, a whole forest of legs. Just legs, not eyes to see me. No one seemed to see me. And when they did, they didn't pay any attention. Just some homely little ragtag brat wandering around. Probably thought I was looking for my mother. Hmp! I was looking for anyone! Anyone who'd give me something to eat. A word or two and maybe a touch would have been nice," he said, his voice changing, softening and growing wistful and boyish, and he looked away from her.
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Mignureal bit her lip until it hurt.
"Anyhow, I got used to no one's even noticing me, so I got close to this one stall and spent a long time easing my hand up there. All quivery and holding my breath. And I touched a fig, and snatched it. It looked huge, and good, and it felt huge in my hand and pulpy and-real good. But then I had to run from the monster."