"Tamora Pierce - Circle Opens 3 - Cold Fire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pierce Tamora)

what the others could do. Daja's ability to draw warmth and see magic
came to her courtesy of a weather-mage.
"Well," Nia said, determinedly cheerful. "Let's try again."
The lesson went forward. Daja caught the rhythm and managed two
circuits of the basin before they decided to stop. Back into the house
they went, shedding their winter gear and skates in the long, enclosed
area called the slush room. Afterward they followed the halls that
made the outbuildings part of the house to reach the kitchen.
Daja accepted a mug of hot cider from one of the maids. She sat
near one of the small hearths, where her jeweler's tools and a task that
she could handle awaited her. No servant would ask a great mage like
Frostpine to mend their bits of jewelry. Daja was fair game; they
thought she was a student, willing and skilled. The whispers that she
too might be a great mage had not come as far north as Namorn.
Daja enjoyed the work. She liked to sit here doing small repairs,
breathing the scents of spices and cooking meat, and listening to
servants and vendors chatter in Namornese. Before she had mastered
the strange tongue, her travels with Frostpine in the empire of Namorn
had been lonely. It was wonderful to know what people actually said.
She touched the necklace the cook, Anyussa, had given her. Daja's
left hand bore a kind of brass half-mitt that covered the palm and the
back; strips passed between her fingers to connect them. As flexible as
her body, the brass shone bright against her dark skin. The magic in
the living metal told Daja that the necklace was gilt on silver тАУ
expensive for a servant, even one so well paid as Matazi Bancanor's
head cook, but Matazi herself would turn up her nose at it.
Daja laid the gilt metal rope straight on the table. She didn't touch
her pliers. Gilt was tricky stuff on which to apply any force: badly
worked, it would flake off to expose the metal underneath.
She needed to warm it a bit. Turning, Daja reached toward the
hearth and called a seed of fire to her. It swerved around the two
cooks who worked there: Anyussa was watching Nia's identical twin
Jorality, or Jory, stir a green sauce. Jory saw the fire seed go by and
grinned at Daja, then shifted nervously from foot to foot as Anyussa
inspected her work.
"Now look тАУ you rushed. It's gone lumpy," the woman said, lifting a
few green clumps in a spoon. "That's the ruin of any sauce. If you
don't stir enough, or let your attention wander, or add flour too fast, it
lumps, and it's ruined." Anyussa turned to chide a footman who had
dropped a basket of kindling.
 Daja was about to tell the glum Jory it was just a green sauce for
fish, not a disaster, when a silver tendril of magic leaped from Jory
into the sauce-pot. The girl stirred it in with a trembling hand. Daja
stared. She and Frostpine had lived here for two months. No one had
mentioned that any of the Bancanor children, the twins or their
younger brother and sister, had power.
Anyussa returned to Jory. Daja watched the cook. Had the woman
seen Jory's small magic?
Anyussa dipped her spoon again. "I tell young girls, you cannot
rush тАУ " She fell silent as she raised her spoon and turned it to spill the