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

local efficiency covered that as well. Men stood on every roof that
might be at risk, soaking shingles with water, keeping an eye out for
jumping flames or wads of burning debris.
Daja was impressed twice over. Since her arrival in Namorn, she'd
found it hard to feel safe in cities that were almost entirely wood. Here
only the nobility and the empire built in stone. Apparently she did not
worry alone. Someone was teaching Kugiskans organized ways to
battle fires.
 "How did this happen?" she asked Anyussa, who stood beside her.
"Most places, they have sloppy lines and hardly anyone ever thinks of
the neighbors' roofs but the neighbors."
"We got lucky," Anyussa replied. She was a fortyish white woman
with brown eyes, sharp cheekbones, and a full, passionate mouth.
Unlike many northern women, she left her hair brown rather than dye
it fashionably blonde, and wore it pinned in a coil. "Bennat Ladradun,
the man who trained us to fight fires, studied with the fire-mage,
Pawel Godsforge."
Daja whistled. Everyone who dealt with such things knew of the
great Godsforge, whose home was tucked among mountain springs
and geysers in the northwest corner of the Namornese empire.
"Ladradun is a mage?" She recognized his name: the Ladraduns lived
nearby.
"Not Ravvot Bennat," Anyussa replied, using the Namornese term
for "Master." "But he said there was plenty for even a non-mage to
learn, and he learned it. When he came home, he talked the city
council into allowing him to train districts in Godsforge's firefighting
methods. Then he talked some of the island councils into granting
funds and people to train. It paid off. It's been two years since a house
burned to the ground here on Kadasep. He тАУ "
Suddenly people in the stableyard were shouting. Above the adult
voices rose the thin screams of children. Daja left Anyussa and raced
toward the stable, realizing someone must be caught inside. She
gathered her power in case she had to do something in a hurry.
In the stableyard, people stood as close as they dared to the entrance
of the burning building, full buckets in hand. Their eyes were wide in
soot-streaked faces, glued to that dark opening ringed in flame.
Someone went in, Daja thought. They're waiting for him to come
out. She was reaching with her magic, prepared to hold back the fire,
when a bulky, awkward, gray shape came out of the smoke-filled
entrance at a dead run. Behind the shape overtaxed roofbeams groaned
and collapsed. The stable roof caved in, sending gouts of flame
blasting out the doorway to clutch and release the gray shape. Daja
saw a clump of burning straw shoot up through the hole in the roof,
swirling in the column of hot air released by the fire. The brisk Snow
Moon winds seized it and dragged it higher, toward the main house.
Daja raised her right hand and snapped her fingers, calling with her
power. The clump of fire came to her, collapsing until it was a tidy
globe that rested on her palm. Holding it before her face, she asked,
"What am I going to do with you?"
She looked at the gray shape. Firefighters pulled the water-soaked