"Melanie Rawn - Exiles 1 - The Ruins of Ambrai" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rawn Melanie)

Collan's life settled into a different routine. He still worked ten hours of the day's fifteen, but at
least he was liberated from the kitchen. Rising by torchlight at Fourth, he ate in the quarters,
then washed and presented himself for three hours of delivering messages among Scraller's
stewards, who had not deigned to address each other in person anytime during the last fifteen
years. Their universal ill-humor was expressed in various ways on Collan's person until
Taguare reminded them that the boyтАФparticularly his handsтАФwas Scraller's property. They
didn't hit him after that, though they often looked as if they'd like to.

From Half-Seventh to Ninth, he had music lessons with Carlon. Half an hour for another
meal and a brief restтАФ Scraller was solicitous of his propertyтАФand a long afternoon of
tending animals was followed by dinner at Twelfth and study with Taguare. Then, at
Fourteenth, he would curl into a blanket and sleep like the dead until the bell clamored its
demand five hours later. He never dreamed.

It bothered him to come to his lessons with the Bookmaster stinking of the sty. Only Scraller's
personal servants were allowed to bathe more than once a week; in The Waste, water was
rationed at the best of times. Along with an aversion to kitchens, Collan took with him from
Scraller's a lifelong hatred of being dirty. And he could never bear to eat porkтАФnot because
he'd conceived any fondness for pigs, but because he could never forget their stench.
As his time with Carlon the Lutenist came in the morning, his hands and clothes were always
clean for his music lessonsтАФhis escape into the cool, pure world of notes that summed into
songs. He learned ballads and rounds, hymns and chanteys and lays, and as the strings
obeyed the growing mastery of his fingers the words made strange and delightful pictures in
his mind. Though he was unsure what love and desire and other odd words meant, any sound
that accompanied music must by mere association tell of wondrous things.

Taguare didn't reveal, and Carlon never mentioned, what awaited him if Scraller found his
performance pleasingтАФor, more to the point, if Scraller's guests found him so. His voice was
clear and fine. To keep it intact, at the first sign of maturity Collan would be castrated.

Taguare said nothing because of his guilt; if he hadn't discovered the boy's quickness of mind,
the gift for music would have gone unnoticed as well. But Collan's only real joy came from
the very thing that would unman him. One day, before it was too late, Taguare promised
himself he would warn the boy to "lose" his voice.

Carlon said nothing because it was to him a perfectly natural state. What was the loss,
compared to privileged position? He himself had never minded.

In Collan's ninth yearтАФmore or lessтАФhe first sang before Scraller's Court. For the occasion he
was washed by bath attendants for the first time in his life. The scrubbing left his dark skin an
angry red, but not a single flea or louse survived. He was then dressed in a motley of cast-off
clothing. The plain brown shirt, from a page recently promoted to footman's crimson,
billowed around Collan's skinny chest and arms. The shortness of the same page's brown
trousers had been disguised by sewing a row of slightly snagged crimson silk ribbon at the
hems, thus decently covering his ankles. (In fact, Scraller liked the effect so much he ordered
the same addition to the livery of all his pages. It was the first time Collan set a fashion, but
not the last.)

The longvest, hemmed to proper knee-length, belonged to Carlon, unworn since his girth had
expanded beyond the seemly closure of the buttons. A gaudy creation of turquoise