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

flame-stitching on thick yellow tapestry silk, the padded shoulders extended a full five inches
beyond the boy's arms. Stiff, heavy, and so big on him that one glance in a mirror told him
he looked ridiculous, the longvest's effect on his appearance irked him mightilyтАФso much so
that he forgot to be nervous about his performance.

At least the slippers fit. They were soft new doeskin, and Taguare's gift, made by his friend,
the cobbler. "You're like a Senison puppy," the Bookmaster told Collan, smiling. "You'll grow
into those hands and feet of yours, ColтАФand top me by at least a head when you're finished!"

The slippers were the latest absurdity in style, with elongated, pointed toes. But they were
new, and his, and so comfortable that he didn't mind too much that they made his feet look
even bigger than they were.

He would remember the slippers and the longvest for reasons having nothing to do with
survival. Cobblers and tailors would moan in later years when they saw Col coming, for his
insistence on perfect fit took hours. After he began his infamous and highly lucrative career,
he would never again wear any garment that had belonged to another man. His clothing
from head to foot was his and his alone. And he never wore a coif if he could possibly avoid it.

They had virulent arguments about that, he and she. It completely escaped him how a
woman who could exert every particle of her formidable powers to the overthrow of the
existing governmentтАФand the social order that nurtured itтАФ could be so utterly dedicated to
the preservation of some of its customs. " Bred in the bone ," the old man told him once, with a
mild shrug. " You must remember Who She is, my lad ."

The hated coif was a woven hood that fit tightly to the skull and fastened at the throat with
buttons or, in the case of Bloods and the First and Second Tiers, sigil pins. Modesty dictated
that every male's head be hidden from brow to nape. Not a single hair could show. Saints
knew how many ladies would be scandalizedтАФnot to mention Scraller, who according to
rumor was baldingтАФif even a slave-child appeared with his head uncovered.

So when they dressed him before his first appearance at court, he submitted to a garish
crimson coif. After strict inspection, Flornat the Slavemaster pronounced him fit to be seen by
polite company. Collan was taken to a dark hallway off the banquet room to await summons.

Carlon had lent his own second-best lute for the occasion. Col clutched it by the neck as if
strangling a snake. He was sweating in the heavy longvest and his scalp itched even though
he knew there wasn't a live bug on him anywhere. This alone was an odd enough sensation to
start his nerves twanging. But worse was the coif: a bad fit around his abundance of curling
coppery hair, the throat strap made it difficult to breathe.

So he took the fool thing off.

No one came to fetch him; a door simply opened and a hand waved him into the banquet
hall. He'd never been inside it in his lifeтАФindeed, never been in any of the public rooms, only
the kitchen and work chambers and the warren of halls. Collan was as startled by the place as
the people within were by him.

Not a hall; a cavern, cut into living rock and festooned with the banners of Scraller's
guestsтАФand dozens of inevitable galazhi. Long tables formed a hollow square around a