"Melanie Rawn - Exiles 2 - The Mage Born Traitor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rawn Melanie)

Part One


969-988


Wraiths


Chapter 1


Cailet Rille leaned back against her bedchamber door, grateful for the quietтАФand the lock.
Too tired to call up any additional Wards to augment those permanently in place around her
Ryka Court quarters, she unbuttoned the high collar of her regimentals and wondered if she
should take a nice, long, soothing bath. No, too much effort. And if TariseтАФwho was right
across the hallway in Sarra's suiteтАФheard the tub spigot running, she'd come in, Wards or
not, to "assist" Cailet's ablutions. According to Tarise, no Lady of Importance and Position
ever even trimmed her own nails.

Though Tarise Nalle was officially Sarra's personal maid (and auxiliary eyes and ears), she
had set herself the task of convincing Cailet that she, too, required a servant to attend all her
needsтАФan idea as alarming as it was amusing. There had been servants at Ostinhold while
Cailet was growing up, of courseтАФdozens of them to clean the sprawling house and cook the
meals and wash and mend and clean some more. But everyone at Ostinhold made her own
bed, tidied her own room, dressed herself, and did her own hair (except First Daughter Geria,
whose first action on attaining her majority and a yearly allowance at eighteen was to hire a
maid). Sarra, having shared Tarise with Lady Agatine, was used to having things done for
her. She saw no reasonтАФnor did TariseтАФwhy Cailet should be made uncomfortable by
similar attentions.

She was, though. And not just because it felt silly to have someone wait on her. She said
nothing about the deeper reasons, the secret reasons, for wanting total privacy in her person
and personal belongings. Instead she told her sister that she was perfectly capable of keeping
her rooms neat, she'd been dressing herself since the age of two, and her hair was hopeless
anyway. Tarise's sharp references to the exalted status of Mage Captal fell on deaf ears. Cailet
wanted simply to forget her position most of the time, and the best way to do that was to be
alone as much as possible.

Or so she'd thought.

She prowled the bedroom, sourly cataloging luxuries that made her feel as if she lived in a
birdcage. Quite literally; sun-silvered oak furniture was inlaid with ebon-wood in patterns of
feathers, and fitted with golden goose heads as drawer pulls, cabinet handles, and finials on
the bedcurtain rods. Thick Cloister rugs intricately figured with a whole improbable aviary
splashed bright colors underfoot. The bathroom, visible through the open stained-glass door
(birds splashing in a sylvan pond), was a marvel of malachite and marble and gold-beaked
faucets. Birdcage it might be, but the view through beveled windows was of the gardens and
Council Lake beyond, and unequaled in all Ryka Court.