"01 - Sword Dancer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roberson Jennifer)

impressed Moon (who is more accustomed to women throwing themselves at his
chubby feet and begging for release, rather than trying to slice into his fat
flesh), but I know better than to think of a sword in a woman's hands. Women
don't use swords in the South; as far as I know, they don't use them in the
North, either. The sword is a man's weapon.
Moon scowled at me sourly. "Good enough to give you a second thought. She
unleashed that thing in here and it was all I could do to get a rope on her."
"How did you catch her, then?" I asked suspiciously.
He picked briefly at gold teeth with a red-lacquered fingernail and shrugged. "I
hit her on the head." Sighed as I scowled at him. "I waited until she was busy
trying to eviscerate the eunuch. But even then, she nearly stuck me through the
belly." One spread hand guarded a portion of the soft belly swathed in silk. "I
was lucky she didn't kill me."
I grunted absently and rose, holding the Northern sword by its plain leather
scabbard. "Which hyort is she in?"
"The red one," he said immediately. My, but he did want to get rid of her, which
suited me just fine. "And you ought to thank me for keeping her, Tiger. Someone
else came looking for her."
I stopped short of the doorflap. "Someone else?"
He picked at his teeth again. "A man. He didn't give his name. Tall,
dark-haired--very much like you. Sounded like a Northerner, but he spoke good
Desert." Moon shrugged. "He said he was hunting a Northern girl... one who wore
a sword."
I frowned. "You didn't give her away--?"
Offended again, Moon drew himself up. "You sent her with your words, and I
honored those words."
"Sorry." Absently, I scowled at the slaver. "He went on?"
"He spent a night and rode on. He never saw the girl."
I grunted. Then I went out of the hyort.
Moon was right: he'd trussed her up like a sacrificial goat, wrists tied to
ankles so that she bowed in half, but at least he'd made certain her back bent
the proper way. He doesn't, always.
She was conscious. I didn't exactly approve of Moon's methods (or his business,
when it came down to it), but at least he still had her. He might have given her
over to whoever it was who was hunting her.
"The Sandtiger plays for keeps," I said lightly, and she twisted her head so she
could look at me.
All her glorious hair was spread about her shoulders and the blue rug on which
she lay. Osmoon had stripped the white burnous from her (wanting to see what he
wouldn't get, I suppose) but hadn't removed the thigh-length, belted leather
tunic she wore under it. It left her arms and most of her legs bare, and I saw
that every inch of her was smooth and tautly muscled. Sinews slid and twisted
beneath that pale skin as she shifted on the rug, and I realized the sword
probably did belong to her after all, improbable as it seemed. She had the body
and the hands for it.
"Is it because of you I'm being held like this?" she demanded.
Sunlight burned its way through the crimson fabric of the hyort. It bathed her
in an eerie carnelian glow and purpled the blue rug into the color of darkest
wine; the color of ancient blood.
"It's because of me you're being held like this," I agreed, "because otherwise