"02 - Sword Singer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roberson Jennifer)

sun-bleached blonde brows. "Even if it took us five and a half more years,
bascha, it'd still be there."
"You forget yourself, Sandtiger." Her tone was suddenly cool. I stopped saddling
the stud and turned to look directly at her. "Only two months remain before
Theron's agreed-upon year is done... and then they will be sending another
sword-dancer to collect the blood-debt I owe."
Not a laughing matter, with Del or with anyone else. What she faced was serious.
If, in the specified months, Del refused to go North to face trial for that
blood-debt, the task of killing her would then belong to any man, or multiples
thereof. Northern, Southron, sword-dancer, soldier, bandit; it simply didn't
matter. Her killer would be rewarded for discharging the blood-debt owed for the
murder of her an-kaidin,
Del was guilty. She had killed the an-kaidin. She carried blood-guilt freely,
and did not deny responsibility. It made the sentence just in the eyes of the
Northern an-kaidin and all their students, the ishtoya and an-ishtoya.
Hoolies, in a weird sort of way even I understood the reason for it.
But anyone who wanted her would have to go through me.




Two
In the desert, the sunsets are glorious. I've never been a man for painting
pictures with words, but often, at day's end, watching, I wished I was. There is
something oddly tranquil and satisfying in watching the sun slide down beyond
the bright blade of the horizon, setting the ocher and umber desert ablaze with
the brilliance of richer colors: copper, canary, saffron and cinnabar. The
desert is transfigured into a paradise of pigments, a collection of colors on
the palette of gods different from those Del knew, or created with Boreal.
Sunset. There is something that speaks in quiet inner places about the ordering
of the world, today and tomorrow, then and now, and all of the yesterdays.
I sat my bay stud and stared westward, watching the sun go down, and knew
contentment in the company I kept. Del was mute, watching as I watched; feeling,
I knew, some of the same feelings, sharing the quietude. There were many things
unknown between us, many things unspoken, because we had both been shaped by
circumstances far beyond ken or control. We were an odd amalgam, the woman and
I; sword-dancers both; dangerous, deadly, dedicated, as loyal to the rituals of
the circle as to one another. And yet denying, in our own independently stubborn
ways, any loyalties to one another at all; preferring, for countless ridiculous
reasons, to claim ourselves invulnerable to the normal course of human wants,
needs, desires.
And knowing, perfectly well, we needed one another as much as we needed the
dance.
The sunset gilded Del's face. She had pushed the hood off her head so the silk
settled on her shoulders, baring hair and features. She was all aglow: old gold,
ivory, ice-white. In profile, she was flawless; full-face, even better.
Inwardly, I smiled, thinking of the bed we would share in Harquhal. A bed bed,
not a blanket spread upon the sand, or the naked sand itself. We had not, yet,
ever shared a proper bed, being confined for so long to the Punja.
But now we left the deadly Punja far behind, passing out of dunes and flatlands