"Jennifer Roberson - Karavans - Ending and Beginning" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roberson Jennifer)

swapped out headstalls for halters, then led the team along the line of wagons to Janqueril,
horse-master. The aging, balding man and his apprentices would tend the teams while every
else made their way into the tent-city settlement, looking for release from the tension of the
And, she knew, to find other diviners who might tell a different tale of the future they fa
tomorrow, on the edge of unknown lands.
Ilona delivered the horses, thanked Janqueril, then pushed a fractious mass of curling da
hair out of her face. Jorda kept three diviners in his employ, to make sure his karavans got
safely to their destinations and to serve any of his clients, but Tansit had always come to he
He said he trusted her to be truthful with him. Hand-readers, though not uncommon, were no
native to Sancorra, and Tansit, like others, viewed her readings as more positive than those
given by Jorda's other two diviners. Ilona didn't know if that were true; only that she alway
told her clients the good and the bad, rather than shifting the emphasis wholly to good.
She had seen danger in Tansit's callused hand. That, she had told him. And he had laugh
said the only danger facing him were the vermin holes in the prairie, waiting to trap his hor
and take him down as well.
And so a vermin hole had trapped his horse, snapping a leg, and Tansit, walking back t
the karavan well behind him, was found by the Hecari patrol that paused long enough to kil
him, then continue on to richer pickings. By the time the karavan reached the scout, his featu
were unrecognizable; Ilona knew him by his clothing and the color of his blood-matted hair
So Tansit had told his own fortune without her assistance, and Ilona lost a man whom s
had not truly loved, but liked. Well enough to share his bed when the loneliness of her life s
her to it. Men were attracted to her, but wary of her gift. Few were willing to sleep with a
woman who could tell a lover the day of his death.
At the end of journeys, Ilona's habit was to build a fire, lay a rug, set up a table, cushion
and candles, then wait quietly for custom. At the end of a journey clients wished to consult
diviners for advice concerning the future in a new place. But this night, at the end of this
journey, Ilona forbore. She stood at the back of her wagon, clutching one of the blue-painte
spoke wheels, and stared sightlessly into the sunset.

Some little while later, a hand came down upon her shoulder. Large, wide, callused, w
spatulate fingers and oft-bruised or broken nails. She smelled the musky astringency of a
hard-working man in need of a bath; heard the inhaled, heavy breath; sensed, even without
reading that hand, his sorrow and compassion.
"He was a good man," Jorda said.
Ilona nodded jerkily.
"We will hold the rites at dawn."
 She nodded again.
"Will you wish to speak?"
She turned. Looked into his face, the broad, bearded, seamed face of the man who
employed her, who was himself employed several times a season to lead karavans across t
wide plains of Sancorra to the edge of other provinces, where other karavans and their mas
took up the task. Jorda could be a hard man, but he was also a good man. In his green eyes s
saw grief that he had lost an employee, a valued guide, but also a friend. Tansit had scouted
Jorda more years than she could count. More, certainly, than she had known either of them.
"Yes, of course," she told him.
Jorda nodded, seeking something in her eyes. But Ilona was expert at hiding her feeling
Such things, if uncontrolled, could color the readings, and she had learned long before to m
emotions. "I thank you," the master said. "It would please Tansit."
She thought a brace of tall tankards of foamy ale would please Tansit more. But words
would have to do. Words for the dead.