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

Abruptly she said, "I have to go."
Jorda's ruddy brows ran together. "Alone? Into this place? It's but a scattering of tents,
Ilona, not a true settlement. You would do better to come with me, and a few of the others.
After what happened on the road, it would be safer."
Safety was not what she craved. Neither was danger, and certainly not death, but she
yearned to be elsewhere than with Jorda and the others this night. How better to pay tribute
Tansit than to drink a brace of tall tankards of foamy ale in his place?
Ilona forced a smile. "I'm going to Mikal's wine-tent. He knows me. I'll be safe
enough there."
Jorda's face cleared. "So you will. But ask someone to walk you back to your wagon la
Ilona arched her brows. "It's not so often I must ask such a thing, Jorda! Usually they be
do that duty."
He understood the tone, and the intent. He relaxed fractionally, then presented her with
brief flash of teeth mostly obscured by his curling beard. "Forgive me! I do know better." T
grin faded. "I think many of us will buy Tansit ale tonight."
She nodded as the big man turned and faded back into the twilight, returning to such dut
as were his at the end of a journey. Which left her duty to Tansit.
Ilona leaned inside her wagon and caught up a deep-dyed, blue-black shawl, swung it
around her shoulders, and walked through the ankle-keep dust into the tiny tent-city.

She had seen, in her life, many deaths. It rode the hands of all humans, though few could
read it, and fewer still could interpret the conflicting information. Ilona had never not been
able to see, to read, to interpret; when her family had come to comprehend that such a gift
would rule her life and thus their own, they had turned her out. She had been all of twelve
summers, shocked by their actions because she had not seen it in her own hand; had she rea
theirs, she might have understood earlier what lay in store. In the fifteen years since they ha
turned out their oldest daughter, Ilona had learned to trust no one but herselfтАФthough she w
given to understand that some people, such as Jorda, were less likely to send a diviner on h
way if she could serve their inter-estss. All karavans required diviners if they were to be tr
successful; clients undertaking journeys went nowhere without consulting any num
of diviners of all persuasions, and a kara-van offering readings along the way, rather than
depending on itinerant diviners drifting from settlement to settlement, stood to attract more
custom. Jorda was no fool; he hired Branca and Melior, and in time he hired her.
The night was cool. Ilona tightened her shawl and ducked her head against the errant br
teasing at her face. Mikal's wine-tent stood nearly in the center of the cluster of tents that
spread like vermin across the plain near the river. A year before there had been half as man
next year, she did not doubt, the population would increase yet again. Sancorra province w
in utter disarray, thanks to the depredations of the Hecari; few would wish to stay, who had
means to depart. It would provide Jorda with work as well as his hired diviners. But she
wished war were not the reason.
Mikal's wine-tent was one of many, but he had arrived early when the settlement had fir
sprung up, a place near sweet water and good grazing, and not far from the border of the
neighboring province. It was a good place for karavans to halt overnight, and within weeks
had become more than merely that. Now merchants put up tents, set down roots, and served
populace that shifted shape nightly, trading familiar faces for those of strangers. Mikal's fac
was one of the most familiar, and his tent a welcome distraction from the duties of the road
Ilona took the path she knew best through the winding skeins of tracks and paused only
briefly in the spill of light from the tied-back door flap of Mikal's wine-tent. She smelled th
familiar odors of ale and wine, the tang of urine from men who sought relief rather too clos
the tent, the thick fug of male bodies far more interested in liquor than wash water. On