"Jennifer Roberson - Sword Dancer 5 - Sword Born" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roberson Jennifer)

Sword Born
Book 5 of the Sword Dancer series
By Jennifer Roberson




PROLOGUE
SWORD PIERCED FLESH, broke bone. I felt it go in, felt the give, the tension in
my wrists as steel cut into body. Heard my own hoarse shout as I denied again
that this was what I wanted, what I meant--
--and awoke with an awkward upward lunge that smashed the back of my skull
into wood.

One way to stop a dream, I guess: knock it clean out of your head.

Driven flat by the force of the collision, I lay belly-down on the threadbare
blanket and scrunched my face against pain and shock, locking teeth together. I
couldn't manage a word, just swore a lot in silence inside my rattled skull.

From above, warily, "Tiger?"

I didn't answer. I was too busy gripping the back of my abused skull, trying to
keep it whole.

"Are you all right?"

No, I wasn't all right, thank you very much; I'd just come close to splattering my
brains all over the tiny cabin we shared aboard a ship I'd learned to hate the day
we sailed. But to say I wasn't all right?

I turned my head, carefully, into a slotted streak of brassy sunlight skulking
fitfully through creaking boards bleeding dribbles of sticky pitch. "--fine." From
between gritted teeth.

Movement overhead. A moment later a wealth of fan-hair barely visible in fog-
tendriled morning light spilled over the side of the narrow bunk looming low
above me, which was precisely what I'd cracked my head against. (The bunk,
that is, not the hair.) Then the face appeared. Upside down.

Del is beautiful from any direction, in any position, wearing any expression. But
just now I was in no shape to appreciate that beauty. "Was that your head?"

I undamped my jaws a bit and removed my cheek from the lump of mildewed
material that served inadequately as a pillow. It stank of salt and fish and, well,
me. "I suppose I could point out that sleeping apart for months on end in bunks
barely big enough for a dog makes it hard for a man to, um, demonstrate his
admiration and affection--"
"Lust," she put in, stripping away euphemism neatly. "And it's only been two
weeks. Besides, we had the floor." She paused, correcting her terminology. "The