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

deck. Which we've used. Several times. Or have you forgotten already?"

Not to be thwarted by an annoying and convoluted interruption intended solely
to sidetrack me into defensiveness, I continued with laborious dignity. "--and
therefore I could claim it was something else entirely that smacked the underside
of your bed with such force as to make the earth move--"

"Embroidering the legend of the jhihadi, are we?"

"--but considering that I'm always an honest messiah, er, man--"

"When it suits you."

"--I'll admit that, yes, that was my head." I moved my fingers gingerly through
wiry hair. "I think it's still in one piece."

"Well, if it isn't, it matches the rest of you. Age does that to a man." And she
withdrew her head--and the hair--so I had nothing to glare at.

"Your fault," I muttered.

She swung down from her bunk over mine. Short, narrow bunks, too small for
either of us together or apart; Del is a tall woman. She landed lightly, bracing
herself against the ship's uneasy wallowing with a hand on the salt-crusted,
battered bunk frame. "My fault? That you're feeling your age? Really, Tiger--
you'd think it was always my idea that we, as you put it, 'demonstrate admiration
and affection.' "

"Hoolies," I muttered, "but I'll be glad when we're on land again. Room to move
on land."

Del sat down on the edge of my bunk. It wasn't a comfortable position because
she had to lean forward and hunch over so she wouldn't bash her head against
the underside of her bunk. I rearranged bent legs, allowing her as much room as
I could; I wasn't about to sit up and risk my skull again. "Any blood?" she asked
matter-of-factly, sounding more like man than woman preparing to blithely
dismiss an injury as utterly insignificant unless a limb was chopped off.

Someone once asked me what it meant if Del was ever kind. I answered--
seriously--that likely she was sick. Or worried about me, but that wouldn't do to
say. For one, I hated fuss; for another, well, Del's kind of worrying doesn't make
for comfort. A smack on the butt is more her style of encouragement, much like
you'd slap a horse as you sent it out to pasture.

I inspected my skull again with tentative fingers, digging through salt-crusted
hair. No blood. Just a knot coming up. And itching. But too far from my heart to
kill me.

Then I dismissed head and irony altogether. I reached out and clasped her arm,
closing the wrist bones inside my hand. Not a small woman, Del, in substance or