"JenniferRoberson-SwordDancer5-SwordBorn" - 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 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