"Tepper, Sheri S - A Plague Of Angels - plangel2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepper Sherri)

126 Sheri S. Tepper

"And I've never made a harlot of anyone, either. It's true, I've recruited concubines a time or two, and carnival folk--a magician, and a strong man. Why do you assume I'm a villain, Farmwife?"
"Your hands are covered, boy, which means tattoos to me, and that means gangs--though you don't speak like them, or at least not when you're speaking to us, though I've no doubt you can and do, most times. Well, it's no matter what you are. There's no refugee here. Only my niece, Oily Longaster from Longville. She missed the turning and went too far up the valley, where she was seen by Farmer Chyne. And if you were born here and raised here, as you claim, you know about Farmer Chyne."
"He was never fond of strangers," said Abasio.
"True. And what with these monsters breeding in the hills, more of them every year, he's got other things not to be fond of. Was his manner as much as anything that made my niece sure she'd gone too far, so she turned and came back again. And that's the whole story of that." She tapped her skimming spoon on the edge of the jar. "May I offer you some biscuits, cityman--"
"Abasio," he offered.
"Abasio." She nodded. "Then it was old Cermit was your grandpa." He got the name out with some difficulty. "Cermit. Yes."
"Poor old man." The Widow gave him a sharp look. "All solitary up there in the woods. So you're the boy who ran off to the city and broke his ma's heart."
"Hush, sister," said the Farmwife. "Let old dung lie."
"Do that," said Abasio stiffly. "I did no more than she had done in her own youth. And I've not regretted it."
"You're young still," said the Widow with a sniff. "Your time for regret is yet to come."
"I offered biscuits and fresh butter and cheese. The good cheese, boy. The stuff we keep for ourselves."
Abasio found his mouth watering. The good cheese, the aged stuff that the farmers kept for themselves because there was no point wasting it on
cityfolk. He hadn't tasted ~hat crumbling yellow wonder in ),ears."Yes, ma'am," he told her fervently. "l'd be most grateful."
He told himself later it was fate, certainly. Fate that the Farmwife mentioned the cheese, and that he accepted it, and that he had his mouth full of it when she walked in. She. Her hair a cloud of darkness and her eyes glowing at him. Her skin shiny.as a piece of handled wood, polished and gleaming. Her skirts pulled between her legs and hiked up into her belt as women did when they worked in the garden, the fabric damp around her knees, knees so softly rounded he could feel them in the palm of his hand, shapely calves, sweetly turned ankles, and feet that made him think of dancing


A PLAGUE OF ANGELS 127

on meadows. Barefoot and laughing she was, coming in and catching sight of him and her brows going up like wings, saying, Who's this? Where've I seen this one before?
And he, he caught his breath through that mouthful of bread and cheese, and choked like a fool, and almost strangled himself, gasping, so there was somebody pounding on him and the Farmwife clutching him around his middle, and when he caught his breath at last with a great whoop of air, she'd gone.
"Smaller mouthfuls, boy," counseled the Farmwife. "Did your ma teach you no manners before you left her?"
"It wasn't that," he said, unthinkingly truthful.
"No, I hardly thought it was," she said dryly. "That was Oily Longaster, my niece, as you've no doubt guessed."
Which was a blatant lie, but he would not argue with her. "She's--she's a very lovely girl," he said.
"She's a lovely young woman, yes. She'll make some lucky farmer a fine wife," said the Farmwife.
"What a waste," he blurted, still unthinking.
"A waste!" Farmwife Suttle exclaimed. "Isn't that a cityman talking! How would you not waste her, boy'? Let's see, she could be a gang concubine, sold to a Chief, and passed on by him to his boys when he tired of her or when she caught one of the IDDIs or grew old. Or she could go to a brothel, where she'd fetch a good many silver rats for her owner until she sickened there. They don't last long in the brothels."
"1 was thinking of the Edge," mumbled Abasio, redfaced. It wasn't true. He'd been thinking of himself.
"Oh? And since when have the Edges been recruiting from outside'? You know as well as I do, boy, that the Edges are closed, them with their lawns and their trees and their tennis and their guard dogs. Them with their clean white clothes and their clean soft hands. Them with their patrols! You have to be born to one of their families, go to one of their schools, be confirmed in one of their faiths, and dress and talk as they do, and if you don't, out you go. No outside wives for them. Nossir."
The Farmwife leaned forward to rap him on the knee with a hard knuckle. "Let be, boy. She'll make some farmer a fine wife, bear him several handsome children, and grow old no unhappier than most of us."
Abasio had no desire to let be. He wanted to rage at her. He wanted to run after the girl. He would have done, except he'd seen her go, and the way she had gone bothered him. She'd fled. She'd taken one look at him and gone out like a cat spooked by a dog.
He finished his bread and cheese, unashamedly begged a bit more for his homeward way, and went out the way he'd come, trying to decide how he'd


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Sheri S. Tepper

manage to find the girl, or talk with her if she was so unwilling. As he rode back along the brook on his way to the gate, he saw the girl-child once again,
this time sitting on the branch of a gnarled tree, watching him closely. "011y says she saw you," said the child. "What's your name?" asked Abasio. "Seelie."
"Seelie. Well, yes, she saw me and I saw her, but she didn't stick around. She came out here, did she?"
"That's her business. I'll be watching, so don't you try anything." What did she suppose he would try? Abduction.'? Here in farm country, where the tocsin would bring the farmers and their families swarming at him like bees? Rape? With the same consequence?
Then all such worries departed him, for he saw her, standing as Seelie had stood, knee-deep in one of the pools, hunting something or other, a plumy creature on her shoulder that at first he thought was a bird, then thought was something else.
He didn't speak until he was near her. "You're Oily," he said foolishly. So far as he knew, it was the only name she had.
She looked up from the fat crayfish in her hand, then dropped it in~.o the sodden sack hanging from her belt. "And you're the man from the city," she said, carefully keeping her eyes away from his. He was just as she remembered him, though the cap and gloves he wore contributed nothing to his appearance. Dark, he was, like walnut wood, darker than she was, and she was dark. Eyes with fire in them. Hands that moved gracefully, as though of themselves.
Handsome or not, she had been warned against citymen. Burned Man had warned her with every word he said. Oracle had warned her with some of the words she hadn't. Though it took all her resolve, she accused him.