"Martha Wells - Fall of Ile-Rien 02 - The Ships of Air" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wells Martha)

outfits she had left behind in Ile-Rien.
At the moment all three of them were covered with bruises,
howler scratches and patches of mud and slime from the walls of
the underground passages. The last few days had been nothing but
fighting and running and swimming and falling, and Tremaine just
wanted everyone to quietly get on the ship so they could get the hell
away from here. She had also gone to a great deal of trouble to steal
the Queen Ravenna for just this purpose and she wanted her new
friends to like it. So far they had stubbornly refused to share her
enthusiasm. Even Ilias, who had actually sailed on the ship briefly.
"It won't matter how big the ship is as long as she sails by curses,"
Giliead continued frankly. "They're never going to get used to that."
Tremaine knew he was probably right, though she wasn't ready to
admit it aloud. Syprian civilization was considerably more primitive
than Ile-Rien's, and they regarded any mechanical object, from
electric lights to clocks, as magical. Worse, Syprians hated magic,
since all their sorcerers were murdering lunatics. It was a minor
miracle that they had managed to get to this point, where a woman
from Ile-Rien who was a friend of sorcerers could talk about this
subject with Syprians at all. It helped that they were a sea people
and fairly cosmopolitan, despite their prejudices. "But the Ravenna
doesn't use magic," she pointed out. "The steam enginesтАФ" She
stopped when she realized the words were coming out in Rienish.
If there was a Syrnaic word for "steam engine" the translation spell
that had given Tremaine the knowledge of the language hadn't seen
fit to include it. "There's boilers, and you put water in them, and
burn coal or oil or something, and the steam makes it go. It's not
magic," she finished lamely.
Giliead and Ilias paused to exchange a look; Giliead's half of it
was dubious and Ilias's was ironic. "They always say that," Ilias put
in. He had spent nearly one whole day in Ile-Rien and now
qualified as the local expert. "Wagons without horses, wizard lights,
wizard weapons, there's an explanation for everything."
Giliead shook his head as he started forward again. "If that's our
only way off the island, we're going to have trouble."
Ilias nodded. "It doesn't matter about me, I'm marked anyway," he
said matter-of-factly. The mark he spoke of was the little half-moon
of silver branded into his cheek. It was what Syprian law said
anyone who had ever fallen under a sorcerer's curse should wear.
"And Gil's exempt from the law because he's a Chosen Vessel, but
it's the others I'm worried about. If the people in Cineth harbor see
them come off that ship, they could all end up ostracized or worse.
And some of the younger ones come from pretty good families,
they could still have a chance of getting married."
Tremaine considered that, frowning. There were a lot of things
she didn't understand about the Syprians yet. In many ways their
society was a matriarchy; men seemed to hold the public offices
like war-leader and lawgiver but weren't allowed to own property,
and family status was important. The Andrien, the family Giliead
had been born into and Ilias adopted by, had had its ups and