"Martha Wells - Thorns" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wells Martha)

watercolors and geography. Blond hair covered her silken pillow and her face was pale, pure, and still.

My eyes went to him, next. He had had time to do nothing else but open the window, and stared at me
now in shock and angry surprise. "Not one step nearer," I said.

Kohler revealed no fear, and I suspected he felt none. He would have known little fear in his life of
privilege. He glared at me impatiently, and said, "You don't smile as you look on your evil work. Can it
be you feel regret?" The thorns had torn his coat and his cravat was askew, his curls tousled. I still didn't
like him. He had a tendency to go red in the face, and he would probably run to fat later. No, he was not
the man to melt my heart at such a juncture.

"Not regret," I said. The journey here had tired me and this place roused memories. "I was young, in the
fullness of my power, and the failure to invite me to the christening was only the last and worst of the
insults I suffered. Or thought I suffered. I could not have done else, being what and who I was. In a long
life I've done worse, and better, since."

He shook his head in disgust. "You are cruel indeed, to look on such an innocent face, and relegate it to
eternal sleep."

"Cruel, yes. But now the cruelty is in the service of kindness. You've seen this place; you must guess its
age. The time to wake her is a hundred years past. Releasing her into our world would be to relegate
innocence to Hell."

He laughed. "Lies, sophistry."

I persisted, in perhaps a foolish effort to make him understand. "The King here is a King no more. He
cannot even claim the land his palace stands on. It would be stripped, the riches stolen. The inhabitants
would be lost, maddened by the changes around them. The servants and peasants would be cast out to
starve, the nobles trotted about as curiosities. I haven't the power anymore to protect them from it, and
must live with the consequences of my folly. You would expose her to that?" It was useless. They will say
I have done it from jealousy, that I am an old and bitter woman and I couldn't bear to see a beautiful
young girl triumph in happiness.

Let them say it.

I know the world. I began this in foolishness and a desire for vengeance, I admit, and I continued it in
folly. But I ended it in sober judgement, and this was not the Prince to break my spell or warm her heart.

The gaze he turned on her had passion in it, but it was not the passion of love. I had seen the same light in
young Matthew's eyes, when I gave him the sweet cake. He said, "Her, her I would take back with me,
to protect and cherish..."

"And to perdition with her family, her companions, her loyal servants? She would not thank you for that,
if the shock of her situation left her with the power of speech." He said nothing, staring at me angrily, and
I began to suspect that his motives were even less pure than I had thought. Incredible as it seems, I felt
responsible for her, as if I was her nursemaid and not her captor. Moving closer, I said, "But perhaps that
would be more to your taste. A prince of your age is surely married?"

He flushed, in a blotchy and unattractive fashion. "I could hardly expect you to understand, witch." He
reached into his pocket and I suddenly found myself facing a small pistol.