"Michelle West - The Memory of Stone" - читать интересную книгу автора (West Michelle)

of which I know so little. Leave her anywhere but here.
But he did not.
"Will you take care of her?" the woman asked. She was fidgeting now.
"I assure you, there is not another place in all of the Empire where she will beтАФ"
"Because she's always been a bit odd." The woman, having said the words, lost half a
of height. Her hair, dark with streaks of gray, seemed to frame a face too pale to carry it. "S
more than a bit odd now. We're her kin, we know what she means when she speaks; we k
there's no harm in her wild ways. She's a good girl. She's an honest girl."
He started to speak, but she had not yet finished.
"She won't thieve, mind, not for herself. But she takes a fancy to things she seesтАФbi
wood or stone, mostlyтАФand she'll pick 'em up."
"We understand that, here."
"And she'll work funny hours, if you don't stop her. It's hard, but she needs to eat." Care
worn lines deeply into the material of her face. "Don't forget it: she needs to eat. And d
And sleep. She's got to be reminded; we let her work once, thinking she would stop in her
time. Waited to see how long that was." Hands were clenched now.
He stared at her. To his surprise, he wanted to offer her comfort. "She will be treas
here in a way that you cannot envision. Sanfred, the man who is hovering, was trained t
two things: he is a painter, here, one of a very few. And he is a . . . baby-sitter. We all w
the hours that your child would work, unminded. And we have learned to watch out for
other. She will not go hungry; she will not go thirsty. Sleep is harder to dictate."
She wasn't satisfied. He could see it.
He said simply, "There are things that she is beginning to learn that she should
learn on her own. The boxтАФyou saw itтАФis only the first sign of that. There are ot
things she might have made. In our histories, a boy much her age walked into the blacksm
forge shortly after a bandit raid. The raids that year were fierce and terrible, for most o
land had seen little rain, and the fields would not take.
"He made a sword. It killed. That was all it did. It was his rage and his desire; he wie
it. It sang. He carried it to the bandit's home, and he had his revenge, and it was bright
bloody.
"But he had had no sword skills, and he was not a large lad; the sword itself contained
the desire to kill and the ability. In the end, the bandits themselves were not enough to slak
thirst, and he wandered into the village he had loved. Hundreds perished before the sh
that would hold that sword was created."
She was pale, now, pale as light on his beloved ocean. But she asked, simply, "W
happened to the boy?"
A mother's question.
 "He was mad," he replied. "And he remained so."
"They didn't kill him?"
He hesitated. "No," he said at last, and gently, "they did not kill him. They gave
instead, to our keeping."
Before she could speak, he raised a hand. "And in our keeping, in the safety of these w
or in the stewardship of those best suited to such a task, he made such things as Kings w
and his work helped to change the face of the lands we now call the Empire. He was hono
he was revered. In his fashion, he was loved."
She closed her eyes. Opened them. "I can't take her home," she said, the stateme
question.
"No."
She rose then. "Let me say my good-byes, and I'll not trouble you further."
But she would. He could see it in the lines of her face, the depth of her concern. She w