"Liz Williams - The Age of Ice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Liz)

I knew what I had to do. I hastened past the warrior and pushed open the door, kicking and shoving until
the ancient hinges gave way. I stumbled out into a frosty courtyard, before a frozen fountain. The mansion
before me was dark, but something shrieked out of the shadows: a weir-form, activated, of a woman
with long teeth and trailing hair. She shot past my shoulder and disappeared. I heard an alarm sounding
inside the house. But the ├втВм╦Ьscribe had a broadcasting signal again and that was all that mattered. I called
through to Winterstrike, where it was already mid-morning, and downloaded everything into the
matriarchy's data store, along with a message. The warrior's face did not change as she slowly vanished.
When she was completely gone, I shut down the ├втВм╦Ьscribe and waited.

The scissor-women were not long in finding me. They took me back to Mote, to a different, smaller cell.
I was not interrogated again. Later the next day, a stiff-faced cleric appeared in the doorway and
announced that I was free to go.

I walked out into a cold afternoon to find the streets thronged with people. There would be no war. The
matriarchy had, in its wisdom, come to a compromise and averted catastrophe, or so the women of
Caud said, mouths twisting with the sourness of disbelief.
I wondered what Gennera had discovered in the library archives that had given Winterstrike such a lever.
It would most likely be a weapon, and I wondered also what I had done, in handing the power over one
city across to another, even though it was my own. For governments can change, so swiftly, and
benevolence never lasts. But I caught a rider through the gates of Caud all the same, heading for one of
the way-station towns of the Plain and then for Winterstrike, and did not look behind me.