"Janny Wurts - Wayfinder(2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wurts Janny)

him; either he slept or had dropped unconscious. The wind bit at wet flesh, made
cruel by driven spray. The tide rose still, and the sand where he lay would very soon
be submerged. Forced by necessity, Sabin arose. The jacket she had left on the dory
would have to serve the old man as a blanket until Uncle Ciondo could be fetched
from his bed.
Sabin awakened to sunlight. Afraid of her uncle's gruff scolding, she shot
straight, too fast. The blood left her head. Dizziness held her still and blinking, and
she realized: Uncle Ciondo was shouting. His voice drifted up through the trapdoor
to the ladder, though he probably stood in the kitchen by the stove, shaking a fist as
he ranted.
"A condemned man, what else could he be! Or why should anyone have
chained him? Those fetters were not closed with locks. They were riveted. We
cannot shelter such a man, Kala."
The castaway, Sabin remembered. She pushed out of bed, and tripped in her
haste over the wet smock she had discarded without hanging last night. From the
clothes chest she grabbed her only spare, and followed with the woolen britches
every fisher's lad wore to sea. She left her boots. Even if they were not drenched
and salt-stiff, they would make too much noise and draw notice.
Masked by the murmur of her aunt's voice, declaiming, Sabin set bare feet on
the ladder. At the bottom, the door to Juard's room lay cracked open, beyond the
stairwell, which tunneled the bellow of her uncle's protest. "Kala, that's daft and you
know it! He could be dangerous, a murderer. I say we send him inland in the fish
wagon and leave his fate to the King's bailiff."
Sabin's uncle was not hard-hearted, but only a sailor, and the sea rewards no
man for sentiment. Ciondo would care very little if the rescued man could hear the
rough anger in his voice. But as a girl not born to a fisher's trade, Sabin flinched.
She tiptoed down the hall and slipped through the opened door, a ghost with mousy,
tangled hair and a sailcloth smock flocked at the cuffs with the rusty blood of gutted
cod.
The man the sea had cast up was asleep. Chain lay on him still, looped at
wrists and ankles with spare line that tied him spread-eagled to the bedposts. Ciondo
had taken no chances, but had secured the refugee with the same half hitches he
might use to hold a dory against a squall. Still, the undyed wool of the blankets hung
half kicked off, as if the prisoner had thrashed in nightmares. His rags were gone.
Daylight through the opened shutters exposed a history of abuse, from the salt-galled
sores left by shackles to a mapwork of dry, welted scars. He was not old after all,
Sabin saw, but starved like a mongrel dog. His skin was sun-cured to teak and
creases, and his hair bleached lusterless white. He looked as weatherworn as the
fishing tackle on the sloop's decks, beaten by years of hard use.
Aunt Kala's voice filtered through the doorway, raised to unusual sharpness.
"Ciondo, I'll be sending no man on to the bailiff before he finds his wits and tells his
name! Nor will any needy stranger leave our roof hungry, the more shame to you for
witless fears! As if anybody so starved could cause harm while bound up in metal
chains! Now, be off! Go down to the beach with the rest, and leave me in peace to
stir the soup."
A grumbling followed, and a scrape of boots on the brick. Few could stand
up to Kala when she was angry, and since Juard's death, none dared. She was apt to
weep when distressed, and if anyone saw her, she would throw cooking pots at them
with an aim that could flatten a pigeon.
Cautious in the quiet after the door slammed, Sabin crept to the window. The