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

"Awake, is he?" Kala stiffened primly. She glanced toward the bed and
stopped cold, her chins sagging beneath her opened mouth, and the tray forgotten in
her hands. For a moment she seemed to breathe smoke as she inhaled rising steam
from the soup bowl.
Then she exploded. "My fool of a husband! Rope ties! The cruelty and the
shame of it." She stepped sideways, banged her tray down on the clothes chest, and
in a fit of total distraction, failed to bemoan the slopped soup. "Sabin, run out and
fetch our mallet and chisel." She added to the stranger on the bed, "We'll have you
free in just minutes."
For an instant, the Wayfinder's cut-crystal eyes seemed to mirror all of the
earth. "Your good man thinks I'm a murderer."
 "My good man is a fool who thinks in circles like a sand crab." Kala noticed
that Sabin still lingered in the doorway. "Girl, must you always be idling about
waiting for speech from the wind? Get along! Hammer and chisel, and quickly."
Kala had matters well in hand before the last fetter was struck. "You're taking
up no space that's needed," she insisted with determined steadiness. "Juard's bed is
yours, he's dead and at rest in the sea, and if you care to lend a hand at the chores,
we could use the help, truly. Sabin belongs home with her family."
She ended with a strike of the mallet. As the last rivet sheared away, and
rusted metal fell open and clanged in a heap on the floor, the Wayfinder raised his
freed wrists. He rubbed at torn skin, then looked up at Kala, who stood over him
gripping the tools with both fists braced on broad hips. In profile, Sabin saw the
stranger give her aunt that same, heavy-lidded gaze that had earlier caused her the
shivers.
"He's not lost, your Juard," the broken voice announced softly.
Kala went white. She dropped the tools with a clatter and clapped her palms
behind her back to distract bad luck, and avert the misfortune of hearing false
words. "Do not spin me lies! Respect our loss. Ill comes of wishing drowned men
back from death, for they hear. They rise in sorrow and walk the sea bed without
rest for all of eternity."
The Wayfinder cocked up his eyebrows in sad self-mockery. "I never lie. And
no such lost spirits walk the sea, nor ever have." At Kala's shocked stiffness, he
thumped his marred fist on the mattress in frustration. "Your boy is not dead, only
washed up on a beach, as I was."
Aunt Kala turned her back, which was as near to an insult as anyone ever got
from her. The Wayfinder glared fiercely, his ice-gray eyes lit to burning. Then his jaw
hardened until the muscles jumped and his speech scraped out of his throat. "Your
son fetched up on the Barraken Rock, to the west. At this moment, he is gutting a
fish with a knife he chipped from a mussel shell."
"My son is dead!" Kala snapped back. "Now say no more, or when Ciondo
comes back, you will go trussed in the wagon to the bailiffs. I'll hear your word."
The Wayfinder sighed, as though sucked down in a chasm of weariness.
"Woman, you'll get no word from me, but neither will you hear any, either, if that is
your desire."
"It is." Kala stamped out through the doorway without looking back. "Sabin,"
she yelled from the threshold at the head of the stairwell. "You'll see that yon man
eats his soup, and bring down the tray when he's finished."
But Kala's bidding was impossible to carry out, Sabin found. On the bed, the
Wayfinder had closed his eyes and fallen deeply asleep.
 The house stayed quiet for the rest of the morning, with Kala beating quilts