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

with a ferocity that outlasted the dust. At noon Uncle Ciondo returned from the
beach, swathed in dripping oilskins, his boots caked to the ankles with damp sand.
The bull bellow of his voice carried up through the second-storied window where
Sabin kept vigil with the invalid. "Kala! Where is that man?"
The thwack of the broom against fabric faltered. "Where else would he be,
but in bed? The shame on you, Ciondo, for leaving him trussed like the felon he
certainly isn't." Smack! went the broom at the quilts.
When only the cottage door hammered closed in reply, Sabin gripped her
knees with sweaty hands. She all but cowered as her uncle's angry tread ascended
the stairs; bits of grit and shell scattered from his boots and fell pattering against the
baseboards as he hurried the length of the hall. The next instant his hulking shoulders
filled the bedroom doorway, and his sailor's squint fixed on the empty shackles that
lay where they had fallen on the floor.
"Fool woman," he growled in reference to his wife. He raised hands scraped
raw from his labors with net and sea, and swiped salt-drenched hair from his
temples. Then he noticed Sabin. "Out, imp."
Her chin jerked up to indicate the man on the bed. "I found him."
"So you did." Ciondo's grimness did not ease as he strode closer, but he did
not send her away. Sabin watched as he, too, met the uncanny gaze of the stranger
who had wakened again at the noise. The sword-edged clarity of that stare arrested
her uncle also, for he stopped, his hands clenched at his sides. "Do you know that
all morning we have been dragging in bits of burst ships? Not just one, but a fleet of
them."
The Wayfinder said a touch tartly, "Karbaschi warships."
"So you know them." Ciondo sighed. "At least you admit it." His annoyance
stayed at odds with his gesture as he noticed his boots, and the sand left tracked in
wet clumps. Hopeful as a miscreant mongrel, he bent and scuffed the mess beneath
the bed where Kala might not notice. He dusted his fingers, ham-pink and swollen
from salt water, on the already gritty patches of his oilskins. "You were a criminal?
Their prisoner perhaps?"
The Wayfinder's Up curled in a spasm of distaste. "Worse than that."
Ciondo straightened. "You'd better tell me. Everything. Our people fear such
fleets, for where they go, they bring ruin."
The man propped up by the pillows seemed brown and wasted as
stormwrack cast up and dried on the beach. In a whisper napped like spoiled velvet,
he said, "I was their Wayfinder. Kept bound in chains to the flagship's mast, to
guide them on their raids. When I refused to see the way for their murdering, or led
them in circles at sea, they made sure that I suffered. But by the grace of your
kindness, no more."
Uncle Ciondo's square face looked vacant with astonishment. "You!" He
took a breath. "You? One of the in'am shealdi, the ones who are never lost? I don't
believe it."
"Then don't." The Wayfinder closed his eyes. His lashes were dark at the
roots, and bleached white at the tips from too much sun. "Your wife named me liar
also."
"Storm and tide! She'll fling any manner of insult at a man, if she thinks it will
help make him listen." Ciondo shifted stance in disgust. "And I did not say you
spoke falsehood, but only that I can't believe you."
At this, the Wayfinder's eyes flicked open. Though he tensed no muscle,
Sabin felt warning charge his presence that swept the room like cold wind. "Is it