"ab Hugh, Dafydd - Jiana 02 - Warriorwards" - читать интересную книгу автора (ab Hugh Dafydd)

4 Dafydd ab Hugh
Radience pushed through the beaded metal curtain; a lifetime of skulking to avoid the Overman allowed her to pass through with not a clink, not a single, silver tone. Behind her, the furry things she could never see chittered and nipped at her heels.
The Caliph was asleep, laid upon his furs. His arms were folded as if in death, his head tipped against the luminous, alabaster resting block. Some said the glyphs on the side of the block were the Caliph's eyes, when his eyes were shut.
Ripples rolled across the alabaster, radiating out from the Caliph's sleepy head. The block ticked with each ripple, like the mandibles of a stingtail clicking together.
The slave girl stepped closer, her teeth chattering until she gritted them. She rolled the weight from back foot to front foot, for she had been taught. Holding her breath to not flutter his eyelids, she leaned over and studied the face of the man she would kill.
The Caliph's eyes were wide open. Radience waited in silence; he often slept this way. She allowed one hundred heartbeats to pass before she dared breathe. But if his eyes never shut, she wondered, when do the glyphs watch me?
She put her good, right arm under the grey bowl and used her left to steady and guide. She lowered the candies to the chess table beside her master, so carefully and slowly that a watcher would have wondered if she were merely one more statue the Caliph had collected.
"Is she another stone Rakdare, carrying the waters of life to the Underdwell, to buy her dead brother's soul back?" Who spoke? demanded Radience. Silence was her only answer.
A lifelike Tooquo san Toq, masterpiece of the divine Tokogare, glared at Radience across the dozing body of the man who owned both statue and slave. The statue's eyes were alive, cold and watchful. She shuddered and looked away, almost catching the brittle flicker, the bricker of a tiny creature.
Stone statues in a traveling khayma! The man was a beast, but the Caliph's word was the roar of the wind and
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the bite of the sand. The male slaves broke their backs lugging the thing along the caravan route. But Radience had enough worries, plotting to kill her master.
"She's plotting to kill her master!" screamed the non-voice that Radience could not quite hear. Radience slapped the side of her shaved head, knocking the voice loose to fell upon the ground and shrivel. She put the bowl down to free her arm, then slid the heavy, businesslike dagger out of her robe.
Moons gone by, an old foot-soldier of the Elect had idled in the kitchen. A fat, randy kitchen maid caught his flirting fancy, and he tried his luck.
But a schemer with hollow cheeks, greased hair, and a withered arm whispered sins and wickedness in the old maids eart lies about her fancied soldier. She knew her pans and pork, this kitchen maid, but her wit was not known to dim the moons with its light. She believed every word and spurned the bold rogue.
The soldier was a philosopher. "If it is not one maid, then it is the other," he mused. But he meant the daughter of the vine, and he swilled down three bottles, tumbled in a stupor.
When he woke, thought Radience, he found the long, hard dagger missing from between his legs.
She held it in her hand nowЧin the whole, right handЧa dagger towards the heart of Hal'Addad, Caliph of Dokamaj Tool. She fought the shakes out of her arm, doubts and worries sent by Arhatman to tear at her decisiveness.
Tiny snakes like long, black hairs fell from her body and slithered across the floor. Snakes or shakes? she thought, then pushed the question deep into the lair of her stomach.
Radience heard a footscrape across the room, and the Caliph's eyelids fluttered. Witt he wake from the sheer savagery of my thoughts? It was only the wind, the bodies, fluffing the walls of the khayma.
The Caliph was Lord of the Wind. He was Hal'Addad fain Kerat bin El al'Sophiate, Lord of the Wind and the
6 Dafydd ab Hugh
Five Sands, Prince of the Waters, Caliph of the Elect from Qomsheh to Yazd to the oasis of Deh Bid, Master of Arts and Letters, and Caliph of the Elect of Dokamaj Tool.
"Snakes!" shouted the voice. "Snakes and quakes and rakes!" Radience gritted her teeth, thinking / will not surrender to terror, agony, and despair this time, and to hell with the Overman!
She lowered the tip of the flat, steel blade until it kissed the Caliph's saffron robe, just left of his sternum. Then she suddenly remembered she was looking down upon him and moved the point to the other side, where his heart actually lay.
She inhaled deeply, sucking the iron of the blade up into her own heart, but her muscles turned limp, and her bowels contracted. An invisible thing sank its needle teeth into her ankle.
Her heart beat like Horsemen at a fast trot, with an extra thump as one of the brutes stumbled.
The step scraped again, heavily. She looked up.
The black eyes of the stone Tokogare glared at her, his hand outstretched as if to stay her arm. Was he bent like that just a moment ago? she marveled. It did not seem possible. He looked different.
She looked down at the Caliph, symbol of her enslavement, and even brought her tiny, left arm up to help hold the wooden hilt, hoping the sight of the limb would give her courage to thrust. But a loud, grinding scrape drove her eyes back to Tooquo san Toq, warrior king of the First Men, ten thousand turns dead.
The statue did move. It moved again as she watched it. It clutched at her, seized a sleeve!
Radience backed away, losing her balance in astonishment. The juggernaut lurched forward, still clutching her sleeve. It tottered off the pedestal, gnashing stone teeth like an avalanche. As Tooquo's foot impacted the canvas floor of the khayma, the world shook and boomed hollowly.
Radience stared full at the stone face and saw the malevolent glitter of the dusty, carven eyes. The crowds whooped and laughed around her, laughing at the cripple, laughing
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at the poor little girl not even fully one of the Elect. Never do it, never make it, never 'mount to nothingЧ
"Damn you!" she cried, more fury than fear. She flipped the dagger and thrust it at the statue's chest. Her hands numbed as she struck a stone wall. She dropped the knife; it shattered like a glass goblet full of thick red wine.
She rememberedЧwhy doesn't he wake up? why don't I wake up?Чbut no, she remembered nothing. Sleep, black sleep, gripped her stomach and even the brickers were dark.
Radience woke from nothingness to find . . .
Did I dream it all?
She lay on her own mat, in her own khayma. She pulled at her dress; it was dry, and her feet were clean of mud. The night smelled old, waiting for the dawn.
Late, she thought. Too late to still be abed! The Overman would draw stripes on her hide. Still alive . . . the bastard's still alive. I failed, even in the dreamworld!
She leaned over, hyperventilating, and felt her throat constrict. A moment later, she lost what little she had eaten for supper. Then she wiped the bile from her mouth and shuffled away, through the flap and into the paling night, toward the kitchen khayma a dozen strides away.
She felt the pallor in her cheeks replaced by a warm flush of shame and humiliation. 7 am a slave, she thought, 0 and a slave I am. I will murder the bastard, she promised. Perhaps tomorrow.
She clenched her teeth so hard that she locked her jaw, and could not open her mouth for an hour-
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Jiana stood still, listening for the swordsman. He was as silent as a horse on cobblestones.
The man was heavy, his breath labored. He shambled back and forth on the wooden floor, which creaked and complained beneath his metal-shod feet.
He slid closer in a lunge. Jiana parried easily, even blind, and flicked her own blade toward his face.
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