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

"Mountains everywhere," corrected the Tunk.
A cold drizzle fluttered from the sky, iron sky, as Jiana pushed through the real, wooden door onto the sidewalk. Despite the rain, the ocean was calm. She felt no need to hold the rope rail, even after the tea and ale she had slugged.
Dilai. Dilai, silky hair spun black like a spiderweb of a glistening coal gossamer.
Dilai, get out of my stomach. I didn't want this. . . . I only wanted you. / only wanted to taste your lips, your spity your cock, all of you. Drink you, in. Breathe your air, laugh at your foolish japes and read wretched poetry at you.
I didn't want love, you fucking bastard serpent.
She walked the plank, headed for one of the public walks.
"Thirty-two turns old today," she said, "and a shit day it is, too. Thirty-two is twice sixteen. Do I remember when I was sixteen? I stabbed a sergeant. And four times eight,
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but that was in the wolf time, lost now. Thirty-two, happy birthday to me."
There was no answering, hectoring voice. Jianabel was conquered. The entity that once infested her stomach, living with her like two snakes coiled, was gone. Or, as fat Toldo would say, the schism in her personality was healed. Either way, it made for a lonely monologue.
"Thirty-two, and today." She stretched, rubbing the hurt from her still-healing leg, and stared at the water.
Black, silky hair looked back, though the ocean was far too dark to reflect. It was Dilai ... or was it the mouse, Dida? So easy to confuse the two: Dilai, the aristocratic, polished decadence of Bay Bay's third oldest family; and Dida, rough, home-woven, innocent naif, an over-excited puppy.
Jiana wrapped her arms around her stomach, trying to hold the images inside.
"Bastards," she prayed.
3
"Fuck the license," Jiana snarled.
The sun sank into the waves, and she abruptly decided to leave Bay Bay, City of the Floating Dead. Her future was as grey and formless as the iron sky. She stopped in the busy thoroughfare and leaned against the railing, causing the walkway to tilt alarmingly on its pontoons. A fat merchant took a stumblestep and swore.
"Hup!" cried the man, "You move or whut?"
"Sorry. I was just thinking ..."
"Nah, nah, you no think. You soldier-boy, girlie! You police! You a footgrab, you whiteface marine!"
"Look, I said I was sorry. 1 want to go back that way. Get out of my way, will you?"
"No, you from get outa my way! You go that way, go to end! Go!"
He stepped forward and butted her with his potato-sack belly. Jiana reached for Wave, but caught herself Her permit did not allow duels with unarmed louts.
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Dafydd ah Hugh
"That was a gimmie, you spherical thug. Now get out of my way and out of my life."
"You from get out, get out that way, or whut? Or whut, hunh?"
Grinning like a demented leper, the man eagerly thrust himself at her again, trying to butt her another blow. Jiana stepped nimbly aside, and the man sprawled against the rail. She put her foot against his tailbone, and gently pushed.
The rail was old and sea-worn; it splintered easily, and the man tumbled into the sea. Jiana stalked away, not even checking to see if he could swim.
"What," she answered decisively.
She side-hopped to another floating walk, and followed it to the courtyard of a hostelery. Jiana slowed her pace and trotted south towards the Eagle Causeway that led to the Prince's Drillgrounds, across the bay on dry land.
The city reeled and staggered in the swells from an offshore squall. The buildings swayed like drunken sailors, and the walks twisted and slid treacherously. Jiana shuffled tike a pro; she had lived in the Floating City nearly eight turns, hating every hour, every moment.
Some buildings were bright with color, splashed with paint and dye from a hundred faraway lands, purchased from the ships that prowled the harbor by the sun and the moons. Most buildings were grey and scored, stripped by the raging winds and salt spray, torn asunder by centuries of neglect. Derelects and drunkards made homes in the worst of them, seizing their tiny islands from the armies of the apathetic.
Jiana scarcely glanced at the murals and paintings, works of art, obscenities scrawled in haste and despair; she had seen them all before. She trotted, eyes half shut, and soon found herself across the Prince's Causeway, on the upper-class landfill island between the mainland and the Maze.
There were a dozen stables there; she could buy a horse. Or she could change her mind and buy the bloody license, as she had every moon for four turns. Yeah. That was my World's Dream. YeoA, fuck Dilai. Fuck Dida.
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Fuck Toldo and Prince Alanai. Traded blood for shit. Now who hires a hero?
For a year following her remarkable adventure for the World's Dream, she lived like a princess. But then Alanai grew silent and depressed, and withdrew into his palace. His band of heroes drifted apart, and Jiana discovered that being a hero had a downside.
What could she do? Certainly not the army; they would treat her either with awe or with sadistic abuse, and she would surely feed some colonel a yard of his own steel within a moon.
Jiana freelanced for a while, drifting from job to job; but she was expensive, and how often did a spice merchant need a true hero to guard his warehouse?
Broke and proud, she found Maqtan. Her name was enough to drag in the bored and sated, a few of them at least. For some moons, the Squatting Dog was the tearoom to frequent.
Dilai found her again. They took up where they had left off, but she was restless. She did not want his money, and he wanted for nothing. Soon she was back at the Squatting Dog, but the crowds were not. Maq kept her on to diminish his lifedebt, and she began dueling clods and foreigners for action on the side.
Jiana slogged through the mud of the landfill, her eyes fixed on the stables, far in the distance. She might reach them by the time darkness was complete, if she made no stops along the way.
"Slave girls on the road to Bay Din. ..." But what did he mean? Two weeks had passed since that smokey night in the Tunk's house, and the Bay Din road was full of mud and pilgrims, as usual. She saw the first stars, and began to hurry.
As Jiana ran, she put a hand on Wave; it was securely wrapped around her waist, looking more like a belt than the twisting, razor-sharp sword that it was.
As she touched the sword, a spark of memory contracted her fingers. The taste and pain of every kill she had ever taken flashed in her stomach. She saw them
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Dafydd ab Hugh