"Anne Bishop - Black Jewels 00 - The Invisible Ring" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bishop Anne)

at the dark-eyed, dark-haired boy sitting cross-legged beside the bed.
"Davin?" Jared said hoarsely, knowing it couldn't be even before the boy's
expression turned wary. His youngest brother would be nineteen now, not the
ten-year-old he'd cheerfully said good-bye to before he'd torn his life
apart.
"I'm Tomas," the boy said. "There's no Davin here."
Thank the Darkness for that.
There was something peculiar and faint about the boy's psychic scent, but
Jared was too preoccupied to figure it out. "Where-"
"We're in the guest servants' quarters."
Jared shook his head and tried again. "Where-"
"Don't know what Territory-"
"Where's the damn chamber pot?"
"Oh." Tomas pointed at a door in the wall. "Over there."
Despite the urgency, Jared hesitated, finally awake enough to realize he was
naked and only had a wadded sheet covering his groin. Tomas grinned.
"They're all outside, and Ladies don't care if you show your dangle to other
males." He scratched his head. "Other males don't care either."
"Sometimes they do," Jared muttered, remembering confrontations between
pleasure slaves that had turned bloody because desperation had pushed
someone over the edge. "Sometimes they care very much."
Tomas's grin faded. His face paled. He scrambled to his feet and bolted for
the door. The jerky movement and the fear that now filled his dark eyes told
Jared more than the fading bruises on the boy's bare arms, more than the old
scars on the stick-thin legs that poked out of a pair of ragged short pants.
And he realized what the boy's diminished psychic scent meant. Tomas was a
half-Blood. Having too much psychic strength to be landen but not enough to
be Blood, half-Bloods were outcast bastards, wanted by neither society. If
the Blood sire thought the unclaimed offspring showed potential, the child
might be taken in and raised as a servant, maybe even trained to become an
overseer for a landen village. Most of the time, half-Bloods became the
slaves that looked after, and were used by, Blood slaves. And sometimes
there was no one cruder than someone who was, himself, enduring cruelty.
Cursing under his breath, Jared followed Tomas.
The bathroom had two toilets, three sinks, and two bathtubs. There were no
partitions to give anyone the illusion of privacy, but at least the toilets
were better than stinking privy holes. Sighing with relief, Jared took care
of business and tried to ignore the boy standing next to him. Tomas might
have learned fear in the slave quarters, but the boy was just too brash to
have learned caution.
"You ain't wearing a Ring," Tomas said in a hushed voice.
"It's invisible," Jared replied curtly, hoping that would end it.
"You sight shield a Ring so people don't know you're a slave, you'll get
your back whipped off for good."
Jared clenched his teeth at the honest concern in the boy's voice and pulled
the chain to flush the toilet. "It's not sight shielded, it's invisible."
"Well, I can see that."
How could he explain something he didn't understand himself? "It's an
Invisible Ring. It's like the Ring of Obedience, but stronger."
Tomas's eyes widened. "You have to wear something stronger than a Ring of