"Barrayar 13 - Miles Vorkosigan 11 - Komarr 2.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bujold Lois McMaster)

She neither spoke nor moved. Now he will attempt to terrify me with suicide gestures. This made, what, the fourth time around for that ploy? His trump card, which had always before ended the game in his favor.

He brandished the skellytum high. "Me, or it?" He watched her face, waiting for her to break. An almost clinical curiosity prompted her to say You, just to see how he would wriggle out of his challenge, but she kept silent still. When she did not speak, he hesitated in confusion for a moment, then launched the ancient absurd thing over the side.

Five floors up. She counted the seconds in her head, waiting for the crash from below. It came as more of a distant, sodden thump, mixed with the crack of exploding pottery.

"You ass, Tien. You didn't even look to see if there was anyone below."

With a look of sudden alarm that almost made her want to laugh, he peeked fearfully over the side. Apparently he hadn't managed to kill anyone after all, for he inhaled deeply and turned back toward her, taking a few steps through the open airseal door into the kitchen, but not too near to her. "React, damn you! What do I have to do to get through to you?"

'Don't bother," she said levelly. "I cannot imagine anything you could do that would make me more angry than I am."

He had come to the end of his menu of tactics and stood a loss. His voice grew smaller. "What do you want?"

"I want my honor back. But you cannot give it to me."

His voice grew smaller still; his hands opened in pleading. "I'm sorry about your aunt's skellytum. I don't know what..."

"Are you sorry about grand theft and petty treason, bribery and peculation?"

"I did it for you, Kat!"

"In eleven years," she said slowly, "you have apparently never figured out who I am. I don't understand that. How you can live with someone so intimately, so long, and yet never know them. Maybe you were living with some Kat holovid projection from your own mind, I don't know."

"What do you want, dammit? It's not like I can go back. I can't confess. That would be public dishonor! For me, you, Nikki, your uncle--you can't want that!"

"I want never to have to tell a lie again for as long as I live. What you do is your problem." She took a deep breath. "But know this. Whatever you do, or don't do, from now on had better be for yourself. Because it won't touch me." Done once, done for all time. She was never going through this again.

"I can--I can fix it."

Was he referring to her skellytum, their marriage, his crime? Wrong anyway, in all cases.

When she still did not respond, he blurted desperately, "Nikolai is mine, by Barrayaran law."

Interesting. Nikki was the one tactic he had never employed before, off limits. She knew then how deathly serious he knew her to be. Good. He glanced around, and added belatedly, here is Nikki?"

"Someplace safer."

"You can't keep him from me!"

I can if you're in prison. She didn't bother saying it aloud. Under the circumstances, Tien was perhaps unlikely to challenge her possession of Nikki before the law. But she wanted to keep Nikolai's concerns as far separated as possible from the ugliest part of this thing. She would not start that war, but if Tien dared to do so, she would finish it. She watched him more coldly than ever.

"I will fix it. I can. I have a plan. I've been thinking about all day."

Tien with a plan was about as reassuring as a two-year-old with a charged plasma arc. No. You are not to take responsibility for him anymore. That's what this is all about, remember? Let go. "Do whatever you wish, Tien. I'm going to go finish packing now."

"Wait--" He swung around her. It disturbed her to have him between her and the door, but she did not let her fear show. "Wait. I'll make it up. You'll see. I'll fix it. Wait here!"

With an anxious wave of his hands, he made for the hall door, and was gone.