"Kate Elliott - Jaran 4 - The Law of Becoming" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elliott Kate)

the ship into Diana's arms, and since that time she had kept him next to her every instant. For the first
eight days, they had stayed at her family's house, and although he liked her rather loud and enthusiastic
relatives, they had all, it seemed to him, conspired with her to keep him always under her eye. Then
Diana had returned to the city and he, of course, went with her. When she rehearsed, he sat in the
theater and watched. When she performed, he did the same thing, or waited in her dressing room.
She ate with him, slept with him, stuck next to him as a father dogs his daughter's first steps or as
anyone leans over a new-built fire, coaxing it to burn on a windy day.

Gods, it infuriated him. She was sheltering him, damn her. Today he had refused to go with her to
the theater. And when she had protested, when she had scolded him, he had finally said what he had
known in his heart at that first embrace on the transfer station, twenty days past.

"You don't want me here!"

Any fool could read the look that crossed her face. "But you are here, Anatoly," she had said, not
denying it, damn her twice, "and I'm responsible for you."

In reply, he had seated himself on the pillow, turning his back to her, and refused to be budged.
Eventually she had left.

He felt no triumph in the act, but, by the gods, a prince of the Sakhalin was not a child to be
watched over! And yet, the bitter fact remained: Not one soul out there in London, except the
members of the repertory company who had spent a year with the jaran, cared or even knew about
the Sakhalin tribe, Eldest Tribe of the jaran. None of these khaja had heard of Ilyakoria Bakhtiian,
who even now led the jaran army on a gods-inspired mission to unite jaran and khaja lands. Anatoly
had left that army to follow his wife to her country, and a damned strange country it was, too.

He had taken a long and confusing and often inexplicable journey to get here to this city called
London, to this province (or was it a kingdom?) called England, to this planet (that had been
explained to him, but he remained skeptical about the truth of the explanation since he was well aware
that the khaja honored different gods and thus must believe a different story of the world and of
creation than the jaran did) called Earth. And the worst of it was, for all his skill at tracking, for all that
he had chased the Habakar king a hundred days' ride into unknown territory and found his way back
with no trouble to Bakhtiian's army and known lands, he did not know where he was. As terrible as it
was to admit it, he did not think that, if he wanted to return, he could find his way back to the plains
by himself.

But he refused to return, because it would give his grandmother and Tess Soerensen the
satisfaction of knowing they had been right to counsel him not to follow his wife.

These khaja were like grazel, he reflected as he examined the scene outside with distaste. They
preferred to clump together in huge herds rather than roaming in smaller, freer groups as did wild
horses and the jaran tribes. He felt closed in. And it smelled funny, too.

Like an echo of his thoughts, a familiar scent caught at him, and he turned his head to look back
into the flat. While not a particularly large room, it had been furnished with little enough furniture that it
almost gave the illusion of a tent as spacious as his grandmother's. In the doorway leading into the hall,
a vision appeared, a woman dressed as any proper, well-born jaran woman would dress. Standing
there, she seemed a sudden and stark reminder of what he had left behind.
 "I beg your pardon," said Karolla Arkhanov. "May I come in?"