"Jennifer Fallon - Second Sons 03 - Lord of the Shadows" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fallon Jennifer)

‘Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days

Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays...

The RubÁiyÁt of Omar KhÁyyam
(translation by Edward J. Fitzgerald, 1859)
LORD OF THE SHADOWS
 PART ONE

THE WILL OF THE GODDESS




Chapter 1

Neris Veran was waiting as Tia climbed the goat path up to his cave overlooking the pirate
settlement of Mil. His eyes were bright and he was unnaturally alert, a sure sign he’d recently taken
another dose of poppy-dust. He must have been waiting for her since he spied her crossing the bay. It
was raining, but it didn’t seem to bother the madman. His thin shirt was soaked, his ragged, unkempt
hair plastered to his head.
“Where’s Dirk?” he asked as soon as she stepped onto the rocky ledge.
“Can’t we go inside, Neris?”
“Where’s Dirk?” he repeated stubbornly. “And why is everybody suddenly back in Mil?”
Tia glanced over her shoulder through the rain at the ships anchored below them. It was an unusual
sight, all the pirate ships in port at the same time. She hadn’t thought Neris would realize it, though.
“Let’s go inside, Neris,” she insisted. “I’m not going to stand out here in the rain being interrogated
by you.”
“It’s only water,” Neris said, turning his face upward. He let the rain fall on his closed eyes for a few
moments, and then he looked back at Tia and grinned. “You’re always complaining I don’t wash often
enough.”
“Come on, Neris,” she urged. “You’ll catch your death if you stay out here.”
“How do you know?”
Tia hurried across the ledge. He turned to watch her sheltering in the entrance of the cave, looking
quite irritated. “You row across here in a downpour and that’s perfectly all right for you, but if I stand in
it, I’m being foolish! Suppose I want to catch my death? Suppose I’m too cowardly to take my own
life so I’m standing here in the rain, tempting fate, daring her to take me?”
Tia sighed impatiently. There was no reasoning with him when he started asking questions like that.
“Did you want to hear about Dirk or not?” she called to him over the steady patter of raindrops,
hoping that would entice him to come in out of the rain. She didn’t wait for his answer. Instead, shivering
a little in her wet clothes, Tia hurried over to the small fire in the cave and began to coax it back to life.
“So where is Dirk?” Neris asked her again as he stepped into the cave, shaking his head like a dog,
showering everything within reach with a fine spray of raindrops.
“In Avacas,” Tia replied shortly as she tended the fire. “He’s joined the Shadowdancers.”
Neris didn’t reply.
 Tia turned to look at him. “Did you hear what I said? Dirk Provin has betrayed us. He’s joined
Belagren and Antonov. He made a deal with the High Priestess, handed me over to them as part of it,
Neris, just to save his own stupid neck.”