"Jude Fisher - Fool's Gold 01 - Sorcery Rising" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fisher Jude)

The second had almost caught up with his fellow. He was shaking his fist at her. "You'll
pay for not showing the due observances, young man!"
Young man? Katla's mouth fell open in amazement. Young man?
He must be blind. She stood up, and with aggressive haste unbound her hair. She
always tied it into a tail when she climbed: otherwise it could be a damned nuisance.
Unconfined, it fell around her shoulders in tumbling waves. At the same moment, as if to
emphasize the point, the sun came out, so that the slanting rain became a shower of silver
and Katla's hair a fiery beacon.
The second old man cannoned into the first.
"Oh, Great Goddess, Lady of Fire—it's—a woman—"
 They looked extremely unhappy.
Katla, deciding not to find out exactly what it was that pained them so badly about the
situation, made her excuses and left, reversing with considerable alacrity and no little skill
the crackline she'd just ascended.
There was a saying that the old women had in the north (they had a saying for
everything in Eyra: it was that sort of place): the heedful outlive the heroes. Like her
brothers, she'd always thought it cautious nonsense; but it was possible in this particular
case that they had a point.
***
SARO Vingo emerged, blinking, from his family pavilion into the light of a day still
making its mind up whether to rain or shine. His head hurt as if someone had trampled on
it in the night. For some reason his father had decided that Saro's first visit to the Allfair
should be marked by a major araque binge, and his uncle and cousins and older brother,
Tanto, had all conspired to line up glass after glass of the vile smoky stuff for him and
watched him down each one in a single swallow until every flask was dry. They had
matched him glass for glass; but they had had a lot more practice. He had left them all
sleeping it off, tumbled on the floor amid the dogs and the vomit; collapsed upon
silk-strewn couches, snoring their heads off in the pile of rich tapestries and shawls they'd
brought as a gift for the northern King at this, his first Allfair. Though why the people of
the Empire should bother to flatter a barbarian, he could not imagine. Falla knew what
he'd make of the gorgeous Istrian fabrics, now reeking of araque and bile. Still, the Eyrans
were known to be very unsophisticated people: he'd probably think it had something to
do with the dye process.
Saro was curious to set eyes upon the women of the north. All the lads whose first Fair
this was were equally fascinated; it had been their major topic of conversation on the
journey here from the southern valleys. King Ravn Asharson was coming to the Allfair, it
was said, to choose himself a bride; so the Eyran nobles would surely be bringing their
daughters and sisters in hopes of making a royal match. As far as Saro was concerned, it
was the focal point of the Fair: not for him the dull complications of deal making and point
scoring with a load of fat old merchants who knew exactly what game they were playing
with one another and making him feel a complete fool for not being a party to their subtly
coded rules and haggling. The women of Eyra were rumored to be among the most
beautiful women on Elda, and that was interesting. Although he would be the first to
admit that he had no real idea of what a woman looked like; let alone how to assess her
beauty. At home, the women were hidden away for most of the time. Since he'd turned
fifteen, some six years ago now, and had been initiated into the sexual world, he had
barely even seen his mother.
He thought of her now; how, swathed from head to foot in a fabulously-colored
sabatka, she would flutter silently from room to room, with only her hands and mouth
showing, like some wonderful, exotic butterfly.