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

country grappling tricks won't see you through. Besides, you're here on my sufferance.
There was no need for me to bring you to an Allfair: it's a waste of a fare for me. Two
stone of sardonyx I'm down because of you, with Fosti Goat-beard desperate to come this
year. Could have bought your mother a nice shawl and some good jewelry with the
proceeds. So having deprived your mother of her Fair-gift, and old Fosti of his place on
the ship, you can repay my generosity by doing nothing, and I mean nothing, without my
permission. Is that clear? And you stay always in my sight."
 Katla opened her mouth to protest, then thought better of it. She'd wait until he was in
a lighter mood, and then work her wiles on him, she thought with sudden savage resolve.
Even in the islands, where women labored as hard as men and were considered their
equal in most things, Katla had found that her wiles provided her with a delightfully unfair
advantage over her brothers.
"Yes, father," she said with apparent docility, and looking up through her lashes was
gratified to see his expression soften.
"Well, mind you do," he finished lamely.
Daughters. Why were they so much more difficult than sons?
At that moment one of his male offspring came crunching up the strand to join them.
His brother and cousins were not far behind. Tall lads, and well put together, the
Aransons and their cousins made a striking group. Halli took after his father: big and
dark, with a nose that in age was likely to become as hooked as a hawk's. Fent, like his
sister, had Bera's flaming hair, fine bones, and skin—and their vanity, too, for he shaved
like a southerner; but hard work had made whipcord of his muscles and packed his light
frame with enough energy for three. As if to provide the greatest possible contrast, or to
demonstrate the various appearances to be found in the Eyran Isles, Erno Hamson and
Tor Leeson were so blond that their hair and beards shone like silver. Erno, whose
mother had recently died, had plaited a complex memory-knot, complete with shells and
strips of cloth, into his left braid. After two weeks at sea, the scraps of fabric were salty
and faded, but the knots were as tight as ever. At night when he had sat his watch at the
tiller, Katla had heard him quietly reciting the word-pattern he had made for his mother
when first weaving the braid, his fingers retracing the loops and bindings to fix the
pattern in his head—
"This cloth the blue of your eyes
This shell your openhandedness
This the knot for wisdom given but never compelled
This knot for when you nursed me from fever . . ."
—and she had been surprised how one who by day could be so distant and diffident
could in the night hours become so tender; and for this she almost liked him.
"So the wanderer returns!" Fent beamed. "Thought you'd escape your chores, did
you?"
"Shirk your family duties?" Tor made a face at her.
"Leave it all for the boys with the muscle?" said Halli, whose sharp eyes had not
missed the flexed-bicep exchange between his father and sister.
Erno said nothing: he was always tongue-tied in Katla's presence.
Aran looked impatient. "Did you bring the tents and the stalls in with this load?"
The lads nodded.
"Right, then—Fent and Erno, and you, Katla, come with me to get the booths set up.
Halli and Tor, you keep the crew working to unship the cargo. I'll be back in an hour and
we'll get the sardonyx weighed in and registered."
Fent grinned at his sister, his incisors as sharp as any fox's. "You can carry the ropes,"
he said. "Since you're only a girl."