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

fantasizing about what dresses they'd wear to be presented, how they'd curtsy and gaze
up at him; how they'd prime their fathers to put their case to the lords. Remarkably,
Jenna had managed to persuade her father to let her come with him to the Fair this year
as well, though Katla doubted she'd ever be able to talk him into entering her into the
marriage contest. The Fairwater clan, though wealthy and with an old heritage, were a
shipbuilding family, and Katla suspected they already had their eye on one of her
brothers for Jenna. Halli, probably, as the older of the two, rather than Fent. Katla
anyway suspected her dour older brother had something of a soft spot for the coy and
flirtatious Jenna. And Jenna, with her liking for dark men would most likely choose Halli,
if she were given her say, though not until she'd had her foolish infatuation with Ravn
Asharson conclusively quashed. They would all be going to the Gathering. That much
Katla knew, for any Eyran family who paid tithes to the King or provided him with ships,
crews, or fighters was welcome to attend any court event. The northerners were not
much for ceremony, Sur be praised.
Though quite what she would do with her tousled crop for the royal reception, she
didn't know, and it was only a couple of days away. She'd been planning to braid it up in
the latest style, shown to her by Jenna when she'd come back from Halbo last month with
a gorgeous new dress in the best southern silk—glossy as a holly leaf and edged with
frothings of Galian silver lace. Katla had no gorgeous new dress at all. She had prided
herself on her own hair being more lustrous and vibrant than Jenna's, and that what she
lacked in finery she'd make up for with her crowning glory, as her mother so proudly
termed it. Not much of a crowning glory now, she thought ruefully. Bera would be furious
when she got home, would no doubt start castigating Aran for ruining his daughter's
marriage chances, and not only to the King! Which, as far as Katla was concerned, was no
bad thing in itself; she didn't think any husband would be so generous as to allow her
travel to the Allfair with him as her father, for all his complaints, had done; let alone run
wild around the islands, climbing cliffs and riding wild ponies. No, she'd be the one saddled
and harnessed, with a brace of children before she could blink, and then more and more
and more until she'd mothered an entire clan. The Eyrans regarded large families as a
sign of Sur's blessing: a hard enough achievement, since they lost so many to feuding and
the wicked seas.
The girls she knew talked about nothing other than weddings, it seemed: which lads
were the nicest looking; which had the best prospects; what their settlements would be,
and what they'd wear for the handfasting; how many children they would have; what
they'd call them all. To Katla such discussions were no more than a catalogue of
constraints, and that the girls should conspire in their own confinement seemed perverse,
to say the least. It was hard to maintain friends when you shared none of their dreams.
Recently, she'd found herself drifting away from them, to pursue more and more solitary
interests, and she hadn't really missed their idle prattle at all.
Oddly enough, she'd come to count her brothers and their cronies as closer allies than
her own sex, finding with them a fine sense of companionship in the sharing of active
tasks around the homestead; or adventures on the island. One day she'd taken Halli with
her to climb the headland at Wolf's Ness, certain she'd seen a rock sprite in a cave near
the overhang. Using combined tactics and a rope made out of sealskin, with Katla
wobbling badly on her tall brother's shoulders at the crux, she'd managed to grasp the
ledge and haul herself over, only to be confronted by a furious gull which had rushed at
her, wings spread wide, its squawks of outrage splitting the air and its mad little chick,
with its huge eyes and ridiculous fluff, pecking bravely at her hands. So much for the rock
sprite. Halli had laughed so much he'd fallen off the ledge, but luckily the rope had caught
over the lip of the overhang and, with Katla as a counterweight, the two of them had