"Jude Fisher - Fool's Gold 02 - Wild Magic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fisher Jude)

whether this expression had been brought about by the knock he had
taken from the granite or from some other, more interior, sensation.
Overhead, a black-backed gull slipped sideways on a current of warm
air, its shadow long in the low sun.
"She said I must look well to you, Katla," the Master of Rockfall said
softly, watching his daughter running wildly down the cliff, oblivious to
the gorse and brambles which choked the path. "Or she would be back for
you." He knew he would never tell her of the exchange he had had with the
seither, not just because Katla would toss her head like a wayward pony
and have her way out of sheer, cross-grained will, but out of some obscure
shame in him that there might be other influences on their lives that he
could not control, that some other force might already be pulling on the
lines of his fate, and those of his family, too.



EVEN downhill and at the breakneck speed that drove her, it took Katla
more than twenty minutes to reach the harbor. The first person she
encountered there was Min Codface, Tarn Fox's right-hand woman, whose
specialty within the mummers' troupe was the throwing of knives with
such accuracy that Tarn liked to joke she could trim your beard and your
nails and then kill you dead before you knew it. Min was a big woman, but
even she was staggering under the weight of a huge wicker chest, around
which she could see nothing at all: two more steps and she'd be in the sea.
Katla caught hold of the chest and turned Min sideways with a foot's
length to spare.
"Close one!" grinned the knife thrower, revealing the huge gap in her
teeth that had caused some obscene merriment between Fent and Tarn,
before Min had threatened to punch their lights out, and even Fent had
recognized someone potentially more violent than himself and had
mumbled what amounted, almost, to an apology. "Thanks, chubb."
Min had a habit of referring to everyone as some type of fish or another.
"He's a right strange mullet," she'd said of one unfortunate lad who'd lost
his balance on top of the human tower they'd been practicing before the
feast or; referring to one of the village girls, "pretty as a speckled trout;"
and, "Your brother Halli seems like quite a fair carp," which was
apparently a compliment. Katla had wondered whether Min had chosen
her own name, or whether its imposition had colored her view of the
world.
Min dumped the chest unceremoniously on the seawall and wiped her
brow. Behind her, a cavalcade of mummers were winding down the steep
hill from the steading, their arms full of costumes and props and
provisions for the voyage ahead.
"You're sailing today?" Katla asked, appalled at how time had overtaken
her.
The knife thrower nodded quickly. "Aye, we'll catch the late tide, Tarn
says. He couldn't be arsed to make an early start, lazy great halibut. Got us
all running around while he sweet-talks your ma out of her best
yellowbread."
At the very mention of this delicacy, Katla's stomach rumbled loudly.