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

with the most expensive herbs and spices and slow-cooked for hours to
bring out the delicate flavorings. To see such love and effort treated with
such childish scorn was painful to Saro. Though it was hardly surprising
that Tanto was in such a permanent foul temper: he was somewhat
changed from the young man who had set out from Altea bound for the
Allfair those short months ago. Then he had been handsome, athletic and
adored? the favorite son, of whom great things were expected. A fine
marriage was talked of, an alliance which would bring status, land,
influence and, it was hoped, not a little wealth. Through Tanto, the Vingo
clan would claw back the economic and political standing it had enjoyed
several generations back, before fortunes were squandered by delinquent
sons and the war with the North had claimed the rest.
And so Tanto had been raised as the golden hope of the family, every
favor and luxury showered upon him: the best tutors (or rather, when the
best were dismissed for gainsaying him, those clever, weak men who had
learned not to complain at his laziness and lack of application, nor to
suggest that the handwriting in which his exercises were delivered might
not be his own); the best fencing masters and weaponry, the best tailors
and the fabrics (though Tanto had never acquired good taste: his
preference ran to ostentation and obvious expense); and later, the most
costly courtesans and body-slaves. But none of this indulgence had done
anything to improve what was already showing itself to be a dangerous
personality, and in encouraging Tanto's dreams of power and glory, their
father had succeeded only in fueling an arrogant and overweening nature.
Tanto did not simply walk: he swaggered. He did not laugh: he brayed,
and usually at his own remarks, for he rarely listened to anyone else's. He
did not merely win: he triumphed, at everything he assayed; or there
would be tantrums and blood shed, usually a servant's.
In short, Tanto had been well on his way to becoming the monster that
the Goddess had, in her own inimitable way, now shown him to be, as if
his ugly interior had been turned inside-out to show his true face to the
world, so that his erstwhile tanned, healthful, and darkly handsome
exterior was displaced by a bloated, foul-smelling, evil-humored slug. The
beauty of it was that Tanto had brought his fate down upon himself by his
own cruel hands (and other parts of his anatomy that were now sadly
missing), no matter how vehemently he tried to heap the blame for it upon
Saro. So it seemed that there was, Saro thought, scrubbing the last of the
dinner off the tiled floor, where it had slid down the wall and congealed,
some poetic justice in the world after all.
"Perhaps some dessert, Brother?" he offered now, turning back to
survey the ravaged creature in the bed. "There's an apricot frangi-pan, or
some fig jelly? "
"Go fuck yourself, Brother," Tanto returned viciously, his black eyes
blazing baleful as coals in the soft blubber of his new face.
Ever since the parts of his gangrenous manhood had been cut away by
the chirurgeon's knife and sealed with Falla's fire, Tanto had swelled in
size, losing all his muscle tone and most of his hair. The fat was likely due
to the fact that Favio and Illustria, while Tanto had been so blessedly
unconscious, had equated parental love with the stuffing of liquid food
into their son's throat by day and night, by long spoon and then by