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

the bed and his brother propped up by a multitude of white pillows (no
doubt, Saro found himself thinking incongruously, stuffed with the
feathers of the most expensive Jetran geese and costing a good cantari
apiece, while I sleep on a pallet stuffed with straw and a bag filled with
chicken feathers from our own coops) staring at him with outraged eyes.
Tanto's bedshirt was torn open to reveal a dark bruise over the collarbone,
or where the collarbone must be, hidden somewhere under all that soft
white flesh. The wound was a livid red, already purpling. It must have
required considerable force and determination to have done such damage
to himself, Saro thought, once more taken aback at the extent of Tanto's
loathing for him.
"I was not eating fast enough," Tanto complained in a miserable whine,
his black eyes glinting with self-induced tears, all the while clasping
Illustria's thin hand in his own flabby great paw. "He kept hitting me
again and again with the spoon? "
 Saro turned to their father. "This has nothing to do with me," he said
through gritted teeth. "How can you believe I would do such a thing?"
But Favio's expression was one of purest disgust; and not for the puling
creature in the bed either.
Tanto savored his triumph. "And when I cried out for him to stop, he
took out his belt dagger and thumped me so hard with the pommel that I
thought he had stabbed me!"
In victorious evidence of this, he reached beneath the bedclothes and
flourished what was in truth Saro's own dagger.
Saro stared at it, dumbfounded. His hand went to his waist, but he
knew before he felt there that he was not wearing the belt on which he
habitually carried the dagger. He could picture it now, slung over the back
of the little cane chair in his own chamber on the next floor of the house.
And the dagger had been in its tooled leather scabbard beside it when he
left the room that morning. So how had Tanto managed to lay hands upon
it?
Tanto saw the doubt on his brother's face and smiled evilly. "But of
course I forgive you, Saro," he said softly, his eyes like gimlets. "I know I
am a trial to nurse and that such care is not your natural calling. Which is
why I have suggested to Father that since the Council is bound to be
calling soon on all good men and true to take up arms for the Empire, we
should be training you up as a soldier."
Saro stared at him in disbelief. Tanto knew well that he had no warrior
skills. His swordsmanship was clumsy, his lancework worse: he had
neither the taste nor the ability for combat. Nor could he rely on archery?
he was a poor shot with a bow, too, not least because he could never stand
to harm a living thing. He was fleet of foot and had an affinity with horses
which enabled him to ride better than most; but as far as he could see, all
this qualified him to do was to leave the field of battle rather more swiftly
than most, which would certainly be his inclination, since he had neither
the aggression nor the blind patriotism required to split another man's
skull for no good reason other than to save his own skin.
He opened his mouth to protest in horror, then closed it again as a new
thought occurred to him. If he were to train as a soldier well enough to
bring no dishonor to the Vingo name, then he might be allowed to leave