"Barbara Hambly - Sun Wolf 2 - Witches of Wenshar" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

butter a roll, and her long fingers trembled a little with anger.
"Impure fornicators," responded Kaletha serenely, "see all things
through the slime of their own impurity." She glanced a little nervously
at Starhawk. For an instant, the Hawk saw again the human side of the
woman, which interested her far more than the wizard and teacher did.
"You mustn't be led to think ... "
Starhawk shrugged. "It isn't any of my business."
Kaletha hesitated, not quite certain what to do with that answer.
Anshebbeth, who had gone a little pink at the mention of impurity, was
looking away. But, in fact, Starhawk had seen relationships like that of
Kaletha and Anshebbeth before, among the nuns of the convent where
she had grown up and, later, among the warrior women of Sun Wolf's
troop; she knew that, in spite of the witlessly smutty remarks of Nexué
and her table-mates, the two women weren't necessarily lovers. It was
more than anything else a domination of the personality, based on
Kaletha's desire to have a slave as much as Anshebbeth's need to be
one.
Across the Hall, Nanciormis had just entered, wearing the plain,
dark-green uniform of the guards and flirting with the two servant
women who'd immediately found reasons to take them to that side of
the room. Anshebbeth forced her gaze back to Starhawk, her mouth
bracketed suddenly in hard little lines, and a stain of color lingering on
her pointy cheekbones.
"It takes courage to follow Kaletha's path, the path of purity, the
path of the mind. But I can tell, looking at you, that you have that."
"Not necessarily." Starhawk poured cream into her coffee and
dabbed with her spoon at the swirls of dark and light.
Nonplussed, Anshebbeth opened her mouth, then shut it again.
The smug self-satisfaction that had glowed from Kaletha in her
disciple's presence faded, and her cinnamon brows puckered into a
frown. "You've been a warrior a long time," she said after a moment.
"That tells me you don't lack either physical bravery or the courage to
go against what people expect of a woman. Do you have the courage
to go against what he expects of his woman?"
Starhawk's attention remained on her cup. "It would depend on
what was at stake."
"Freedom to do as you wish?" Kaletha pressed her. "To be first
instead of second?"
"That's a tricky one." Starhawk looked up. "The fact is, I am best
as a second-a better lieutenant than I am a captain."
"Is that what you truly believe," Kaletha asked, "or only what it is
more convenient for him that you believe?"
"Are you asking that out of genuine concern for me," Starhawk
returned, "or only to get back at him by having me leave him?"
At this display of lese-majeste, Anshebbeth almost dropped her
spoon. But Kaletha held up a hand to silence her indignant indrawn
breath; when her eyes met Starhawk's, they were rueful with the first
admission of wrong the Hawk had seen from her.
At least, Starhawk thought, she doesn't pretend she didn't
understand what I asked.