"Robin Hobb - Assassin 2 - Assassin' s Quest" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hobb Robin)

Gravebirth

IN THE CHALCED States, slaves are kept. They supply the drudge labor. They
are the miners, the bellows workers, the galley rowers, the crews for the offal
wagons, the field-workers, and the whores. Oddly, slaves are also the nursemaids
and children's tutors and cooks and scribers and skilled craftsfolk. All of
Chalced's gleaming civilization, from the great libraries of Jep to the fabled
fountains and baths at Sinjon's, is founded on the existence of a slave class.
The Bingtown Traders are the major source of the slave supply. At one time,
most slaves were captives taken in war, and Chalced still officially claims this
is true. In more recent years there have not been sufficient wars to keep up
with the demand for educated slaves. The Bingtown Traders are very resourceful
in finding other sources, and the rampant piracy in the Trade Islands is often
mentioned in association with this. Those who are slave owners in Chalced show
little curiosity about where the slaves come from, so long as they are healthy.
Slavery is a custom that has never taken root in the Six Duchies. A man
convicted of a crime may be required to serve the one he has injured, but a
limit of time is always placed, and he is never seen as less than a man making
atonement. If a crime is too heinous to be redeemed by labor, then the criminal
pays with his death. No one ever becomes a slave in the Six Duchies, nor do our



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laws support the idea that a household may bring slaves into the kingdom and
have them remain so. For this reason, many Chalced slaves who do win free of
their owners by one path or another often seek the Six Duchies as a new home.
These slaves bring with them the far-flung traditions and folklore of their
own lands. One such tale I have preserved has to do with a girl who was Vecci,
or what we would call Witted. She wished to leave her parents' home, to follow a
man she loved and be his wife. Her parents did not find him worthy and denied
her permission. When they would not let her go, she was too dutiful a child to
disobey them. But she was also too ardent a woman to live without her true love.
She lay down on her bed and died of sorrow. Her parents buried her with great
mourning and much self reproach that they had not allowed her to follow her
heart. But unbeknownst to them, she was Wit-bonded to a she-bear. And when the
girl died, the she-bear took her spirit into her keeping, so it might not be
free of the world. Three nights after the girl had been buried, the she bear dug
up the grave, and restored the girl's spirit to her body. The girl's gravebirth
made her a new person, no longer owing duty to her parents. So she left the
shattered coffin and went seeking her one true love. The tale has a sad ending,
for having been a she-bear for a time, she was never wholly human again, and her
true love would not have her.
This scrap of a tale was the basis for Burrich's decision to try to free me
from Prince Regal's dungeon by poisoning me.

The room was too hot. And too small. Panting no longer cooled me. I got up
from the table and went to the water barrel in the corner. I took the cover off