"Huff, Tanya - Fire's Stone V1.1 Txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Huff Tanya)

Let other thieves slink in alleys, he would take the high roads of the city.

Two buildings and a heart-stopping swing from a flagpole later, he dropped onto the wall around Faharra's garden. He patted his pocket; the gaudy cluster of gems had survived the trip. He looked forward to hearing Faharra heap abuse on the jeweler who had created the ugly brooch.

"More good stones are ruined by the setting some asshole

THE FIRE'S STONE

15

jeweler puts them into than by a hundred gem cutters with bad eyes and drinking problems." She'd said it before.
He paused and remembered what else she was likely to say tonight. His stomach twisted. He stared ahead at the black rectangle of her window. His brows lowered until they met in a deep vee above his nose, looking more like demon wings than ever. Then he shook his head and went on. His teeth were clenched and his shoulders had knotted with tension, but he went on.
I'll humor the old lady. She deserves that much at least. More, he could not admit to, not yet, although the thought- the hope-of putting his burden down had become almost too strong to ignore.
He stepped gingerly onto the branches of a slender fig tree, then swung one leg over the wide marble sill of Faharra's room.
The room was very quiet. Aaron's stomach twisted tighter.
The couch was a shadow against the far wall. Even with eyes adapted to the night, Aaron could not pierce the smaller shadows piled on it.
He slid into the room and padded silently across the tile floor. The old woman slept so seldom now, he didn't want to wake her. He'd just make sure she was comfortable and leave.
By the end of the couch his foot touched something. Something that rocked and sang metal against stone. He bent. Faharra's goblet. Not quite dry so someone, probably a servant, had poured her a drink before she slept.
He could see the wasted body of the gem cutter now, lying amidst the pillows and shawls and blankets. Another step and he could see her face. She looked very annoyed. Her eyes were open.
He touched her hand. The fingers were just beginning to stiffen.
"How did you know," he asked the god of his father, in a language he had not spoken for five years, "that I loved her?"
THE FIRE'S STONE

17

Two

Scented smoke curled about the mausoleum and the finger bells of the mourners broke the evening into a thousand tiny pieces of sound. Perched high on one of the more ornate tombs, safely out of sight, Aaron blocked his ears against the noise which threatened to shatter him as well.

Faharra's granddaughter had spared no expense and the procession from the house to the temple crematorium and then out into the necropolis had been a spectacle worthy of the best gem cutter Ischia had known.

"And yet while she lived," Aaron growled softly from his vantage point, "you couldn't spare an hour to sit with her, nor any kindness to lighten her day."

Her thickening figure nearly hidden beneath her funeral draperies, the granddaughter appeared the picture of bereavement as hired dancers carried the brass urn into the squat marble building that held fifteen generations of her family's remains. When they emerged, when the wallers had sent a last chorus to the gods, she turned and, tenderly supported by two of her closest friends, led the procession back to the city.

Aaron watched the tottering figure leave and his lip curled. If that fat sow felt anything at all, it was pleasure at being the center of attention. Not for a moment did he believe that the red and yellow veils hid sorrow.

When he could no longer hear the maddening chimes of the finger bells and the heavy scent of sandalwood had been swept clean by the evening breeze, he dropped silently to the ground.

The door to the mausoleum was locked and the lock wound tightly about with red and yellow ribbons.

A violent twist tore the ribbons loose and a heartbeat later Aaron dropped the lock on the ground beside them. The door, well oiled, swung silently open. He stepped inside.

He worked and lived in shadow, but this darkness felt different, a part of the mausoleum like the brass fittings or the carved friezes. It etched a boundary about the light spilling in through the open door, cutting it into a rectangle of gray on the floor and barely allowing it to spread beyond. At the edge of the dim illumination, almost in the center of the tomb, stood an altar; the Nine Above grouped about the One Below who cradled a brass urn in marble arms. Fa-harra. She would stay in the deity's embrace until another of her family died and then her urn would be moved back to the shelves that lined the walls.
Aaron couldn't see the shelves-behind the altar the darkness thickened into a solid black wall-but he could feel the weight of the dead and was thankful he had no need to pierce their sanctuary. He had come for what lay with the One Below. The gods of Ischia held no terror for him, for without belief a god is nothing and Aaron believed only in death.
At the edge of the rectangle of light, he paused and stretched an arm out into shadow. No, not quite. His hand groped at air. He would have to take one, maybe two steps past the boundary.
He suppressed a shudder. Crossing into the darkness, even the less well defined darkness by the altar, felt like crossing into the realm of the dead, into their world not just their resting place, and the demons of his childhood flickered for an instant around the perimeter of his sight. Then his hands lay on the urn and he could ignore the darkness and the dead now that he held what he wanted.
Quickly working the stopper free, he dipped a tiny gold vial into the coarse ash. Until this morning it had held Faharra's favorite perfume and the smell of jasmine still lingered. He'd stolen it while the funeral director worked not twenty feet away. Once filled and sealed with a bit of wax, he hung the vial about his neck on a piece of silk cord, tucking it safely under his shirt. As he pushed the stopper back into place, he frowned. The granddaughter had been true to the end; the urn was plain brass, embossed but not jeweled. An insult to the greatest gem cutter Ischia had known.
The greatest gem cutter Ischia had known. . . .