"Katherine Kerr - Deverry 07 - A Time Of War" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kerr Katherine)

‘Not a bad choice he’d be. Good steady man, his father, and prosperous, too.’

Jahdo laid his spoon down in his bowl. All this talk of Councilman Verrarc had made him feel sick to his
stomach, and cold all over, as well. He should tell Gwira how he felt, he knew, should tell her about -
about what? There was some incident he wanted to tell her, just because she was old and wiser than
anyone else in town. Something about some event out in the meadow. Hadn’t something scary
happened? Yet he couldn’t quite remember what it was, and the moment passed beyond returning.

Yet, not two days later, the boy recovered a brief glimmering of the memory, though not enough to save
him. Early on that particular morning, Dera sent Jahdo over to town to claim some eggs and meat that
one of the townsfolk owed them.

‘Your Da be across, too, love,’ she said. ‘See if you can find him when you’re done.’

Jahdo had rowed about halfway across the lake, his back turned to his destination, of course, when he
saw the ceremonial barge pushing off from Citadel and heading his way. With a few quick strokes he
moved off its course and rested at his oars while the squat barge slipped past, painted all silver and red,
riding low in the water. In the middle stood a false mast to display the yellow and green banners of Cerr
Cawnen, which hung lazily in the warm summer air. At the bow clustered a group of men in rich clothing,
embroidered linen shirts belted over knee-length trousers, the common style in this part of the world, with
short cloaks thrown back from their shoulders. Jewels and gold winked in the rising sun.

As the barge slid past, Jahdo saw Councilman Verrarc standing at the rail. His heart thudded once as the
councilman looked his way. Since only some fifteen feet separated them, Jahdo could cleaily see that
Verrarc had noticed him, that the councilman frowned, too, and turned to keep him in view for a minute
or two after the barge went past, Again Jahdo felt his mouth turn parched, and the sensation made him
remember his meadow fear and the image of a woman, wrapped in black and hissing as she spoke. Yet
all the boy knew was that in some obscure way Verrarc’s image had sparked the memory. With a cold
shudder he forced the recollection away and rowed on to town.

The family who owed them for the ratting, the Widow Suka and her son, had slaughtered a goat just the
day before. Some hundred feet from the lake’s edge, her house perched on a erannog piled up so many
hundreds of years before that the construction had turned into a real island, with trees and topsoil of its
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own, a little garden, and a pen for goats, which, every day in summer, the widow’s son rowed over to
the mainland for the grazing. While she nestled eggs safely in the straw in Jahdo’s basket and wrapped
chunks of goat up in cabbage leaves, Jahdo strolled to the edge of the erannog and looked over to shore.

Down by the gates in the wall a crowd of people stood round, all staring toward the gate itself. Jahdo
could just pick out the tall form of Councilman Verrarc toward the front of the mob.

‘Now what’s that?’ Suka said. ‘Looks like a merchant caravan’s coming in.’

‘It does, truly. Ooh, I wonder where they’ve been?’