"Mercedes Lackey & Larry Dixon - Mage Wars 01 - The Black Gryphon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

then, the "tender" ministrations of the guards had left her a changed woman.
She hid behind the curtain of her hair, but her blushes were still clearly visible. "The client," she
replied, her voice choked with shame.
"Exactly," he said sternly. "That is what we are all here for. And what is the second rule, Lily?"
Lily had trained as a fighter and had served in Urtho's army. Injured and left for dead, the
experience had shattered her nerves and the injuries themselves left her unfit to face combat again. Lily
had been treated as a hopeless cripple, destroyed in both nerve and body, until she fought her way back
to what she was now. She looked him in the eyes, but her face was so scarlet that it matched her hair.
"The client receives what he needs, not what he wants."
"And you may—if, in your sacred judgment, and not merely your opinion—deliver what he wants
after he gets what he needs," Amberdrake told them both.
Jaseen sniffed a little and looked up at him to see if she'd had any effect on him with that sniffle of
self-pity. Amberdrake's expression must have told her that she wasn't winning any points, for she slowly
raised her head and brushed her hair back although her red face was a match for Lily's.
"Jaseen. Just now it was my judgment, as it was the judgment of your old client's Healer that he
needed a little less cosseting and a little more spine." He leveled his gaze right into her eyes so that she
could not look away. "You are quite good at sympathy, but your chief failing is that you don't know when
to stop giving it. Sympathy can be addictive and can kill strong men as surely as a diet of nothing but
sugar."
She whispered something inaudible, but he was good enough at lip-reading to know she had said
only, "Yes, Amberdrake." He turned to Lily.
"It was your job to challenge him. I hope that you did—I will only know after his Healer talks to me.
And by 'challenging' him, I don't necessarily mean physically. You could even have challenged him by
making him earn what he got from you." The fact that she avoided his gaze told him she hadn't exactly
done that. "We aren't even primarily bedmates," he reminded both of them sternly. "That's what makes us
something more than—what our critics claim we are."
Both these women had mended from their past shatterings; he knew that, every kestra'chern in this
encampment knew that. If they hadn't, they simply wouldn't be here. They'd been given guidance in
reassembling themselves from the splintered pasts fate had left them, and were obligated by that training
to help others as much as they had helped themselves. Amberdrake would not permit
incompetence—and although he was not officially a "leader," he had that much power among the
kestra'chern without needing the title. In his experience, true leaders seldom had or needed flamboyant
titles.
Jaseen and Lily bowed their heads, their blushes fading. "Yes, Amberdrake," Lily murmured. "You
are right, of course. But it's easy to forget, sometimes, with the way we're treated."
"People treat you as what they wish you were, and that is not always what you are," he said gently,
reminding them both of their pasts. "You must always remember what you are. Always. And always
believe in each other."
Jaseen nodded wordlessly.
He raised his voice slightly so the rest of the observers could hear better. "Whatever the kestra'chern
have been in the past, we are now something very important to these warriors. The war may turn upon
what we do. We are the rest after the battle, and the blanket to warm them when they shiver. We are
comfort in the darkness when death has become far too personal; we are the listeners who hear without
judgment. We are priest and lover, companion and stranger. We are all the family many of them have,
and something so foreign they can say anything to us. They need us, as they need their rations, their
weapons, their Healers. Keep that always in mind, no matter how you are treated."
Both of them stood taller and straighter, and looked him right in the eyes. Several of the others
nodded in agreement with his words, he noted with satisfaction.
"Now, let's get back to the business of living," he told them. "You are both too sensible to quarrel
over this." He summoned an infectious grin for the two recent quarrelers and the others, and it caught all