"R. A. MacAvoy - L3 - The Belly of the Wolf" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacAvoy R A)

sat on the upper floor balcony of our little house, halfway between grief and sulking, for there was nothing
in this landscape to remind me of my dead friend and king, and it seemed unfair to have no tools for my
mourning.
Lights came on in the streets below, because Can-ton is too busy to close down at sunset; its
commerce goes daily until exhaustion.
It seemed to me I had never given Rudof half enough in recompense for all he had done for me. I
remembered all the times I had paraded my refusal of the simplest duties a subject owes his king. I would
not war for him; I would not accept his au-thority over me nor the authority he wished me to take up
over others. What was it I had said to my king, on our first meeting, on the southern marches of
Zaquashlon? “Let us not stop here like fools dis-cussing my accent ...”
Why was I still alive and free after all that? He had been known as a touchy man. A redhead.
His only surviving son was a redhead also, and the boy had never appreciated my qualities. The boy
was now a man: the king of Velonya. I was not en-tirely unhappy to be away from Velonya as he
as-cended the throne.
Navvie was standing at the balcony with me. Her hands gripped the balustrade and she allowed her
feet to swing between the uprights. There were green stains on her fingers and she bore a smell of
crushed grass. “I don’t know if the railing is safe,” I said.
“It will hold my weight,” she answered, with the complacency of the very small. “Or do you think I
should be acting my age?”
This was so ridiculous I didn’t respond. Nothing I have taught Nahvah has had anything to do with
acting one’s age.
“By my age,” she continued dreamily, looking at the thirty-foot drop beneath her, “I am really a
hope-less old spinster.”
My daughter is twenty-seven, though she looks fourteen. I asked her if she even knew how to spin,
with the idea she would turn—a toe-pirouette on the wooden slats and then laugh, and maybe then I
could laugh, too. But Navvie did not give me that laugh. She just shook her head. “No. Mother did not
remember how, so she could not teach me. Unless you mean spinning a blade.”
“Still, that’s a form, of spinning. I suppose you qualify as a spinster—and will even if you marry.”
“Marriage doesn’t run in my family,” Navvie said calmly. “Neither my mother nor my father ever
mar-ried.
“That was just a joke,” she added, after staring at my face. “Please, Papa. Just a joke,”
There was very little light outdoors by now, and I left the piers and the ocean for lamp-lit rooms and
dinner.
I was thinking of young Jeram as much as I was Rudof that evening, wondering what effect the
po-litical turmoil would have on his troublesome little philosophy, which the boy called a religion and
which he blamed on me. Of ttimes I have wanted to hang Jeram, for his enthusiasm was only matched by
his ability to miss the essence of things. I did not want anyone else to hang Jeram, though. What a
miserable shame it would be if he died for a teaching he didn’t even understand.
Navvie opened a bottle of wine. I did not know when she had purchased this luxury; I was too
de-pressed at the moment to ask. In retrospect I guess she had the bottle ready to celebrate the success
of her breech pistol, and instead it went to help us drown the sorrow of Rudof’s death.
Navvie’s mother used to while away the time put-ting dagger holes in rented furniture. Navvie herself
always leaves things in better condition than when she found them. Our souls come out of a grab bag, I
think, and our parents have limited power to en-dow or influence. Tonight Navvie seemed to be mending
and freshening clothes. I watched her, scarcely seeing.
“The church, Papa? Is that what’s bothering you? Your expression is more peeved than grieved.”
“Rudof has certainly peeved me as well as grieved me, child. But you’re right. I am wondering
whether your friend Jeram’s silliness has gotten him into final trouble.”
Navvie sighed at me as I often have sighed at her. Or her mother at both of us. “It isn’t fair to blame
Jeram on me, Zhurrie, just because we are both of an age. It’s you he reveres. Besides”—she stacked