"Ann Maxwell - Concord 3 - Name of a Shadow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maxwell Ann)

and pulled the robe back on. Ryth noted the three curved knives strapped to various parts of Kayle’s
heavily muscled body, then the weapons vanished beneath the loose clothes. Out of sight, but not out of
reach; the robe had conveniently placed slits.
With a rolling movement, Kayle settled the robe around his body. He glanced at Ryth’s cape. The
cape seemed dulled, as though light no longer made any impact on the material’s drab surface. Ryth
pulled up a loose hood that concealed everything but his silver-green eyes.
“Can you fight?” asked Kayle matter-of-factly.
“Yes.”
“Just yes? No elaborations, no tales of epic brawls?”
“No.”
Kayle half-smiled. “Good enough, Sharnn. Hand-held or projectile weapons?”
“Whatever is necessary. Though,” Ryth added, “I prefer faal-hnim,”
“Faal-hnim!” Kayle turned to face Ryth so quickly that his robe belled into rolling shades of purple.
“How did a Sharnn learn that lethal discipline?”
“People come to Sharn,” said Ryth. “Some of them talk to the children. I was a child, once.”
Kayle made a sound that was half admiration, half frustration, but did not doubt that Ryth was a
practitioner of faal-hnim’s difficult and deadly dances. It explained the Sharnn’s extraordinary grace.
“I suppose,” said Kayle dryly, “you once talked to a psi master.”
Ryth’s lips moved in silent laughter. “What little I know of the mental arts was taught to me by the
Carifil. Very difficult concepts. And for a Sharnn of the Seventh Dawn, not particularly useful.”
“Oh?”
“The Seventh Dawn is a solitary discipline.”
Kayle’s mind reached out and deftly touched the fringes of Ryth’s awareness. For an instant Kayle
sensed a savage radiance that was stunning, then the incandescence thinned to an apparently
inexperienced mindtouch that concealed immense depths and distances and raw power.
*Is mindspeech uncomfortable for you, Sharnn?*
*Just ... unexpected ... but each time it happens, I learn.*
Kayle sensed their contact strengthening, stabilizing as the Sharnn’s protean mind found patterns in
Kayle’s skill and learned from those patterns. Ryth learned with shattering speed. Between one breath
and the next, his mind-speech clarified.
*You learn very quickly, pattern-man.*
*I am Sharnn.*
Kayle turned abruptly and walked to the door. Ryth followed, wondering if he had insulted the
Nendleti—Nendleti pride was legendary. But as they descended the winding stairs of one of Vintra’s
older kels, Kayle spoke in a husky whisper.
“Don’t you want to know where you might die tonight? And why?”
“I can guess,” said Ryth, unsmiling. “We are in Sima, capital city of the planet Vintra. We are
probably going to Old Sima; it is the center of Vintran discontent. And danger.” While he spoke, Ryth’s
eyes took in the shabby lilac walls and faded rose and cream murals that decorated the Access room
between the street and the kel’s sleeping rooms. “As for why—” Ryth turned suddenly, but saw nothing
more than a shadow slipping down the wall. “Someone must have promised you information about
Malia.”
Kayle stopped. “Keep talking, pattern-man. What information?”
Ryth’s cape flared, then snuggled around his soft leather boots.
“I don’t know,” said Ryth.
Kayle blinked slowly. “You surprise me, pattern-man. I thought you knew everything.”
The Nendleti turned and walked around the Access platform. Blue energy blazed across the Access,
and for an instant, Kayle’s eyes were as purple as Vintra’s smoldering moon. When the energy died, four
people stepped off the platform. Their tight leggings and elaborately jeweled armbands proclaimed them
buyers of the sort who flocked to the scene of the latest human disaster, purchasing the wreckage of