"Patricia A. McKillip - Ombria in Shadow" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)

OMBRIA IN SHADOW
An Ace Book
Published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
Visit our website at www.penguinputnam.com
Copyright © 2002 by Patricia A. McKillip.
Text design by Tiffany Kukec.
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not
be reproduced in any form without permission.
First edition: January 2002
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McKillip, Patricia A.
Ombria in shadow / Patricia A. McKillip.— 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-441-00895-X (alk. paper)
I. Title
PS3563.C38 O43 2002
813'.54-dc21
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
 one

Rose and Thorn
While the ruler of the ancient city of Ombria lay dying, his
mistress, frozen out of the room by the black stare of Domina Pearl,
drifted like a bird on a wave until she bumped through Kyel Greve’s
unguarded door to his bed, where he was playing with his puppets.
They looked at one another, the tavern keeper’s daughter and the
child-heir of Ombria, both pale, both red-eyed. Kyel lifted the falcon
puppet on his hand. Its feathers were of silk, its eyes of dyed
zirconium.
“Take down your hair,” the falcon said. Lydea lifted her hands;
pearls, pins, gold nets scattered to the floor. Her hair, the color of
autumn leaves, swept nearly to her knees. The boy gazed at it a
while, unblinking, until Lydea thought he must have fallen asleep
upright in his vast bed. But he shook himself finally. He had his
father’s black-lashed sapphire eyes, and his black hair. His skin was
white as wax, except for his nose, which was red. He wiped it on his
sleeve.
“May I sit?” Lydea asked gravely. Tall and graceful, head always
slightly bowed under the weight of a perilous love, she had come,
barely more than a child herself, into the palace of the Prince of
Ombria at his wife’s death. In five years, Royce Greve had taught
her presence and manners in that difficult place, but he could not
stop her from biting her nails. She would have now, but Kyel tossed
her a puppet.
“You must make it ask.”
She wriggled her poor, torn fingers into its porcelain head: a
goose head, appropriately, she thought.
“May I sit?” the goose asked, and the falcon answered,