"Moon, Elizabeth - Gird 02 - Liar's Oath E-Txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moon Elizabeth)

us all. In all the records from Luap’s time, there is no mention of iynisin, and
only one or two comments of some mysterious danger. The neighboring kingdom was
said to believe that demons of some kind lived in the canyons before Luap came.
Perhaps they thought iynisin were demons, but that doesn’t explain why Luap and
his folk never saw them.”
“It would help,” the king said, “if we knew more about Luap himself: who he was,
and why he journeyed there, and what he thought he was doing.”



Chapter One
« ^ »
Fin Panir in summer could be as hot as it was cold in winter; every window and
door in the old palace complex stood wide open. Luap had started work early,
before the heat slicked his hands with sweat to stain the parchment. Now, in
midmorning, the heat carried ripe city smells through his broad office window.
He paused to stretch and ease his cramped shoulders. For once Gird had not
interrupted him a dozen times; he had finished a fair copy of the entire Ten
Fingers of the Code. He reached for the jug of water and poured himself a mug,
carefully away from his work. Could he write another page without smudges, or
should he quit until evening’s cool? He wondered, idly, why he had heard nothing
from Gird that morning, and then remembered that a Marshal from a distant grange
had come to visit. Doubtless they were still telling stories of the war.
He stretched again, smiling. It was nothing like the life he had imagined for
himself when he was a boy, or a young farmer, but somewhat better than either of
those vanished possibilities. As Gird’s assistant and scribe, he had status he’d
never had before; he was living in the very palace to which his father had never
taken him. And he knew that without him, Gird could not have created, and
revised, the legal code that offered some hope of lasting peace. His skill in
writing, in keeping accounts, in drawing maps, had helped Gird win the war; his
skill in writing and keeping records might help Gird win the peace.
“Luap…” One of the younger scribes, a serious-faced girl whose unconscious
movements stirred him brought her work to his desk. “I finished that copy, but
there’s a blot—here—”
“They can still read it,” he said, smiling at her. “That’s the most important
thing.” She smiled back, shyly, took the scroll and went back downstairs. He
wished he could find one woman who would chance a liaison with him. Peasant
women, in the current climate, would not have him, as some had made painfully
clear. They had suffered too much to take any man with known mageborn blood as
lover. The few mageborn women who sought him for his father’s name he could not
trust to bear no children; he suspected they wanted a king’s grandson, and in
his reaction to their pressure he could understand the peasant women’s refusal.
As for those women who sold their bodies freely, he could not see them without
thinking of his daughter’s terrible death. He needed to feel that a woman wanted
him, the comfort of his body, before he could take comfort in hers.
But he knew that would not happen, any more than wishing would bring back Gird’s
wife or children, or restore any of the losses of war. All the Marshals had lost
family; everyone around him had scars of body and mind both. His were no worse,
he reminded himself, and decided to work on another page. Work eased his mind,
and kept it from idle wishes—or so the peasants always said, in the endless tags