"Jennifer Roberson - Sword Dancer 1 - Sword Dancer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roberson Jennifer)

shook her off, still watching the blonde, but when Numa started to dig
in her
nails, I gave her my second-best sandtiger glare. It usually works and
saves me
the trouble of using my best sandtiger glare, which I save for special
(generally deadly) occasions. I learned very early in my career that my
green
eyes--the same color as those in a sandtiger's head--often intimidate
those of a
weaker constitution. No man scoffs at a weapon so close to hand; I
certainly
don't. And so I refined the technique until I had it perfected, and I
usually
got a kick out of the reactions to it.
Numa whimpered a little; Ruth smiled. Basically, the two girls are the
best of
enemies. Being the only women in the cantina, quite often they fight
over new
blood--dusty and dirty and stinking of the Punja, more often than not,
but still
new. That was unique enough in the stuffy adobe cantina whose walls had
once
boasted murals of crimson, carnelian, and lime. The colors--like the
girls--had
faded after years of abuse and nightly coatings of spewed or spilled
wine, ale,
aqivi... and all the other poisons.
My blood was the newest in town (newly bathed, too), but rather than
sentence
them to a catfight I'd taken on both of them. They seemed content
enough with
sharing me, and this way I kept peace in a very tiny cantina. A man
does not
make enemies of any woman when he is stuck in a boring, suffocating
town that
has nothing to offer except two cantina girls who nightly (and daily)
sell their
virtue. Hoolies, there isn't anything else to do. For them or me.
Having put Numa in her place (and wondering if I could still keep the
peace
between the two of them), I became aware of the presence newly arrived
at my
table. I glanced up and found those two blue eyes fixed on me in a
direct,
attentive stare that convinced me instantly I should change the errors
of my
ways, whatever they might be. I'd even make some up, just so I could
change
them. (Hoolies, what man wouldn't with her looking at him?)
Even as she halted at my table, some of the men in the cantina murmured