"Joel Rosenberg - Hidden Ways 3" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rosenberg Joel C)

They'd been through some things together, her and Ian and him—and Mom and Dad and Uncle Hosea, for that matter. You sweat
and bleed and shiver in fear enough with somebody, and they're part of you, and you're part of them, in a way that transcends any
ordinary understanding.

Call it magic; Torrie Thorsen had no objection to magic.

He grinned. And that felt kind of nice, even if he had to share that special closeness with Maggie, with Ian, and his family. At
least, he didn't have to share every—

There was that smell again. Bitter and acrid, but distant. Like . ..

. . . like he couldn't remember what.

You learn a lot of things on a fencing strip, and one of the first you learn is balance, although Torrie had learned that from his
father a long time before he had ever set foot on a fencing strip. The three pillars of fencing were balance, timing, and space, and
if you didn't have all of those down solid, there was no point in even thinking about strategy, because somebody with whatever
attribute you were missing could score on you just about nine times out of nine.

He spun around, quickly, his weight on the balls of his feet, not sliding at all, despite the slipperiness of the sidewalk.

The middle-aged woman in the heavy coat, weighed down with the canvas Byerly's bags, let out a gasp, her eyes wide, and
dropped one of the bags.

Paper-wrapped packages of meat fell to the sidewalk, cans rolled into the snow, and the small glass bottle of Crystal hot sauce
bounced once, twice, three times on the ice before deciding not to break after all. Which was just as well. Torrie would have had
to offer to pay for it, and this being the city, that would have been awkward.

"I'm sorry," he said, bending over to help her put the groceries back. "I thought I heard something, and I kind of, I don't know, I
kind of twitched."

"That was different," she said, her mouth twisting into a smile.

He brushed snow and grit off the bottle of Crystal sauce and put it back in her bag.

"Can I carry one of these for you?" he asked, reflexively, then flinched. You just didn't do that in the city.

But surprisingly, she nodded. "Sure—you bet." She smiled knowingly as she handed him one of the gray canvas bags. "You can
take the boy out of the country, but not the country out of the boy, eh?"

"It shows, does it?" He slung both of his bags over his left shoulder and kept step with her.

"Well, yes, it does." She smiled again. "But it's very sweet." She took the small, sort of mincing steps that old people did when
they walked on a slippery surface, but at least she took them quickly enough that he didn't have to slow down too much.


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 Hidden Ways 3.htm

"Whereabouts are you from?"