"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Courting Rites" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

“You can’t do that,” Mariah said, and reached for the banjo. I swung around,
keeping it out of her grasp.
“She can do whatever she wants.” Silas stood at the door. I wondered how
long he had been there, if he had followed me from the moment I left the lobby.
Mariah gasped. She froze, looking at him, then looking at her father. Of
course, she had never seen Silas old. She had only seen the young man, the one who
had held me. It was easy to make love to death when he was the most beautiful man
you had ever seen. Difficult when he was caving inside himself, only eyes, hair, and
voice remaining.
“Give me the banjo,” Silas said, that voice carrying more power than I had
ever heard—even more than the day he had admonished me for taking too many
lives.
“No,” Mariah whispered. She extended her hand to me. It shook.
But I didn’t look at her. I looked at her father. Tubes shoved into his arms,
the cords of his neck exposed, eyes sunken into a skeletal face. If I gave it back, he
would live, but he would never be the powerful man he had been, the man who made
his bed with military precision, who probably dominated any room he stood in. She
was clinging to a shell and he, he was too far gone to know it.
I had been lucky. My father had died quickly, by comparison.
“Give me the banjo,” Silas repeated.
But life was life. And there it was, staring up at me from the depths of a
hospital bed, as wispy and tenacious as greenery in the desert.
 Silas made these decisions every day. Every hour of every day. I could not.
I extended one hand to him, letting the banjo pass in front of Mariah. This was
their fight, not mine.
Mariah lunged for it, but Silas was quicker. He snatched the banjo from me,
hugging it like a long-lost friend. On the bed, the father made a strange keening
sound—and I couldn’t tell if it was from fear or pain.
The years shed off of Silas like fur off a cat. As he crossed the room, Mariah
wrapped herself around him. The sounds of the hospital had faded into nothing.
“Let him live,” she said.
Silas, young, black-haired, slim, the beautiful man I had first seen, ran his hand
along her face. He kissed her forehead and cupped her chin, as if he had never held
anything so precious. “You should have asked that in the first place,” he said.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.” Her voice sounded desperate. I wanted to look
away, but couldn’t.
“I’m as familiar with hurt as I am with anything else,” he said. “The banjo
takes the hurt away.”
“But only for him.”
“Yes,” Silas said. “Only for him.”
He walked beside the bed, took the old man’s hand. The old man stared up at
him, keening stopped. I could see fear in the old man’s rheumy eyes, but his gaze
never wavered. “You can live like this for years,” Silas said, “or you can come with
me.”
Mariah was shaking. She hadn’t moved another step. All through this, she had
thought of no one but herself.
“I’m sorry,” the old man said to her.
She nodded, unable to speak. A lump rose in my throat, too. I wanted out,
but didn’t dare move. Silas let go of the old man’s hand, swung the banjo to the
front of his chest, and played.