"Michael Swanwick - Cold Iron" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

Rooster turned his head to the side and spat on the floor in disgust. "Not unless Jane changes her mind."

Stilt began to cry.

His sobs began almost silently, but quickly grew louder. He threw back his head, and howled in misery.
Horrified, the children tumbled over one another to reach him and stifle his cries with their hands and
bodies. His tears muffled, then ceased.

For a long, breathless moment they waited to hear if Blugg had been roused. They listened for his heavy
tread coming up the stairs, the angry creaking of old wood, felt for the stale aura of violence and barely
suppressed anger that he pushed before him. Even Rooster look frightened.

But there came no sound other than the snort of cyborg hounds on patrol, the clang and rustle of dragons
in the yards stirring restlessly in their chains, and the distant subaudible chime of midnight bells celebrating
some faraway sylvan revelry. Blugg still slept.

They relaxed.

What a shivering, starveling batch they were! Jane felt a pity for them all that did not exclude herself. A
kind of strength hardly distinguishable from desperation entered her then and filled her with resolve, as
though she were nothing more than an empty mold whose limbs and torso had been suddenly poured
through with molten iron. She burned with purpose. In that instant she realized that if she were ever to be
free, she must be tough and ruthless. Her childish weaknesses would have to be left behind. Inwardly she
swore, on her very soul, that she would do whatever it took, anything, however frightening, however vile,
however wrong.

"All right," she said. "I'll do it."

"Good." Without so much as a nod of thanks, Rooster began elaborating his plot, assigning every child a
part to play. When he was done, he muttered a word and made a short, chopping pass with his hand
over the candle. The flame guttered out.

Any one of them could've extinguished it with the slightest puff of breath. But that wouldn't have been as
satisfying.

***

The black foundry was the second largest workspace in all the plant. Here the iron was poured to make
the invulnerable bodies and lesser magick-proofed parts of the great dragons. Concrete pits held the
green sand, silt mixes and loam molds. Cranes moved slowly on overhead beams, and the October
sunlight slanted down through airborn dust laboriously churned by gigantic ventilating fans.

At noon an old lake hag came by with the lunch cart, and Jane received a plastic-wrapped sandwich and
a cup of lukewarm grapefruit juice for her portion. She left her chamois gloves at the workbench, and
carried her food to a warm, dusty niche beside a wood frame bin filled with iron scrap, a jumble of
claws, scales and cogwheels.

Jane set the paper cup by her side, and smoothed her coarse brown skirt comfortably over her knees.
Closing her eyes, she pretended she was in a high-elven cloud palace. The lords and ladies sat about a
long table, all marble and white lace, presided over by slim tapers in silver sticks. The ladies had names