"Martha Wells - Wheel of the Infinite" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wells Martha)

“They always overdo things. It has something to do with being actors.”
“Why are you with them?”
She glanced sideways at him. “I met them in Corvalent.”
Firac and Killia pretended to stagger, and Gisar’s box tipped into the larger box, splashing Rastim
and the others. The guards, watching from the steps of the post, didn’t react except to exchange glances.
Probably struck dumb with amazement, Maskelle thought.
“The performance that Magister Acavir objected to?” Rian asked.
 “Yes. I was in the audience too.” Acavir hadn’t wanted to listen to reason and Maskelle had had to
frighten him a little to discourage him from violence. Another small violation of her oath. Perhaps the
Ancestors would consider it small, as well. And perhaps it had escaped the Ancestors’ notice how much
she had enjoyed it. Not likely. Rian was still looking at her. “He wanted to kill them. The curse was a
compromise.”
The Ariaden were carrying the large box back to the wagons slowly, ready to burst into song if the
knocking was still audible, but the water muffled the noise admirably. Maskelle knew they would have a
needlessly elaborate story to explain their actions if anyone asked. She glanced briefly upward in
wordless appeal to the Ancestors. Who are probably laughing themselves sick, she thought. “They’ve
made too much out of this since it happened. You’d think a cursed puppet was the end of the world.”
She needed to stop trying to think of a way to lure Rian back into her wagon and focus on the present
situation. The continued interest of the post guards was a problem, considering the activity of Gisar the
puppet. Putting it in the second box was a good stop-gap measure, but it would only work until the
creature thought of something else.
“Why are they going to Duvalpore?” Rian asked.
“To get the curse on the puppet removed.” She watched him carefully, and added, “I’m going to
Duvalpore because the Celestial One asked me to.”
Rian shifted against the wagon. “And you thought no one would look for you in a troupe of play
actors.”
“No one did, not all the way from Corvalent, and I had had a great deal of trouble before then.” She
let out her breath. The dark spirits that hunted her had been confused by the presence of so many other
living beings around her; they had been long used to her travelling alone, and it had taken them until now
to find her again. She added, “So I’m dragging them along with me for their own good and mine, whether
they like it or not.”
Rian said nothing for a moment, then, “Why don’t you use your magic?”
Maskelle smiled to herself. The night was turning wild, the wind was up, and the river still rushed
through the pylons supporting the post. She said, “It’s not mine to use,” and walked away.



Chapter 4
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Rian watched Maskelle walk back toward the fire. He had had a long journey, made longer by the
fact that he didn’t know where it would end. Travelling through the lowland jungles had meant unfamiliar
and dangerous animals, raiders, poisonous plants, and strange people with inexplicable customs. He had
been hunted by the savages who lived in the deep jungle, chased by the ten-foot-tall flightless gankbirds
that populated the hills, and then lately drowned in the near constant rain, which had driven him to the
point where he would have been ready to sell his body for dry clothes, if only someone had given him the
opportunity. The journey had almost ended on the river fighting those motherless drunken raiders and
cursing his own stupidity. Instead he had found a woman worth following.
She was also a woman who thought a curse that could make a thing of painted wood stand up and