"Liz Williams - La Malcontenta" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Liz)

"They hate it. I hate it. But it is your last remaining legal right, ancient custom, and we have no choice."
Shorn says, slow and disbelieving, "I am to be allowed out? In the mask-and-gown?"

Essegui leans forward, hands on either arm of the chair, and speaks clearly. "Understand this. If you use
the mask-and-gown as a cover to flee the city, our mothers will go to the Matriarchy and ask for a
squadron of scissor-women to hunt you down. The city will, of course, be closed from dusk onward, and
they will know if anyone tries to leave. Or if anything tries to get in."

"I will not try to leave," Shorn whispers. "Where would I go?"

"To that which brought you to this plight?"

Shorn gives a small, hard laugh like a bark.

"To the mountains, in winter?" Essegui goes on. "You would die of cold before you got halfway across
the Demnotian Plain. And the mountains, what then? Men-remnants would tear you to pieces and devour
you before you had a chance to find it." Essegui grimaces. "Perhaps it would even be one of them. I've
heard that all women look alike to them."

Shorn lowers her gaze. There is a moment's silence. "I have told you that I will not try."

"There is a mask waiting for you," Essegui says. She turns on her heel and is gone through the door,
leaving it open behind her.

Shorn does not leave the chamber immediately, but stares at the open door. She has been dreaming
about this day ever since the evening of her imprisonment, six hundred and sixty-eight days ago. Ombre
then was like every other festival, a chance for fun and celebration, supposedly. She had thought no
further than a possible assignation with Celvani Morel, an old college friend, recently detached. She
wonders now whether she hoped that it would fill the emptiness within. She did not expect to meet what
stepped from under the bridge of the Curve.

The open door seems as dark, but Shorn, once more, hesitates for only a moment before stepping
through.

The mask is one that she remembers from her childhood: the round, bland face of a crater cat. It is a
child's mask; for the last few years, Canteley has been wearing it. Now, however, it is the only one left in
the box. Shorn pulls the gown—a muted red-and-black brocade—over her head and then, slowly, puts
the mask on. The cat beams at her from the mirror; she looks like a too-tall child, no longer the woman
they call the Malcontent. She twitches aside the fold of a sash, but the box is empty. There is no sign of
the other mask: the long, narrow head, the colour of polished bone, mosaicked with cracks and fractures.
She searches through the draperies, but there is no sign of it. She tells herself that she feels nothing.

As she turns to go downstairs, a gaezelle dances in through the door. "Tui, is that you? Is it?" The
gaezelle flings her arms around Shorn and holds on tight.

"It's me. But don't call me Tui." It sounds as though she's spitting. "That's not my name any more."
Canteley has grown over the last months; she is almost as tall as her sister now. Shorn has nearly
forgotten the piercing quality of her voice, shrill as a water-whistle. She feels as though an icy mass has
lodged deep in her own throat.