Leckie, Ann / Леки, Энн - Собрание сочинений (21 произведение) [2006-2023, fb2/epub, ENG]

The Raven Tower 2019, epub (retail), ISBN: 978-0-316-38871-9, Orbit (US)

Hesperia and Glory 2006, fb2 How I Found God 2006, fb2 Bury the Dead 2007, fb2 The Snake's Wife 2007, fb2 The Endangered Camp 2009, fb2 Beloved of the Sun 2010, fb2 Maiden, Mother, Crone 2010, fb2 (with Rachel Swirsky) Another Word for World 2015, fb2 The Justified 2019, fb2 We Continue 2020, fb2 (with Rachel Swirsky)

1

The body lay naked and facedown, a deathly gray, spatters of blood staining the snow around it. It was minus fifteen degrees Celsius and a storm had passed just hours before. The snow stretched smooth in the wan sunrise, only a few tracks leading into a nearby ice-block building. A tavern. Or what passed for a tavern in this town. There was something itchingly familiar about that outthrown arm, the line from shoulder down to hip. But it was hardly possible I knew this person. I didn’t know anyone here. This was the icy back end of a cold and isolated planet, as far from Radchaai ideas of civilization as it was possible to be. I was only here, on this planet, in this town, because I had urgent business of my own. Bodies in the street were none of my concern. Sometimes I don’t know why I do the things I do. Even after all this time it’s still a new thing for me not to know, not to have orders to follow from one moment to the next. So I can’t explain to you why I stopped and with one foot lifted the naked shoulder so I could see the person’s face. Frozen, bruised, and bloody as she was, I knew her. Her name was Seivarden Vendaai, and a long time ago she had been one of my officers, a young lieutenant, eventually promoted to her own command, another ship. I had thought her a thousand years dead, but she was, undeniably, here. I crouched down and felt for a pulse, for the faintest stir of breath. Still alive. . . .

I first saw you when you rode out of the forest, past the cluster of tall, bulge-eyed offering stakes that mark the edges of the forest, your horse at a walk. You rode beside Mawat, himself a familiar sight to me: tall, broad-shouldered, long hair in dozens of braids pulled back in a broad ring, feathers worked in repoussé on gold, his dark gray cloak lined with blue silk. More gold weighted his forearms. He was smiling vaguely, saying something to you, but his eyes were on the fortress of Vastai on its small peninsula, still some twelve miles off: some two- and three-story buildings surrounded by a pale yellow limestone wall, the ends of which met at a round tower at the edge of the sea. On the landward side of the wall sat a town’s worth of buildings interrupted by a bank and ditch. Gulls coasted over the few bare-masted ships in the harbor beside the fortress, and over the gray water beyond, flecked white with the wind, and here and there a sail. The white stone buildings and more numerous ships of the city of Ard Vusktia were just visible on the far side of the strait. Mawat—and Vastai—I knew, but I had not seen you before, and so I looked closely. Slight, and shorter than Mawat—it would be a wonder if you were not, the residents of the fortress in Vastai eat so much better, and so much more regularly than the peasant farmers who were your likely origins. You had cut your hair close to your scalp, a single arm ring and the haft of the knife at your side the only gold on you, your trousers, shirt, boots, and cloak solid and sturdy, all dull greens and browns. The hilt of your sword was wood wrapped with leather, undecorated. You sat stiff in the saddle, even at a walk. Possibly because you’d woken early to a summons and then ridden for three days with only what rest the horses required, and likely before you became a soldier you’d had very little experience riding. Mawat said, “We’ve made good time, it seems, and the Instrument is still with us, or there’d be black flags on the tower, and lots of movement in the tower yard. And even if there were, we don’t have to rush now. It would be easier for you—and the horses for that matter—if we went the rest of the way at a walk, I think.” And then, at the expression on your face, “What is it?” . . .

Добавлено: Leckie, Ann - Translation State (Ancillary Universe) - 2023.epub