Книжный вызовВаш трекер чтения книг
Это новая версия страницы книги. Часть функций ещё в работе — мы добавляем их постепенно.
Witchmark
"Amaranthine need healers?""We can be hurt, Miles. Or killed.""I thought you were immortal.""Only if we live a boring life."
"What do I do now?"Tristan caught my hand and squeezed. "You find a way to live with it."
"It`s the only way!""Find another."
It`s one thing to serve others. Quite another to be forced into it, however noble the cause.
"You`re not finding me a flat," I said. "You`ll pick out a ten-room folly. How did you find me?""I telephond the hospital. Dr. Matheson was most helpful.""Oh, indeed." The meat was sour."Don`t be sulky, Miles. Six rooms.""No."She rolled her eyes. "Do they even make flats smaller than six rooms?""Grace, do you know the cost of a loaf of bread?""Are you calling me a snob?""Can you deny it?"
An Amaranthine had visited the legendary painter Brianthine in his studio, disrobed, and asked him to pain her. Briantine had picked up his brush and fallen into an ecstatic haze he described as the best hours of his life. He`d awakened to an empty studio. The painting had vanished, paid for with a sack of oak leaves turned to solid gold. He toiled for years trying to recapture her on canvas until he finally put his eyes out. His failures rest in the Royal Gallery, considered masterpieces.Stories about the Amaranthines had a lot of endings like that.
"Why do you send the mad to live so far away from their families? They can`t visit easily.""That`s the point, sometimes." I rounded the bannister and tried to keep my steps from echoing. "Sometimes solitude from your family is part of the cure.""Because your family is the illness?""I didn`t say that."
"But you know it`s real." He spoke in a low voice.I turned to my window. "It doesn`t matter. What matters is what the people believe."
"I wanted to be free.""I would let you have your freedom—""Then why bind me at all?" I asked."Because I need you," she said. "None of the other Secondaries want liberty the way you do. They bend their necks and dismiss their own talents as worthless tricks. None of them is someone the other Secondaries can look up to.""I want freedom, and so you want to chain me, to teach the others they should be like me."