Читать книгу Red Sister онлайн | страница 23

Nona whispered her hope to Saida on a cold day when the sun burned scarlet over half the sky and the wind ran its fingers through the wooden bars, finding strange and hollow notes.

‘Giljohn doesn’t want pretty,’ Saida snorted. ‘He’s looking for breeds.’

Nona only blinked.

‘Breeds. You know. Anyone who shows the blood.’ She looked down at Nona, still wide-eyed with incomprehension. ‘The four tribes?’

Nona had heard of them, the four tribes of men who came to the world out of darkness and mixed their lines to bear children who might withstand the harshness of the lands they claimed. ‘Ma took me to the Hope church. They didn’t like talk of the Ancestor.’

Saida held her hands up. ‘Well there were four tribes.’ She counted them off on her fingers. ‘Gerant. If you have too much gerant blood you get big like they were.’ She patted her broad chest. ‘Hunska. They’re less common.’ She touched Nona’s hair. ‘Hunska-dark, hunska-fast.’ As if reciting a rhyme. ‘The others are even rarer. Marjool … and … and …’

‘Quantal,’ Markus said from the corner. He snorted and puffed up as if he were an elder. ‘And it’s marjal, not marjool.’

Saida scowled at him, and turning back she lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘They can do magic.’

Nona touched her hair where Saida’s hand had rested. The village littles thought black hair made her evil. ‘Why does Giljohn want children like that?’

‘To sell.’ Saida shrugged. ‘He knows the signs to look for. If he’s right he can sell us for more than he paid. Ma said I’ll find work if I keep getting big. She said in the city they feed you meat and pay you coins.’ She sighed. ‘I still don’t want to go.’

Giljohn took the lanes that led nowhere, the roads so rutted and overgrown that often it needed all the children pushing and Four-Foot straining all four legs to make headway. Giljohn would let Markus lead the mule then – Markus had a way with the beast. The children liked Four-Foot, he smelled worse than an old blanket and had a fondness for nipping legs, but he drew them tirelessly and his only competition for their affection was Giljohn. Several of them fought to bring him hoare-apples and sweet grass at the day’s end. But, of all of them Four-Foot only loved Giljohn who whipped him, and Markus who rubbed him between the eyes and spoke the right kind of nonsense when doing it.