Читать книгу Red Sister онлайн | страница 32

Regol turned as if to go then paused. ‘Sooner rather than later someone will try to convince you that the reason so many of us up here are titchies like yourselves is that Partnis eats children, or there’s some test so deadly that almost nobody survives it, or sometimes Maya forgets to look before she sits down. The truth is that you’ve been bought early and cheap. Most of you will be disappointments. You won’t grow into something Partnis can use. He’ll sell you on.’ Regol raised a hand as Denam started to speak. ‘And not to a salt mine or to be used as the filling in a pie – just to any place that has a need you can meet.’ He lowered his hand. ‘Any questions?’

A cracking sound filled the immediate silence and it took Nona a moment to realize it was Denam’s knuckles as he formed fists. The giant’s scowl deepened. ‘I really hate you, Regol.’

‘Not a question. Anyone else?’

Silence.

Regol walked back into the darkness, stepping rafter to rafter with the unconscious grace of a cat.

Life in the Caltess proved to be a big improvement on an open cage rattling along the back-lanes of empire. Truth be told, it was an improvement on life in Nona’s village. Here she might be the smallest but she wasn’t the odd one out. The isolation of the village bred generations so similar in looks you might pick any handful at random to make a convincing family. Nona alone hadn’t fit the mould. A goat in the sheep herd. The family Partnis’s purse had furnished him with mixed every size and shape, every colour and shade, and in the attic’s gloom they were much of a muchness even so.

In addition to the four dozen children Partnis kept immediately beneath his roof, he housed a dozen apprentices, and seven fighters in their own set of rooms around the great hall. The apprentices shared a barracks house out in the rear of the compound.

Nona found a spot wedged between grain sacks larger than herself. Saida had more difficulty finding a space to squeeze into and was turned away by older residents time and again, even those she dwarfed. But in the end she settled on the boards close to Nona’s sack-pile, further back where the roof sloped so low that she had to roll into place.