Читать книгу Red Sister онлайн | страница 77

Folded in the soft hubbub of voices and with the warmth of her bed drawing her down into sleep Nona let the contest with Ghena play across the back of her eyelids. The whole thing had lasted only moments, moments in which Ghena had thrown a dozen or more punches, a well-practised dance on her part, instinct and reflex on Nona’s. Memory of one fight slipped into memory of another, returning Nona to the sawdust and sweat of the Caltess, watching the apprentices spar. Partnis Reeve’s fight-masters taught discipline but left room for aggression.

A week or two after Nona’s arrival Raymel Tacsis had strolled into the great hall where the apprentices were training. Nona, Saida and two other attic children engaged in sweeping the floor paused their labours and leaned on their brooms to watch the fighter. Up close his size was intimidating. Nona realized that her head wouldn’t even reach the man’s hip and that with the strength of one arm he would be able to toss her, Saida, and the other two sweepers across the room, not separately but together.

‘I’ve a better lesson for these puppies.’ Raymel climbed over the ropes into the ring where two gerant apprentices had been wrestling, both of them enormous but lacking more than a foot on the older man. He stood huge, blond, and glorious between them, somehow wearing his wealth though all that covered him was a loincloth and a sheen of oil.

The fight-master stepped forward, an objection on his lips, but Raymel boomed across him, ‘And the rest of you.’ He beckoned another three apprentices from across the hall. Two hunskas holding nets and a gerant girl with a ponderous brow that looked as if it would break the fist of anyone foolish enough to punch her in the head.

As the girl clambered in behind the two swifter apprentices Raymel drove an elbow into the throat of the gerant behind him. ‘Don’t ever wait to attack.’ The apprentice fell, clutching his neck. The rest stood, too stunned or nervous to act. Raymel slapped the girl, his huge hand covering half her face and sending her back into the ropes, spitting blood. His grin was an ugly thing, corrupting the good looks he’d been born with.