Flesh and Spirit

Начало книги

On my seventh birthday, my father swore, for the first of many times, that I would die face down in a cesspool. On that same occasion, my mother, with all the accompanying mystery and elevated language appropriate for a prominent diviner, turned her cards, screamed delicately, and proclaimed that my doom was written in water and blood and ice. As for me, from about that time and for the twenty years since, I had spat on my middle finger and slapped the rump of every aingerou I noticed, murmuring the sincerest, devoutest prayer that I might prove my parents’ predictions wrong. Not so much that I feared the doom itself—doom is just the hind end of living, after all—but to see the two who birthed me confounded.

Sadly, as with so many of my devotions, some to greater gods than those friendly imps carved into the arches and drainpipes of palaces, hovels, latrines, and sop-houses, my fervent petition had come to naught. I’d been bloody for two days now, the rain was quickly turning to sleet, and I seemed to have reached the hind end of everything…

Читать дальше →