Killashandra - Crystal Singer

Начало книги

KILLASHANDRA came in from the Milekey Mountains with a load of rose quartz prisms and cylinders in A-sharp or higher. She worked well in the upper registers, which gave her a distinct advantage over most of the crystal singers in the Heptite Guild.

When she’d hit the frequencies, holding the tone long enough to locate and pitch the crystal cutter, she hadn’t thought twice before she’d decided shape: prisms and cylinders. A good crystal singer has to have, first of all, perfect pitch and then a fine intuition for shape. No sense coming in with black quartz in octagons and cubes when the critical demand was for beads and cones.

When Guildmaster Lanzecki told her she’d hit the market at the top, she shrugged.

“Made it lucky this time,” she said, wincing as she remembered the last week on the Range. The sun had been fierce on the scars of her cuttings, half-blinding her, and the scream of crystal had sliced through her mind as she’d cut. But she’d been desperate to hack enough cargo to get off-world for awhile away from crystal song, far away, so her mind would have a chance to heal. “What’s the guild’s percentage of it?”

Читать дальше →