（外文电子版资料）Jo Clayton - Hallahs Choice.pdf

Hallah’s Choice By: Jo Clayton * * * * From the Drytowns to Leigh Brackett Hamilton’s Mars, mercenaries and assassins stride or skulk through exotic desert towns. They are violent and sinister, and, no doubt, each one of them has a history that we would wonder at—when we’re not taking cover. Hallah, Jo Clayton’s protagonist, has a history more painful than most. Is she bent on revenge? Yes, but this is one assassin you can imagine singing a lullaby. * * * * 1 Into the web Languorous late afternoon. Heatwaves and a haze of yellow dust. The Shiza’heyh of Yaanosin ride to the Betrothal Feast and Fealty Jubilee with their guards and dependents, their wives and daughters and their eldest sons, their equerries and orderlies and grooms, their harriers and farriers, their agents and their clerks, their stooges and their sycophants, their bath girls and bed-warmers, their tailors, their valets, their wardrobemasters, their cooks and their cupbearers, their food tasters and wine tasters, their scullions and slaveys. The Shiza’heyh Kihyayti’an rides to the Betrothal Feast and Fealty Jubilee with all this and his unmatched pair of matchless assassins. Zisgade Neisser the Shadowsnake, unfeeling as the polished ivory blades he wears up each sleeve—he is a thin gray man, yellow with dust, riding at his master’s side. Hallah Myur, with no epithet allowed—such things are a foolishness she is content to live without—a thin gray woman riding near the tail of the procession, a little woman yellow with the rolling dust, dark eyes narrowed to cracks. Sweat runnels cut through the dust plastered on her brow, baring streaks of lined light brown skin. Wisps of hair straggle