"12 - Stealer's Sky 1.0a" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asprin Robert)

Shadowspawn ranged through Sanctuary like a hungry tiger on the prowl.

His real name was Hanse and Hanse was mad. Better put, he was angry, but he was mad, too, in a manner of speaking: mad with anger. Shadowspawn was hardly the first or the last person to be driven into a sort of madness by anger. He had done heroic deeds: he had broken into the manse of that sorcerer and stolen the earring that saved Nadeesh's life and enabled Strick to buy the Vulgar Unicorn from the old physician. And then by all gods, by the will of Injustice Himself-that evil gnomish dwarf who was left hand of ever-fickle Lady Chance-the heroic Hanse had been hit by a stagger spell, punched by three big toughs, drugged, bound, gagged, and popped into a big cloth bag. He had been hauled down to the dock, hauled onto a ship, and dumped into its hold. Destination: slavery, in the Bandaran Isles.

Yet that did not happen. The next time Shadowspawn emerged from the shadowless sack and saw light he was in the murky keep of that most sinister of men, Jubal. Jubal had bought him. True, after some smirking and sneering and taunting Jubal had freed him, but not as an act of decency or in exchange for the pitiful price the crime lord had paid. Oh, no. He had named a ridiculous sum, close to sixteen pounds of gold, and Hanse's only choice had been to agree. A ridiculous, monumental sumfive hundred pieces of gold! Ridiculous!

Ole Jubal, Hanse thought, must have been thinking with his nose, not his brain. And he wants to take over peacekeeping in Sanctuary. Right. And put me in charge of guarding all the jewelers and shops.

At least Hanse knew now that one of his kidnappers had been Tarkle, whose main occupation was being a bully- And Hanse was just as sure that Tarkle with his brain borrowed from a minnow hadn't acted solely on his own. No, the mage Marype with his pretty silver tresses must have thought up the vengeful plan for the disposal of HanseIShadowspawn, a plan that truly did involve a fate worse than death and so was truly wicked, and clever. Marype probably paid Tarkle, too.

Hanse knew four more things, all Musts. He would find Tarkle. He would find Marype. He would have his vengeance. And somehow, somehow he would pay Jubal his damned ridiculous price.

Of course I'm worth it, but that's beside the point.

Shadowspawn ranged through Sanctuary like a hungry tiger on the prowl. And he could not find Tarkle.

Strick gazed across his blue-draped desk at the young woman there. From beneath a great mass of fiery hair that dribbled straggly red bangs over her brows and even eyes like an unkempt hedge, she stared anxiously back.

"I have interesting news for you," he told his visitor, whose name was Taya and whose scarlet mop of hair was a disguise, "from the princegovernor. He is without malice toward you. A small house and a guarantee of funds await you. They are sufficient to set you up in some business venture. You could also use it to leave Sanctuary, if you wish. This is genuine and only truth, Taya. As to my changing your appearance-yes, that is possible, but such a thing is not a matter of a few minutes and the Price may not please you. Meanwhile, you are best advised to go into hiding for a week or so. It is hardly what you're used to, but I'd recommend a room upstairs over the Vulgar Unicorn."

Her eyes had widened when he began, returned to something approaching normal as she took in his words, and now flared wide again. She flounced narrow and shapely shoulders. "That . . . place?!"

The very big man spread his hands in a "why not?" gesture and his eyebrows said the same-he who looked like a swordshnger, a wealthy wizard's bodyguard, perhaps, and who was instead a wealthy wizard who was at the same time friend to prince and thief, Rankan noble and Ilsigi banker, carpenter and smith, whore and orange-peddler, He said, "Who's going to think of looking for you there?" She swallowed, stared at the close-fitting blue coif or hood without which no one had seen this man; she visibly considered, and at last nodded. "B-but I wouldn't dare even set foot in that-that . . ."

"Careful, Taya," the spellmaster told her. "I own the place." He mirrored her nod. "The person waiting to see me right now will make the perfect guide, Taya. He will do it for me."

Two people sat in Strick's waiting area below. One, muffled in her costly shawl, was a mildly attractive noblewoman with a ghastly hairy wart erupting from her nose. Yes, Strick could and would deal with that, and be well paid for making her presentable again. The other, from whom she kept herself well clear, was an oldster with a voice out of a gravel pit. It was he that Strick's young assistant, Avenestra, beckoned to rise and follow, and he did, banging his staff as he walked. He was surprised to find someone else in Strick's office, and peered closely at her. Unusually keen of eye-especially at night-he recognized the softly weeping girl there with the white mage. She, meanwhile, glanced up at him and shrank at sight of wrinkled brown hands emerging from an old tan-once-brown robe with its hood all crumpled on his back and around his shoulders. His face was darkly shadowed by a funny feathered hat from some far place, doubtless to hide features ravaged by time and disease and even worse-if anything could be worse than time and disease to a very attractive young woman who had been concubine to the prince-governor from Imperial Ranke. Once-Imperial Ranke.

"Skarth," Strick said, "this is someone who needs to vanish in the Maze for a while."

The big hat nodded and its big bright yellow feather waggled tiredly. "She also resembles someone I once was so rude as to bind and gag in a certain bed in a certain large building!"

Taya gasped and looked at him sharply. He had entered with a limp, bearing a staff or cane in one of those dark, aged hands. Now she also saw an overdone black mustache, floppy as the feather and big and droopy as Strick's oversized blond mustache.

"Taya is in disguise. Taya, this man is in disguise. Please, just wait outside for a moment, will you? I need to impress on him the importance of his job in escorting you."

"Uh-oh, oh, all right," Taya said, who was accustomed to being asked to leave someone's presence and wait somewhere or other while more important things happened than a prince's mere bedwarmer, and hardly accustomed to thinking much for herself.

She rose, bulky and silly in yards and yards of S'danzo garb that hardly went with the lavishly proportioned red wig. The white mage's pneumatically overweight young assistantIreceptionistIfetch-and-carrier smiled at her and showed her along the corridor past that burly man who looked like a swordslinger, a wealthy mage's bodyguard, and was. Like the beyond-plump Avenestra, he wore garments of the color that had already come to be known as Strick blue.

"What'm I supposed to do with that?" the one called Skarth was meanwhile asking Strick. He gestured after Taya, Abruptly losing his limp, he paced with uncommon grace to lean on the back of the chair she had just vacated,

Across his blue-draped desk, the man all in blue told him.

"Uh." A withered old brown hand gestured. "No problem with that. Iffen any of these young jaybirds try to cock their combs at that fair young lass I'll whock 'em with my stick, I will!"

Strick winced. "Next time you consider a disguise that elaborate you might try to gain a lesson or a little advice from Feltheryn."

"Wh-oh, that actor? Not a bad idea, though. What did you find out about Tarkle?"