"Cook, Glen - Black Company 09 - Glittering Stone 03 - Water Sleeps" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Glen)

a plague of those in Taglios. These days the capital city boasted
plenty of every kind of out-lander imaginable. Every layabout and
lackwit and sharp- ster from the length and breadth of the empire
was migrating to the city. The population had tripled in a
generation. But for the cruel efficiencies of the Greys, Taglios
would have become a chaotic, murderous sink, a hellfire fueled by
poverty and despair.



Poverty and despair existed in plentitude but the Palace did not let
any disorder take root. The Palace was good at ferreting out
secrets. Criminal careers tended to be short. As did the lives of
most who sought to conspire against the Radisha or the Protector.
Particularly against the Protector, who did not concern herself
deeply with the sanctity of anyone else's skin.



In times past, intrigue and conspiracy had been a miasmatic
plague afflicting every life in Taglios. There was little of that
anymore. The Protector did not approve. Most Taglians were
eager to win the Protector's approval. Even the priesthoods
avoided attracting Soulcatcher's evil eye.



At some point the boy's black clothing came off, leaving him in the
Gunni-style loincloth he had worn underneath. Now he looked like
any other youngster, though with a slightly jaundiced cast of skin.
He was safe. He had grown up in Taglios. He had no accent to give
him away.



4



It was the waiting time, the stillness, the doing nothing that there is
so much of before any serious action. I was out of practice. I could
not lean back and play tonk or just watch while One-Eye and Goblin
tried to cheat each other. And I had writer's cramp, so could not
work on my Annals. "Tobo!" I called. "You want to go see it
happen?" Tobo was fourteen. He was the youngest of us. He grew
up in the Black Company. He had a full measure of youth's
exuberance and impatience and overconfidence in his own
immortality and divine exemption from retribution. He enjoyed his
assignments on behalf of the Company. He was not quite sure he
believed in his father. He never knew the man. We tried hard to