"Charles de Lint - Mulengro" - читать интересную книгу автора (De Lint Charles)

prepared to hear him out. The Gypsy leader sighed.

“This morning,” he said, “Joji Anako was collecting scrap behind the repair shop just up on Scott Street
—do you know the place?”

Janfri shrugged.

“He was taking a load to his car,” Big George continued, “when he saw two men approaching him from
downtown. It was perhaps three hours after midnight and dark, so he did not know them for Rom until
they were very close to him. One was Romano Yera—Punka’s son. The other was a stranger—a Rom as
well, but dressed all in black.”

Janfri’s eyebrows lifted quizzically. It was odd that a Rom would wear black for it was considered a
very prikaza color. Very unlucky. Except for drabarne—those who professed to be magicians. It was
also curious that the Rom was a stranger. It was an accepted tradition that any Rom entering an area
already claimed by a kumpania reported his presence to its rom baro as soon as he arrived. But times
were changing, for the Rom as well as for the Gaje. Matters of tradition were not always so judiciously
adhered to as they had been in the old days.

“A stranger in black,” he said, “does not necessarily have anything to do with draba.”

Big George leaned ponderously forward, a grim expression on his face. “Romano Yera died yesterday
evening. His body was found by the shangle before midnight and they took it away to their police
building downtown. What Joji saw was Romano’s mulo, o Boshbaro. Romano’s ghost walked last night
in the company of a man wearing black.”



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 MULENGRO

Black. Like the paint of the patrin on the wall of his house before it burned down. Beside him, Yojo
drew in a sharp breath. The skin prickled at the nape of Janfri’s neck.

“Dib… did Joji speak to them?” he asked finally.

Big George nodded. “But they passed him in silence. The stranger was a Rom—Joji is sure of that—a
scarred Rom with eyes like smoke, o Boshbaro. There was death in his eyes.”

“Joji… ?”

“Told me this before he left town,” Big George said. “Now tell me. You know both worlds, o Boshbaro
—ours and that of the Gaje. What does this mean?”

“Prikaza,” Janfri said softly. “Very bad prikaza, Big George.”

The rom baro nodded. “So tonight I will call a meeting of the kris and we will discuss this thing. You
will come?”

“Of course.”