"Kerr, Katharine - Westlands 02 - A Time Of Omens" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragon Stories)

Just when all these expensive arrangements were concluded, it began to rain, a dark sodden pour that went on and on and on for three days and washed away the troupe's remaining coin along with their tempers. In a flood of jokes and compliments Salamander moved from person to person, keeping up morale and stopping fights. As she told him late one night, when they got a moment alone together, Jill had to admire him for it.
"But still," she remarked. "If you'd only put this much hard work into your studies-"
He busied himself with slapping mosquitoes.
"I've been meaning to have a talk with you," she went on, relentless. "No doubt you've lost some ground lately, but now that you're married and settled, there's no reason that you couldn't gain it back."
"No doubt you're correct, O Princess of Powers Perilous, as well as accurate, precise, and just plain right, but the times are a bit troubled, not to say noisy, with all of us packed into this stinking inn together, for concentration. At the moment, the only dweomer I feel like working would be a bit of weather magic, to drive away this wretched storm, but I know that such would offend your fine-tuned sense of ethics."
"Things aren't quite desperate enough for that, yet."
"True. It doubtless will clear soon enough on its own. The innkeep assures me that this much rain is most unseasonable."
Apparently the innkeep knew his weather, because they woke on the morrow to clearing skies. In a much improved mood the troupe set about cleaning and readying their equipment for the coming show.
"I hope to every god that I was right about the profit to be made here," Salamander remarked to Jill. "If I'm not, we are well and truly in the thick of battle without a sword, as the old saying would have it."
She said nothing, by a great effort of will.
"I know what you're thinking," he went on with theatrical gloom. "You might as well berate me and be done with it."
"I was merely wondering why anyone bothered to settle here in the first place, and then, in the second, why they bother to stay."
"Pearls." All at once he grinned. "Pearls both black and white, mother of pearl and fine shells of all sorts, the best and the rarest for the jewelers of Bardek. And they quarry the black obsidian, too, to send home, and catch the parrots and other rare birds to delight the fine ladies of Surtinna. Merchant ships sail back and forth all the time, trading for their wares."
"Nothing but a lot of trinkets, if you ask me."
"Trinkets have made men rich before. Of course, a lot of men have died out here, too. The sea's bounty demands its price."
"If it's that dangerous, maybe you should just take the troupe home now."
"Not until I've put my scheme to the test, O Monarch of Might Mysterious. And tonight, here in the very market square of Myleton Noa, will the test come!"
The market square in question was a big sprawl of mud in the center of town. All round the edge stood such civic buildings as the town could muster: a customs house, an archon's residence, a barracks for the town guard, and a money changer, who supported a small guard of his own, according to the wine seller.
"He's a shrewd one, old Din-var-tano," he remarked to Jill. "And as honest as the sea is deep, too. But a miser? Ye gods! He lives like a slave, and he won't have a wife because of the expense of keeping one, you see. I'll wager we won't see him tonight at this here show. He'd feel obliged to part with one of his precious coppers! But it looks like everyone else in town is here, that's for certain."
Jill and the wine seller were standing on the wooden steps of the archon's palace, a little above the crowd swarming round the muddy square. The old man had set up his little booth on the top step, and as they talked, he was busily chaining wine cups to the rail. In the velvet twilight, the troupe was raising crossed pairs of standing torches round the stage while Salamander himself stood underneath the slack rope and pulled on it to make sure it was secure.
"We've never had a show through here before," the wine seller went on. "I wager I'll do good business after it's over."
"No doubt. I take it things are lonely in Anmurdio."
"As lonely as the sea is deep, that's for certain. Sometimes I'm sorry I came, I tell you, but then, a man can live his life as he likes out here without a lot of city clerks laying down the law and grabbing his coin for taxes."
"Ah. I see. Tell me something. Do you ever hear of ships sailing south?"
"South? What for? Nothing out there but sea and wind."
"You're sure?" She paused to kill a particularly big mosquito that had landed on her wrist. "You've never heard of any islands lying far to the south?"
He sucked his stumps of teeth while he considered.
"Never," he said at last. "But I can tell you who you want to ask about that. See over there, that great big fellow standing in the torchlight? The one with the red tunic-that's right, him. Dekki's his name, and he's quite a sailing man, goes to all sorts of places, and not all of them are on maps, if you take my meaning."
Jill sighed, because she did see. A pirate, most likely, and not her favorite sort of person in the world. Before she could ask the wine seller more, on the stage drums boomed out and flutes sang. In a pleasurable shudder of applause, the crowd surged closer. The show had begun.
From the very first moment, when the youngest and clumsiest acrobat cartwheeled across the stage, Jill could see that Salamander's commercial instincts had delivered triumph. No matter whether a performer pulled off a difficult trick or fell in the middle of an easy one, the crowd clapped and cheered. At the end of each turn coins clinked and slithered on the stage. After all, these colonists were rich by the standards of the cities they'd left behind, but lacked luxuries to spend their wealth upon. When the heart of the show appeared, Keeta and her flaming torches, Marka dancing upon the slack rope, the crowd screamed and stamped their feet. Silver flashed like rain in the torchlight. When Jill turned to speak to the wine seller, she found him utterly entranced, smiling as he stared. Salamander himself performed the greatest trick of all, making the crowd fall silent again to catch his every word. It seemed to Jill that he luxuriated in their attention like a man drowsing in a hot and perfumed bath. She felt as if she should slap him awake before he drowned.
Finally, when the performers were exhausted beyond the power of cheers and coins to revive them, the show wound down. By then the moon was low on the horizon, and the wheel of stars turning toward dawn. In a cooler wind from the sea the crowd lingered, watching the troupe strike its stage or drifting over the various booths and peddlers selling food and drink. When Dekki came strolling up, the crowd round the wine booth parted like the sea beneath a prow to let him through, and the wine seller handed him a cup without waiting to be asked. The pirate paid twice its worth for it, though; Jill supposed that his high standing in the town depended on his generosity just as a Deverry lord's respect among his folk depended on his. The wine seller made him a bob of a bow.
"This lady here would like to speak with you, Dekki." He jerked a thumb in Jill's direction. "She's a scholar and a map-maker."
"Indeed?" His voice was a rumble like distant thunder. "My honor, then. What do you want to know?"
They moved away from the press of thirsty customers and stood by a pair of torches. Jill pulled her map out of her shirt and held it unrolled in the flaring light.
"I got this over in Inderat Noa," she said. "Do you see those islands far to the south? You wouldn't happen to know if they really exist, would you?"
"Well, I wouldn't be surprised if you told me they did. Let's put it this way. There's something out there." He took the map and frowned at the dim markings. "Once me and my men, we were blown off course by a storm, and a bad one it was, too. We rode south before it for many a day, and we just barely pulled through, and we found wrack from a ship that wasn't so lucky. We spotted what looked like a figurehead and hauled it on board. We were thinking, see, that it was an Anmurdio ship, and so we'd take it home for the owners' reward. Huh. Never seen anything like it in my life." He handed back the map. "It was a woman, and she was smiling and had all this long hair, a nice job of carving it was, you would have sworn you could have run your fingers through it. But she had wings, or, I should say, what we found had stumps of wings. They must have folded back along the bow, like. But anyway, there were these letters carved round the belt she was wearing. Never seen anything like them. I call them letters, but they were magic marks for all I know."
"And what happened to this thing?"
"Oh, we tossed it back. Wasn't one of our ships."
"I see. So, then, it must have come from somewhere to the south?"
"Most likely. And then there's the bubbles, too. Down on the southern beaches, sometimes you find these glass bubbles after a storm." He cupped his massive hands. "About so big. Bad luck to break one. The priests say there must be evil spirits trapped inside. But someone must have blown the glass and trapped the spirits."
"I don't suppose you'd be interested in sailing south someday, just to find out what lies that way."
"Not on your life!"
"Not even if someone paid you well?"
"Not even then. You can't spend coin down Hades way, can you? That storm took us about as far as a man can sail and still get himself home again, and we all came cursed near to starving to death before we made port."
The way he shook his head, and the edge of fear wedging into his voice, made it plain that not all the persuasion in the world was going to change his mind. Jill stood him to another cup of wine in thanks for the information, then bid him farewell and strolled over to join the troupe. They were laughing, tossing jests back and forth and all round the circle, dancing through their work, so happy-so relieved, really-that she couldn't bear to spoil their celebration. She would wait to talk with Salamander on the morrow, she decided
"Ebany?" she called out. "I'm going back to the inn. This trip's wrung me out."
He tossed a length of rope into a wagon and hurried over, peering at her in the flickering torchlight. He himself looked exhausted, streaming with sweat, his eyes pools of dark shadow.
"Jill, are you well? Lately you've looked so pale."
"It's the heat." As she spoke, she realized the grim truth of it. "I'm not used to it, and I'm not as young as I used to be, you know. And it seems to be taking its toll on you, as well."
He nodded his agreement and ran both hands through his sweaty hair to slick it back from his face.