"Dave Duncan - Tales of King's Blades 5 - The Jaguar Knights" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Dave)

“I am not permitted to answer.”

Wolf hurled a bone into the fire. “This is ridiculous!” He studied her for a moment.“I know this fodder
would sicken a sewer rat, but it’s cold out there, soeat.That’s an order.You’re as frightened as the King
was.What do you fear, Hogwood?”

“I am not afraid!” Anger darkened the flush the fire had brought to her cheeks.

“Yes, you are. I know I have the ugliest face in Chivial and they call me the King’s Killer, but I rarely kill
inquisitors, and never women or children, so you need fear nothing from me, girl. What else scares you?
The journey?”
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“Nothing!” She glared.

“You’re lying,” he said and cut a hefty slice of cheese.

Suddenly his assistant was wearing the blank, glassy mask of an in-quisitor. Even the flush faded from
her cheeks. “This collaboration is not prospering. Start again.You tell me your background and I’ll tell
you mine.”

It was a peace offering, he supposed. They had time to kill, a meal to eat. A job to do.They couldn’t
fight all the time.

15



Dave Duncan

P

“My history is no secret. I was born Ed Attewell in Westerth.” “In Sheese, to be exact.” “A totally
unimportant mining hamlet.” “Is it really?” He ignored that dangerous invitation to tattle. “My father died
in a

rock fall, and my mother found another breadwinner.When she died in childbirth, he found another bed
mate. When he fell down a shaft . . . and so on. I lost count.They got worse.Worse, they got drunk, and
often on money I’d earned in the pits.”The last stepfather had given him the start of his face—the
smashed nose, crumpled ears, gap teeth.“I had one full brother,Alf.When the current house brute started
in on him as well, I decided it was time for us to leave.” Wolf had gone for him with a shovel, leaving
himself no safe course except flight.

Hogwood had switched expressions, to Dark Chamber Sympathetic Face Number One, perhaps. “So
what led you to choose Ironhall?”

He laughed and gulped down some ale. “Crime, of course. Every kid in Ironhall brags of a criminal past.