"Feist, Raymond E - The Riftwar Legacy 02 - Krondor- The Assassins" - читать интересную книгу автора (Feist Raymond E)

But after sundown, the entire system was pitch-black, save for a few
locations with light sources of their own, and only an expert could move
through the maze of passages safely. From the moment he left the palace,
James knew exactly where he was.

While a member of the Guild of Thieves, the Mockers, James had learned
every trick of survival that harsh circumstance, opportunity, and keen
native intelligence had presented to him. He moved silently to a stash
he had prepared and moved a false stone. It was fashioned from cloth,
wood, and paint, and in light far brighter than any likely to ever be
present here, it would withstand inspection. He set the false stone down
and retrieved a shuttered lantern from the stash. The hidey-hole held an
extra set of picks, as well as a number of items unlikely to be welcome
inside the palace proper: some

45 caustic agents, climbing equipment, and a few non-standard weapons.
Old habits died hard.

James lit the lantern. He had never considered keeping a lantern in the
palace, for fear someone might observe him making the transition between
the palace sewer and the one under the city. Guarding the secret of how
the palace could be reached through the sewers was paramount. Every
drawing on file in the palace, from the original keep through the latest
expansion, showed the two systems as entirely separate, just as the city
s sewer was divided from the one outside the city walls. But smugglers
and thieves had quickly rendered royal plans inaccurate, by creating
passages in and out of the city.

James trimmed the wick, lit it, and closed the shutters until only a
tiny sliver of light shone, but it was enough for him to navigate his
way safely through the sewer. He could do it with no light, he knew, but
it would slow him down to a painful near-crawl to have to feel his way
along the walls the entire way, and he had a good distance to travel
this night.

James did a quick check to insure he had left nothing exposed for anyone
to chance across. He considered the never-ending need for security which
created this odd paradox: the Royal Engineers spent a lot of time and
gold repairing the city s sewers and just as quickly the Mockers and
others damaged them to have a furtive passage free of royal oversight.
James often was the one responsible for identifying a new breach.
Occasionally he was guilty of hiding one, if it suited his purposes more
than it compromised the palace s security.

Thinking that there was a great deal more to being a responsible member
of the Prince s court than he had imagined when he had first been put in
the company of squires, the former thief hurried on toward his first
appointment.

46 * * *