"Jude Fisher - Fool's Gold 02 - Wild Magic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fisher Jude)

you're such a handsome fellow, if your mate here pays for the Rose? "
Katla, puzzled as to why anyone should want to pay a greater price for a
briefer encounter, and curious to know exactly what "the Rose" entailed,
opened her mouth to ask, but Halli pushed her roughly in the back.
"We've just arrived, ladies," he called over his shoulder, "and we'll need
considerable sustenance before we have the strength to do your skills true
justice."
Katla quirked an eyebrow. How strange to hear her diffident brother so
confident and self-possessed.
"I'll take the Rose!"
The cry came from behind them. Katla turned to see a motley bunch
coming up Fish-eye Lane led by a small round figure in a boiled leather
jerkin. Behind him was a tall, gaunt, one-handed man in full war gear, an
ugly fellow wearing a skullcap and a lugubrious expression and, some
steps behind, a fearsome-looking woman with a cropped head and a
mouthful of pointed teeth. Walking beside her was a giant of a man with a
long sword banging against his leg.
 "Sellswords," said Halli in a low voice.
"Aye, I know," Katla returned cheerfully. "Joz! Hey? Joz Bearhand!" She
waved and whistled.
The big man stopped in his tracks. He squinted ahead, then turned to
the woman beside him. "Well, now, Mam: look what the tide threw up: it's
Katla Aransen, by Sur!"
The woman strode forward until the light cast by the sconce in the
brothel's doorway fell squarely upon her. The whores took one look at this
new arrival and without further discussion took their business further up
the street.
"We thought you were dead," Mam grunted, looking Katla up and down
suspiciously.
"You looked dead the last time we saw you," the small fat man said,
grinning up at her. "Laid out on the shoreline like a half-burned trout, you
was, and yer hair all frizzled off."
"Fish don't have hair," the skullcapped man pointed out with deadpan
logic.
"She didn't neither, Doc? "
"Shut up, Dogo." Joz Bearhand pushed the little man aside and gave her
a hug to suit his name. "I'm glad you're alive, girlie." He stepped back and
patted the sword at his side. "Best blade I've ever had, this. I've a
hankering for a dagger to match."
Katla smiled delightedly. "Ah, the Dragon of Wen." It was indeed the
best sword she had forged, other than the carnelian blade which Tam Fox
now had in his possession. And much luck may it bring him, she thought.
"It'd be a pleasure, Joz."
Mam glanced at the sword and curled her lip. "Lost me a fortune, that
thing. I'd say it carried bad luck."
It was hard to believe the Dragon of Wen could have lost the mercenary
woman a fortune, Katla thought. At the worst, she could sell it for a good
sum. "Bad luck?" she asked.
Mam laughed and the light from the sconce gave her filed gnashers a
grim and bloody aspect. "Your sweet brother," she said, "borrowed this