"Ed Greenwood - Forgotten Realms - Elminster 5 - Elminster's Daughter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Greenwood Ed)

"There are really no more excuses left to you, sirs," the man who sat apart told the
others, smirking. "I will have my coins this night—or the deeds to your shops."
"But—" one of the men burst out, and then bit off whatever else he'd been going
to say and looked helplessly down at the bare table before him, face dark with anger.
"So you'll ruin us, Caethur?" the next man man asked, his voice trembling. "You'd
rather turn us out onto the streets than bleed us for another season? When you could
set your hook at a higher rate, grant us more time, and keep us in debt forever,
paying you all our days and yielding you far more coin than our stones are worth?"
Secure in the strength of the two murderous bodyguards at his back, Caethur
leaned forward with a widening—and not very nice—smile on his face and replied
triumphantly, "Yes."
He leaned back in his chair, very much at his ease, steepled his hands, and
murmured over the resulting line of fingertips, "It will give me great pleasure,
Hammuras, to ruin you. And you too, Nael. And especially you, Kamburan."
He moved his eyes in his motionless, smiling face to the other pair of seated
merchants and added with a sigh, "Yet it almost pains me to visit the same fate upon
you two gentlesirs. Why, I'd almost be inclined to give you that extra season
Hammuras speaks of, if, say, something happened to still Kamburan's oversharp
tongue forever. Why—"
One of that last pair of merchants slapped his hand down on the table. Wo,
Caethur. You'll not turn us to savaging each other whilst you gloat. We'll sink or
stand together."
The other merchant of the two nodded balefully.
Caethur gave them both a brittle smile, wiggling his ring-bedecked fingers so the
gem-studded gold bands adorning them flashed in the lamplight like glasses of the
new vintage Waterd-havian nobles had dubbed "sparkling stars," and said airily,
"Well, then, we've come to that moment, sirs, when the wagging of tongues must
give way to making good, one way or another. Kamburan, why don't you begin?"
Reluctantly, the white-bearded merchant reached a hand into the breast of his
flame-silk overtunic and drew forth—slowly and carefully, as two crossbows lifted
warningly—a glossy-polished wooden coffer only a shade larger than his palm.
Wordlessly he flipped it open, displaying the frozen fire of the line of gems within
for all to see. Seven beljurils, sea-green and shimmering, their flash-fires building.
Kamburan set the coffer gently on the table and slid it toward Caethur.
Halfway to the moneylender it stopped. Caethur lifted a finger, and one of his
guards stepped smoothly forward to close the coffer and slide it the rest of the way
down the table. The moneylender made no move to touch it.
"We should have gone to Mirt," Hammuras muttered. Caethur gave the spice
dealer a shark-like grin. "Life is filled with 'should-haves,' isn't it, Hammuras? I
should have chosen to deal with more astute and harder-working tradesmen and
never come to this regrettable salvaging of scraps from the wrack of what should
have been five flourishing businesses."
"None of that!" Nael snarled. "You know as well as the rest of us that times have
been hard! The beasts from the sea, a season's shipping shattered, wars in Amn and
Tethyr and the fall in trade with both those lands. . . ."
Caethur spread his hands and lifted his eyebrows at the same time, to ask mildly,
"And did not every merchant of Waterdeep face these troubles?
Yet—behold—they're not all here, sitting around this table. Only you five." Turning