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

rooftops. So she'd become what she was being treated as—one more thief
scratching to survive in a city that was not kind to thieves.
 So here she was, aching and scheming on a decaying rooftop in Trades Ward. A
lonely young lass, fairly nimble in her leaps and tumblings but not particularly
beautiful, with her slender, long-limbed build, her hacked-off dark hair, black-fire
eyes, and beak of a nose. "The Silken Shadow," she billed herself, but still she saw
men smirk when she uttered that title in the dingy, nameless taverns near the docks
where odd stolen items could be sold for a few coppers—and no questions.
The winter had been hard. If it hadn't been for chimneys like this one, the cold
would have taken her before the first snows—and one had to fight for the warmest
rooftop spots in Waterdeep.
As it was, Narnra spent much time hungry these days. Hungry and angry. Fear was
with her at every waking moment, keeping her glancing behind her and knowing it
was largely in vain. She could not help but be uncomfortably aware of how skilled
other thieves in this city were ... to say nothing of the Watch and the Watchful Order
and the Masked Lords alone knew how many powerful wizards. She was a match
for none of them and not even a laughable challenge to most.
To come to their notice—save as a passing amusement—would be to die.
So here she crouched, desperate for coins to buy food for her belly and all too
apt, these days, to fall into rages.
Rage is something a thief who expects to live to see the dawn can ill afford.
She sighed soundlessly. Oh, she was lithe and acrobatic enough to prowl the
rooftops, but not comely enough to seek the warm and easier coin—hers if she
could dance unclad inside festhalls. No, she was just one more lonely outlander
scrambling to make a dishonest living on the streets of Waterdeep. Scrambling
because she lacked the weapons of a noble name or a shop of her own to make
forging a dishonest living comparatively easy.
Scowling, Narnra drew forth the purse she'd snatched earlier in that street fight in
Dock Ward. A gang of thieves, that must have been, to set upon two merchants that
way, and she'd raced in and plucked their prize, so they'd be looking for her. . . .
All for three gold coins—mismatched, from as many cities, but all heavy and true
metal—six silvers, four coppers, and a claim-token to a lockbox somewhere in
Faerun that she knew not. Well, they would have to serve her.
From inside the top of her boot she drew a larger yet lighter purse, drew open its
throat-thong with two fingers, checked that the cloak was laid beside her in just the
right position, and shifted herself a fingerlength closer to the edge of the roof,
ducking low.
So far as she could tell, the moneylender had no more guards left. He was wearing
some sort of daggerclaw, shielded from idle eyes by a cloak he was carrying draped
over that arm, but he moved like a man wary and alone. He'd hastened through
Lathin's Cut to reach the High Road, and there waited in the first deep doorway for a
Watch patrol to pass, and fallen in close behind it. He looked like any respectable
merchant caught in the wrong part of the city late at night and trying to wend his way
safely home.
If he was going to avoid the scrutiny of the standing Watchpost ahead, where the
great roads met, he would have to turn aside just below her, in only a few paces
more. His gaze flicked upward, and Narnra held her breath and kept very still, hoping
she looked like a rooftop gargoyle. Caethur strode on, slowing and stepping wide so
as to look around the corner, then drawing in toward it, to duck around close to the
wall.