"Barbara Hambly - A Night with the Girls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

red slippers, and a velvet bell-rope tied around his wrists managed to look well-groomed.
"Prince Chare will never grant our city the liberties we demand! He will destroy us, if we
not take whatever means we can to turn him away!" He had an orators carrying voice and a
demagogue's habit of speaking to multitudes, even when such multitudes consisted of only t
or three. Starhawk suspected he made speeches to his servants and children over breakfast.

"The wight is a weapon of terror, to be used against his men…"

"Only it isn't going against his men, is it?" Elia's motherly face was grim under a mask o
slime and blood. "It feeds on both sides of the wall. Mostly in the poorest neighborhoods,
which lie closest to the wall and the tombs-I think that was my nephew Dal, whose body no
lies out in one of its farm-cellar lairs tonight-but there have been wealthier children who've
disappeared, haven't there, Councillor?"

Toth's eyes darkened with understanding, as pieces of things he had heard fit together, an
he nodded.

"We all have to be ready to pay the price of freedom," insisted Cornmonger. He glanced
around him nervously, for Starhawk had refused to untie his hands when the wight had attac
and the smell of the thing still hung rank and choking in the air. "It served to turn Chare's
mercenaries against him, didn't it?"

"Not a hope, pookie." Battlesow grabbed a handful of the costly fabric of his shirt. "I fig
where I sign on. But hoodoo like this wasn't in the bargain." Her piggy black eyes glistened
she moved her head, listening to the deathly, horrible stillness of the dark no man's land of
burned farms between camp and wall. "Those faces in that thing's body and chest-I know so
of those men. Like I knew the man it killed the night before last. And all I got to say is, you
damn well better sign those Articles of Compromise or you're gonna be one sorry man whe
we do break the city wall."

"You'll be sorry even if Chare doesn't," added Starhawk, holding his elbow to steady him
over the rough ground. "Once Elia and Toth tell the people about your summoning the
wight-against the vote of the Council. Once someone sends word to your prospective allies
Kwest Mralwe that you'll use hoodoo against your own people without a second thought." S
glanced behind her, around her, in the sicklied wash of late-rising moonlight, her hair prick
at the distant, gutteral growling almost unheard in the sultry blackness.

"And what about you?" Toth hurried to keep up with Starhawk, for he was a short man,
chubby and balding. He was armed with a sword which he handled like a man who'd had o
four lessons in its use, and had brought with him three of his servants, also armed. This wa
fortunate considering the increasing size and ferocity of the wight. "What do you get of this,
lady, for going against the man who hired you?"

"Chare didn't hire me." She scraped a gobbet of gore off her neck-spikes, which had bar
saved her from having her throat torn open. "I was just called in over this wight business, o
my partner was, anyway. And what I get out of it is not seeing my friends slaughtered by a d
magic against which they have no defense. And the same," she added, "goes for the people
within the wall."

They passed the outpost guards along Ari's part of the perimeter, soldiers who knew