"Barbara Hambly - Benjamin January 07 - Days of the Dead" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

Her mouth quirked reminiscently as she spoke of the school she'd taught on Rue St. Claud, the smile
fleeting away the next moment like the silver flash of fish among reeds. January well recalled the old
Spanish house to which she'd first led him on a night of wind and rain during the terrible season of yellow
fever in the summer of 1833. Most of her students-daughters of quadroon and octoroon plaçées by their
white protectors, even as she was herself--had left the city then. Only six remained, four of those
des-perately ill with yellow fever. He remembered Rose's bitter tears at their death. Two years later, she
still grieved for them, and the loss of the school had been like the loss of her family.

January's hand sought hers, its tightening an unspoken reassurance. We will have a school again. She
flashed him another quicksilver smile. Their wedding-night had been spent in the big old house on Rue
Esplanade that was, mir-acle of miracles after years of mutual poverty, their own. It was still a matter of
astonishment to him that though he daily missed Ayasha still, his grief did not lessen the won-der of his
love for Rose.

Her hand tightened in return, and in a lighter voice she said, "So for all I know, Hannibal could have left
a trail of corpses from here to Ireland and on across the Continent. Unless..." She hesitated, genuine
doubt springing into green-gray eyes that were her legacy from a white father and a white grandfather.
"You don't think he could have done murder while under the influence of opium, do you? And not
remember?"

"My nightingale, do you have any idea how much opium it would take to render Hannibal
unconscious?"

"Hmmn," said Rose. "There is much in what you say."

"Even supposing he-or anyone-could lay hands on such a quantity," went on January-who had
considered the possibility already-"there wouldn't be a question of his having done it. And it sounds like
there is. Though why he would be staying on a hacienda evidently operated by a madman, when we last
saw him running off with the prima soprano from that Italian opera troupe..."

January saw the bandits and heard the shots at the same instant that the clattering rhythm of the
coach-team broke. A bullet punched through the side of the coach, and the old Swiss valet on his
jump-seat opened his mouth as if to protest, but no sound came out, only blood. As he top-pled over,
the guard's voice yelled from above, "Bandits!" In the same moment, the coach itself lurched, swayed
precari-ously; there was another salvo of shots and Rose dropped forward, scooping up the rifles that
had been put ready in the coach at the previous night's stop in Perote.

One of the team's been hit, January thought, in the sec-ond before the coach bumped, stewed, tipped
in what felt like a horrible slow dream-like somersault.... He grabbed Rose around the waist and caught
the wall-strap with the other hand-the Swiss valet pitched from his seat, dead-weight flying, smashing into
January's back as the big vehi-cle went over. Dillard was the only other passenger who braced himself
for the impact, and the two German mer-chants plunged and tumbled in a whirlwind of dust, hats, and
spattering specks of blood: horses screaming, a blurred jumble of dark shapes glimpsed through the
reeling win-dows, the warning shout of the Indian guard on the box above. The impact of something or
someone drove the breath from January's body; gunfire cracked all around.

He drove himself up at the windows above him before the coach stopped skidding-it didn't occur to
him till later to wonder what would have happened had the attack come in one of those places where the
road swung along the brink of a gorge. Young Padre Cesario shoved a rifle into his hands, and January
flipped up the window like a trap-door, and fired at one of the forms that came pound-ing toward him