"Huff, Tanya - Fire's Stone V1.1 Txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Huff Tanya)

Tanya Huff

smooth, and expressions ranging from polite interest to rapt adoration were fixed firmly in place. When they saw which royal emerged, the languid posturing, suitable for the heat of the afternoon, resumed. His Royal Highness Prince Dar-vish, while undeniably the life of any party, was useless as a purveyor of royal favor. Either he forgot the request entirely, the wine driving it from his mind, or he did something which so enraged his most exalted father that he was not permitted to approach the throne for an indefinite period of time.

Those closest bowed as he passed and wondered where he could be off to in such a scowling hurry. Neither the hurrying nor the scowl was like the prince.

"Well, I hope he's not going all dark and brooding," sighed one elderly noble to no one in particular. "We've quite enough of that going on now."

Out in the corridors of the palace, Darvish picked up his pace. If the thief had been with the twins since early morning there might not be much left to save. He fought to keep the full extent of his fury from showing; the last thing he needed was an interrogation from one of the lord chancellor's . . .

"Good afternoon, Highness."

. . . agents. Or worse yet, the lord chancellor himself. As a member of the royal family, Darvish held the higher rank but the lord chancellor held the trust of the king. The prince would be expected to pause, to converse, to place his concerns in a position of secondary importance, to recognize the lord chancellor's power. Darvish came to a decision between one step and the next.

"Give it to the Lady," he said pleasantly, without breaking stride.

"Highness!"

The prince quickly left the plump and elderly lord chancellor behind, blowing protests into an empty corridor. Later, when his thief was safe, he'd take the time to enjoy the shocked disbelief in the old man's voice. And he'd pay for it, later, when his father heard, but that didn't matter now.

The Chamber of the Fourth was deep in the oldest section of the palace, carved out of volcanic rock and close enough to the crater so the heat of the lava and the smell of the sulfur permeated the entire area. As Darvish crossed from

THE FIRE'S STONE

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frescoed walls and tiled floors to chiseled stone, the marks of the tools still raw generations after they'd been made, he began to seethe, dwelling on the injustice that brought his thief down to this place. By the time he reached the chamber, he'd worked his rage up to a fever pitch and had half convinced himself that the twins had stolen a prized possession.
As his palm touched the door, someone screamed behind it. A hoarse hopeless scream, from a throat that had almost no screaming left.
It rooted Darvish to the spot as it climbed and peaked and died. Not until silence ruled again did it release him. He kicked open the door, sending it slamming back against the wall.
The room was not large and the stench from a dozen kinds of smoke and as many kinds of pain was almost overpowering. He gagged, recovered, and sucked his next breath through his teeth. Two slim figures in unrelieved black, bracketing a table like pillars of night, looked up at the sound. Identical hair and clothing, chosen to minimize sexual characteristics, made it nearly impossible to tell them apart even in the bright light of the half dozen hanging lamps that illuminated their work. Heavy kohl, outlining eyes almost amber, distracted from minor facial differences. But Darvish had known them all their lives and knew without question who held the red coal poised at the end of long pincers and who only watched.
"Shakana!" he bellowed at his younger sister. "Drop it!"
She smiled, graciously inclined her head, and let the smoking coal fall to rest on the blistered chest bound before her on the table.
The scream pulled Darvish the length of the room and he used the momentum to throw his brother aside. With the calluses of his sword hand, he swept the coal onto the floor.
Shakana danced back, flicking the skirts of her robe away from the sparks, her sandals making sucking noises as they left the floor.
"You have no right," she began, but at Darvish's wordless growl, reconsidered and held her tongue. Eyes locked on her brother, she rounded the table to help her twin rise.
The thief's arms and legs had been manacled to lengths of chain, then pulled tight; not yet to dislocate only to hold
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Tanya Huff

immobile at the extreme limit of their stretch. His head had been enclosed in a steel vise, the band across his eyes grooved to hold heated iron pellets. Thankfully it was still cold and empty. Three deep gouges ran the width of each thigh; wizard marks, for flesh and blood were necessary to trace the thief's trail through the palace. His genitals were swollen but intact. On his chest . . .

. . . obscenely red against skin almost white, blisters bubbling up from the most recent burn even as Darvish watched, the marks of four live coals dropped and allowed to cool while the flesh below cooked. The two oldest had broken and split, blood and other fluids still oozing from their angry centers.

The twins had barely gotten started.

With hands that wanted to tremble, Darvish fought the bolts out of the head vise and as gently as possible eased it free. The thief began to toss his head back and forth, whimpering softly.

"Don't!" Darvish snapped, reaching for the manacles. "Stay still."