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

"State your business," he droned, dropping the point of his pike.
"Package for their Royal Highnesses."
The twins were always referred to thus, as a single unit. Aaron had no idea why he had chosen them as his silent accomplices, but he remembered the thief inching feet first into the volcano. . . .
The pike snapped up, the guard's fingers moving restlessly along the haft, itching to make the sign of the Nine and One. To come between the twins and their toys was never healthy. "Straight ahead to the first cross corridor, make a left, pass four corridors, make a right, give it to the guard at the end of the long gallery."
A nod, the barest bending of his neck, and Aaron passed into the palace.
The sentry shivered as the outlander went by. The eyes in the pale-skinned face had been flat and dead and empty of all emotion, like chips of silver-gray stone. He'd seen corpses with more life in their eyes.
May he and their Royal Highnesses have the joy of each
24

Tanya Huff

THE PIKE'S STONE

25

other, he thought and tried to lose the chill in the memory of Lia's flesh.

The corridors, built wide and high to catch the breezes, were, for the most part, empty. The few who moved about at this hour-servants tending the lamps that broke the palace into bars of light and shadow, a drunken noble on her way to the Nobles' Quarters, a pair of yawning ink-stained clerks scurrying home to bed-paid him no mind for the livery of the chief magistrate was well known and if he walked in the palace, he'd passed the gate.

The dim and the quiet settled over Aaron like a cloak, wrapping him in a feeling of safety both false and dangerous. Aaron recognized it, but didn't seem to have the energy to deal with it. He felt as though he were dreaming and the further he walked, the stronger the feeling grew. At the end of the long gallery, he almost trusted the dream enough to let it carry him forward into the sight of the guards.

And then he remembered that trust meant betrayal.

He faded into the darkness caught in the deep bay of a shuttered window and froze. The louvers had been left open to allow the air to circulate, but fortunately they had been angled in such a way he would not be seen from the gardens. The livery would not carry him past the two guards at the door leading to the royal apartments and that one small door was the only exit deeper into the palace.

"He keeps it in an anteroom off his bedchamber. "

Aaron rested his forehead against the polished wood and waited for Faharra to finish. He couldn't work when she was so close.

"Perhaps he fondles it before he sleeps. There's more life in a well cut gem than in many a well born woman.

His eyes on the distant guards and his other senses spread about the gallery, he slipped the latch from the shutters and opened one just enough to ease through. The hinges sighed faintly. He froze and listened to the silence, then risked an alarm once more as he pushed the shutter closed and secured it with a bit of wax.

"You're too good a thief, Aaron my lad. "

"Yes, " he agreed silently, watching his hands as though they belonged to someone else. "I am. "

Moving quickly, for the air smelled of dawn and the servants would be stirring soon, he changed back to his boots and resecured the baggy bottoms of his trousers, working

by touch while his eyes grew reaccustomed to the dark and his ears sifted the night for any sound of an alarm.
If the dogs were close. . . .
Halfway down the length of the gallery there was a wall; the barrier to the private gardens of the royal family.
Aaron had no idea if it was warded.
If it was, he didn't know if Herrak's charm would work again.
"ft isn't easy to cut an emerald that big, let me tell you. "
"You've told me, Faharra," he responded softly, and leapt for the top of the wall.
He crouched there for a heartbeat, balanced against the night, weighing his next move, then he flung himself through the air a body length and more and into the arms of a honey locust. He'd take the high road when he could.
The snap of a broken branch.
A low grunt of pain.
The royal garden stirred as the hunters came to see what had made the sound.