"Tanya Huff - Death Rites" - читать интересную книгу автора (Huff Tanya)

that pompous ass, to put himself into a bad situation. The fortress is impossible to take down from
without, but there's a way in Jolan hasn't been able to find or she'd have closed it down. It isn't like her to
make a point by killing assassins as they come through."

"Ar… un?"

She smiled again at the missing rank. An assassin had no family but the army. For Neegan to
deliberately insult a superior officer… "They'll be taking no or-ders from Marshal Arnon. The Emperor
is taking care of this; they go in under his orders alone."

He forced a lungful of air through the ruin of his throat. "Send… them."

Bannon dug a finger into one of the grain bags they rode with and ground the kernels together. "I'm not
sure I like being loaned out like a waterskin or a whetstone."

"Orders are orders," Vree shrugged without looking over at her brother. She didn't have to look, she
knew what she'd see. He'd be lying back, wearing only kilt and sandals and a petulant expression.
"These orders just happen to come directly from the Emperor."

"Yeah? And that's another thing. Since when does the Emperor get directly involved in this sort of shit?"

"When it involves family," she said with pointed emphasis on the last word.

"An assassin has no family but the army," Bannon reminded her, poking her hard in the ribs.

The carter glanced back at the wrestling match, shaking her head. Easy to believe these two had trained

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together all their lives—they fit together like moving puzzle pieces. Less easy to believe they were
brother and sister, in spite of an obvious physical resemblance. There was a sexuality in the way he
moved that teased and provoked at the same time and a tension in her responses indicated she was well
aware of it.

None of my business, the carter reminded herself. All assassins were a little bit crazy, and rumors in the
Sixth Army said these two were crazier than most.

Just before noon, they passed the ruin of Sabu.ro. The buildings and most of the surrounding olive
groves had been burned. In the months since, very little had been rebuilt.

"After Commander Jolan pulled back, Marshal Arnon turned the Seventh Army loose on it," the carter
explained when Bannon asked why.

Which was all the explanation necessary.

If Marshal Arnon turned the army loose, there wasn't anything to rebuild with.

"The people of Sabu.ro probably thought that sort of thing never happened to Imperial citizens," Vree
observed dryly.