"Katherine Kerr - Deverry 05 - A Time Of Exile" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kerr Katherine)

one thing and another he managed to lose the blade good and proper, far away in the Bardekian
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archipelago across the Southern Sea, round about the year 1064. At the same time as Rhodry was killing
the man who’d stolen it, the dagger itself fetched up in the marketplace of a little mountain town called
Ganjalo, where it stayed for several years, stubbornly unsold. The merchant couldn’t understand—here
was this beautiful and exotic item, reasonably priced, that no one ever seemed to want to buy. Finally it
did catch the eye of an itinerant tinker, who knew of a rich man who collected unusual knives of all sorts.
Since this rich man lived in a seaport, the dagger allowed itself to be installed in the collection. Again,
some years passed, until the collector died and his sons divided up the various blades. The youngest,
who happened to be a ship’s captain, felt drawn to the dagger for some irrational reason and traded
another brother an entire set of pearl-handled fish knives for it. The next time this captain went to sea, the
dagger went with him.

But not to Deverry. The captain sailed back and forth from Bardek proper to the off-lying islands of
Orystinna, a lucrative run, and he saw no reason to consider making the dangerous crossing to the distant
barbarian kingdoms. After some years of this futile east-west travel, the dagger changed owners. While
gambling, the captain had an inexplicable run of bad luck and ended up handing the dagger over to a
friend to pay off his debt. The friend took it to a northern seaport and on a sudden whim sold it to
another marketplace jeweler, who bought it on the same kind of impulse. There it lay again, until a young
merchant passed by and happened to linger for a moment to look over the jeweler’s stock. Since this
Londalo traded with Deverry on a regular basis, he was always in need of little gifts to smooth his way
with customs officials and minor lords. The dagger had a barbarian look, and he bought it to take along
on his next trading run.

Of course, poor Londalo didn’t realize that in Deverry offering a silver dagger as a gift was a horrible
insult. He found out quick enough in the Eldidd town ofAbernaudd, where his ill-considered gesture cost
him a trading pact. As he bemoaned his bad luck in a tavern, a kindly stranger explained the problem,
and Londalo nearly threw the dagger onto the nearest dungheap then and there, which was more or less
what the dagger had in mind. Yet, because he also knew a lesson when he saw one, he ended up
keeping it as a reminder to never take other people’s customs for granted again. If silver could have
feelings, the dagger would have been livid with rage. Back and forth it went between Bardek and the
Deverry coast for some years more, while a richer, older Londalo became a respected and important
member of his merchant guild, until finally, in the spring of the year 1096, he and the dagger turned up in
Aberwyn, where Rhodry Maelwaedd now ruled as gwerbret. The magical currents around the dagger
thickened, swirled, and grew so strong that Londalo actually felt them, as a prick of something much like
anxiety.

On the morning that he was due to visit the gwerbret, Londalo stood in his chamber in the best inn
Aberwyn had to offer and irritably applied his clan markings. Normally a trained slave would have
painted on the pale blue stripes and red diamonds that marked him as a member of House Ondono, but it
was very unwise for a thrifty man to bring his slaves when he visited thekingdomofDeverry. Surrounded
by barbarians with a peculiar idea of property rights, slaves were known to take their chance at freedom
and disappear. When they did, the barbarian authorities became uncooperative at best and hostile at
worst. Londalo held his hand mirror at various angles to examine the paint on his pale brown skin and
finally decided that his amateur job would have to do. After all, the barbarians, even an important one
like the lord he was about to visit, knew nothing of the niceties of the art. Yet the anxiety remained.