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

Something was wrong; he could just plain feel it.

There was a knock at the door, and Harmon, his young assistant, entered with a respectful bob of his
head.

“Are you ready to leave, sir?”
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“Yes. I see you have the proposed trade agreements with you. Good, good.”

With a brief smile Harmon patted the heavy leather roll of a document case that he carried tucked under
one arm.

As they walked through the streets of Aberwyn, Londalo noticed his young partner looking this way and
that in distaste; occasionally he lifted a perfumed handkerchief to his nose as they passed a particularly
ripe dungheap. There was no doubt that visiting Deverry was hard on a civilized man, Londalo reflected.
The city seemed to have been thrown down around the harbor rather than built according to a plan. All
the buildings were round and shaggy with thatch, instead of square and nicely shingled; the streets
meandered randomly through and around them like the patterns of spirals and interlace the barbarians
favored as a decorative style. Everywhere was confusion: barking dogs, running children, men on
horseback trotting through dangerously fast, rumbling wagons, and even the occasional staggering drunk.

“Sir,” Harmon said at last “Is this really the most important city in Eldidd?”

“I’m afraid so. Now remember, my young friend, this man we’re going to visit will look like a crude
barbarian to you, but he has the power to put us both to death if we insult him. The laws are very
different here. Every ruler is judge and advocate both as long as he’s in his own lands, and a gwerbret,
like our lord here in Aberwyn, is a ruler far more powerful than one of our archons.”

In approximately the center of town lay the palace complex, or dun as the barbarians called it, of the
gwerbret. The barbarians all talked about how splendid it was, with its many-towered fortress inside the
high stone walls, but the Bardekians found the stonework crude and the effect completely spoiled by the
clutter of huts and sheds and pigsties and stables all around it. As they made their way through the bustle
of servants, Londalo suddenly realized that he was wearing the silver dagger on his tunic’s leather belt

“By the Star Goddesses! I must be growing old! I don’t even remember picking this thing up from the
table.”

“I don’t suppose it’ll matter, sir. All the men around here are absolutely bristling with knives.”

Although Londalo had never met this particular ruler before, he’d heard that Rhodry Maelwaedd,
Gwerbret Aberwyn, was an honest, fair-minded man, somewhat more civilized than most of his kind.
Londalo was pleased to notice that the courtyards were reasonably clean, the servants wore decent
clothing, and the corpses of hanged criminals were nowhere in sight. At the door of the tallest tower, the
broch proper, the aged chamberlain was waiting to greet them. In a hurried whisper Londalo reminded
Harmon that a gwerbret’s servitors were all noble-born.