"Holly Lisle - Secret Texts 4 - Vincalis the Agitator" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lisle Holly)

desperately sought. In the Belows, no one would think of displaying food in the open
air, where anyone might walk up to it, touch it—steal it. But here it lay, in vast and
wondrous quantities and unimaginable varieties. Wraith routinely stole thrown-away
food from the containers behind stores and homes in the Belows, but this was new
food, right where he could get it.

His stomach rumbled; the fruits and vegetables, breads and cheeses, pastries and
beverages spread like a banquet before him, and he wanted so much to eat something.
Anything. He had eaten scraps of bread soaked in some sort of gravy the previous
day, picking tiny maggots off before taking bites. Aside from water, he’d had nothing
else.

Any bite of food at all would have been wonderful—but none of the other people
wandering through the aisles ate anything while they walked. He’d watched carefully;
after years of scavenging, the knowledge that calling attention to himself would cause
him trouble had become so deeply ingrained he didn’t even need to think about it. The
shoppers all around him carried baskets that they picked up from one corner of this
odd open-air market, and they wandered through the aisles, sorting through the
offered produce and putting their chosen items into their baskets. When they finished,
they simply took the baskets with them and left. They never paid, as people in the
Belows paid. Wraith had seen money many times, and understood that it could be
traded for food; what he had never been able to discover was where he might get
money of his own.

Here, however, no money appeared to be necessary.

So he took a basket, and like the other people, he began putting food into it. In one
basket, he would have enough food for Jess and Smoke and himself to live on for
several days—and to live well. He mainly chose breads, dried meats, and pastries,
because these, from his experience, would last longest. However, he couldn’t resist
just a few of the beautiful, brightly colored fruits and vegetables. He could imagine
the expressions on the faces of his friends when he returned with such a bounty.

When he finished collecting the food he wanted—not letting himself be as greedy
as he desperately wished to be, but still with a nice haul—he headed for the exit,
following the precise route those before him had followed. But whereas no one paid
any attention when those others left, when he left someone said, “Hey, that boy didn’t
pay!”
 And then someone else said, “But he didn’t set off the alarm.”

And a woman shouted, “Master! A thief!”

A man of young middle age rose from the edge of the market, where he had been
sitting, apparently doing nothing more important than watching the water falling in
the fountain. He turned, and stared at Wraith with eyes as cold as death, and pointed a
finger. “You. Stop.”

His voice had an odd echo to it. Wraith didn’t waste time contemplating what that
echo might mean; he simply clutched the basket of food to his belly and fled.