"R. A. MacAvoy - L2 - King of the Dead" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacAvoy R A)

terrible night, .I longed for the sunny triv-iality of worrying about the next meal, or keeping the resident
beggars from one another’s throats.
I had no real doubts where the assassins had come from. No one with money to hire such had any
reason to want me dead except those who had inherited my father’s dukedom, and who believed I
would go to the king some day and demand it back.
I can understand their worry, for I know the love of countryside. I have learned to love the oratory King
Rudof gave as, which is beautiful, and earlier in my life I learned to love a square block of brick and brass,
which was not. I also understand the fear of being robbed, although all I pos-sess is education, which can
only be taken from me by rattling my brains hard.
And Arlin, of course. I can’t say I possess her, but I might be robbed of her, and I have found that that
possibility will cause me to kill.
It would have been simpler had there been only one gainer by my father’s loss, but there were at least
three-Towl Kuby: Viscount Endergen, Karl Bonn: Baron Fowett, and of course the Duke of Leone,
whose father Arlin had Clain The young duke was only seventeen, but his age was no impediment to
employing a man for any purpose, and even if I did not find Leone lovable, his son might have done so. If
he did not, still there was the sting of humiliation and reduced holdings to spur him on.
***
Which of these men had sent the blight upon us, I could not know. I do not live the sort of life where I
would be likely to meet any of them and judge. It could have been all of them, adding to a common fund.
For this sort of problem I needed you, in your role as Earl Daraln, for politics are chess to you and you
play chess very well.
But you were off alone somewhere, free of students for once, acting the eccentric philosopher and
gatherer of exotic knowledge. The king, too, was off in Old North Velonya, acting the king, and there
was no one here but Arlin, who is a social renegade, and myself, who have been called “sim-ple”
sufficient times for me to remember the word.
The next day Arlin continued to bleed from the mis-carriage, and although she denied the loss of black
blood to be dangerous, I feared her black mood.
Education changes nothing, nor does understanding. Be-fore I endured your tutelage I was Zhurrie the
Goblin, Zhur-rie the Clown. Now I am ten times more the down, and ten times happier to be one. Lady
Charlan Batmering was a silent, saturnine girl and full of black secrets. Arlin the sword spinner took that
persona further and darker, and his (her) secrets were deadly. As a graduate of our exclusive school
(two students, one master, or perhaps three students altogether), Arlin was more brilliantly black than
ever.
The next day a new beggar arrived, having heard of the shelter through a beggar’s peculiar information
services, and the original two beggars departed. One of these was short and rosy, and blond as a baby
duck, and the other was wolfhound tall, with white skin and black hair. No one heard them leave and no
one marked their absence, though ac-cording to the writ of the king, the oratory belonged to them and
their heirs forever. Beggars have different writs.
The summers of high Velonya are as hot as the winters are cold, but the forests of maple and birch cut
the heat into manageable slices, and even the short summer nights become cuddling-comfortable, soiled
only by the presence of mos-quitoes. For two years Arlin and I had floated from the North Cliffs down
to Warvala City and back again, our only home being barns or byres taken for the evening in exchange
for labor, or the occasional inn room which meant I had sold a pair of eyeglasses or Arlin had won a
game of cards.
In the summer this style of life had been as comfortable as any other, and in spring it was paradise, but
with the first snows it became deadly, and all our attention was necessary to keep us a step in front of
starvation, or the loss of fingers, ears, or toes.
No man, however beggarly, sleeps in the woods of Ve-lonya from November through March, and the
gray down-pours of April are not much easier. These past four months in the oratory had been an
unexpected release from hell, teacher. We had refurbished the kitchen and cleaned every chimney. We