"Ann Maxwell - Fire Dancer 1 - Fire Dancer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maxwell Ann)

Rheba barely heard the advice. She contemplated Jal’s markers, saw the pattern emerging in
them, saw that one bet would complete his series. To defeat him she would have to create seven
times seven markers with seven different shapes, and do it in less time that it took for Jal to
instruct his computer on the winning sequence. Forty-nine shapes. Gods, it would be easier to
suck out all the energy and leave a transparent void.

“Forfeit,” murmured the crowd, echoing Satin.

Most people had bets on Trader Jal, a favorite among the habitués of the Black Whole. To them,
she was a diversion, a lucky innocent whose luck had failed. Her hair stirred, strands sliding one
over the other with a subtle susurration of power.

“No. I’m staying.”

She slid into the third-level seat and programmed a flurry of instructions into her console. The
crowd murmured and shifted in surprise. Rheba had just swept the pot, betting every credit she
had that for a period of fifteen seconds she could block each grouping of primes that any or all
players tried to make. It was an impossible, suicidal wager.

Silence expanded out from the ziggurat. Circlets breathed instructions into players’ ears. Behind
privacy shields, fingers poised over computers. A chime announced the beginning of the game.

The markers vanished.

Frantically, futilely, players programmed their computers. The ziggurat remained empty of
shapes. Players banged fists and consoles against the ziggurat’s lucent surface, but no markers
materialized. There was nothing in the center of the ziggurat except gold numerals counting off
the seconds remaining in the bet. Four, three, two, one.

Zero.

The light permeating the ziggurat ebbed until all levels became orange, signifying the end of the
game. The pot and Trader Jal belonged to Rheba. All she had to do was find her way past the
bettors before anger replaced disbelief.

Quickly, Rheba pulled on her shipclothes, fastened her earring and gathered up her robe. The
crowd watched soundlessly, still stunned by the sudden reversal of fortunes. Rheba glanced up at
the kingseat. Jal smiled. She concealed a quiver of distaste beneath the colorful folds of her robe.

“We’ll talk on my ship,” she said in a low voice.

For a moment, Jal remained the still center of the room’s silence. Then he came to his feet, and
silence shattered into exclamations of anger and unbelief. Rheba looked out over the multicolored
tide of upturned faces, sensed Jal climbing down from the kingseat behind her back and felt very
vulnerable.

“Cheater,” muttered a second-level player.
The sentiment was echoed on all but the kingseat level. Jal merely descended, smiting as though
at a joke too good to share. Rheba began to wonder who had lost and who had won—and what
precisely had been wagered. Insults and imprecations were called in many languages as Jal