"Recluce - 09 - Colors Of Chaos" - читать интересную книгу автора (Modesitt L E)

   "And I thought you slept through it all."
   "I wasn't that sleepy."
   "I could have roasted you with chaos, and you wouldn't have known it."
Faltar grinned. "Anyway, two of them were blades, and one was a healer,
it looked like."
   "I imagine you looked very closely."
   "It's not what you're thinking. One of the blades was a woman.
Redheaded and good-looking from what I could tell, but she was big,
taller than you, and had that look, like Eliasar does when he's slapping
you around in weapons training. One was like Kinowin, big and blond,
except he was even bigger. The healer was smaller, a young fellow,
redheaded, almost shy."
   "Here's the cutlets. That's another six." The serving woman in the
blue vest set two heavy brown platters on the table, then glanced from
Faltar to Cerryl.
   Cerryl dug out another four coppers. Faltar did the same.
   "And I'd be thanking you both." She slipped the coppers into her
wallet and gave a broad smile, pausing for a moment before nodding and
slipping away.
   Cerryl frowned, then took a bite of the cutlet, chewing hard because
it was tough, if tasty. He had his own ideas about the travelers from
Recluce, but Kinowin had told him not to guess outside the Halls.
   "What do you think?" asked Faltar.
   "I just don't know. They make some of their Blacks, the ones that
don't fit in, travel through Candar. That's what Myral told me once."
   "That's the Blacks for you. You don't fit in, and they throw you out.
I guess you can do that if you live on an island."
   "Every place has rules," Cerryl pointed out, using his own dagger to
cut the meat and then spear a chunk of the roasted potato. "That's why we
have the city patrol."
   "One of the mages who had been helping Eliasar when I became a student
went with the Patrol. Klyat. He'd been an arms mage with the lancers."
   "What does he do?"
   Faltar shrugged. "I don't know. I haven't talked to him in a while,
and he wouldn't say when I was a student. Keep the peace, I guess."
   Cerryl nodded but wondered. He'd seldom seen the patrols, for all the
talk about them when he'd been an apprentice.
   "Recluce has always been trouble, from the time of Creslin on." Faltar
chewed for a moment. "Now they're even shipping stuff from Austra and
Nordla, and some of it's cheaper than what we can grow and make in
Candar. Derka and Myral were always insisting we're going to have trouble
with Recluce. Then these Blacks show up. Of course, it could be
coincidence. These things happen." Faltar swallowed the last of his ale
and lifted the mug.
   "More?" asked the serving woman, drawn to the raised mug as a moth to
light. "That'll be two."
   Faltar fumbled out two coppers.
   "Maybe ... or it could be an order-chaos conflict."
   "You just found about those, and now everything's an order-chaos
conflict." Faltar laughed. "It could be trade."