"Janet Morris - Thieves World - Beyond Sanctuary" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morris Janet E)

concentrating on her slippered feet poking out under amber skirts. "Lastel, I must have the night air,
or faint away. Where is our host? We must thank him for a more complete hospitality than I'd
thought to find…"
The habitually pompous priest was simpering with undisguised delight, causing Lastel to raise an
eyebrow (though Cime tugged coquettishly at his sleeve) and inquire as to its source: "Lord Molin?"
"It is nothing, dear man, nothing. Just so long since I have heard court Rankene—and from the
mouth of a real lady…" The Rankan priest, knowing well that his wife's reputation bore no
mitigation, chose to make sport of her, and of his town, before the foreign noblewoman did. And to
make it more clear to Lastel that the joke was on them—the two Sanctuarites— and for the
amusement of the voluptuous gray-eyed woman, he bowed low, and never did answer her genteel
query as to the whereabouts of the First Hazard.
By the time he had promised to give their thanks and regards to the absent host when he saw
him, the lady was gone, and Molin Torchholder was left wishing he knew what it was that she saw
in Lastel. Certainly it was not the dogs he raised, or his fortune, which was modest, or his
business… well, yes, it might have been just that… drugs. Some who knew said the best
krrf—black and Garonne-stamped—came from Lastel's connections. Molin sighed, hearing his
wife's twitter among the crowd's buzz. Where was that Hazard? The damn mage-guild was getting
too arrogant. No one could throw a bash as starstudded as this one and then walk away from it as
if the luminaries in attendance were nonentities. He was glad he hadn't prevailed on the prince to
come along… What a woman! And what was her name? He had been told, he was sure, but just
forgot…
Outside, torchlit, their breath steaming white through cold-sharpened night air, waiting for their
ivory-screened wagon, they giggled over the distinction between "serious" and "solemn": the First
Hazard had been serious, Molin was solemn; Tempus the Hell Hound was serious, Prince
Kadakithis, solemn; the destabilization campaign they were undertaking in Sanctuary under the
auspices of a Mygdonian-funded Nisibisi witch (who had come to Lastel, alias One-Thumb, in the
guise of a comely caravan mistress hawking Garonne drugs) was serious; the threat of northern
invasion, downcountry at the Empire's anus, was most solemn. As her laughter tinkled, he nuzzled
her: "Did you manage to… ?"
"Oh, yes. I had a perfectly lovely time. What a wonderful idea of yours this was," she
whispered, still speaking court Rankene, a dialect she had been using exclusively in public ever since
the two of them—the Maze-dweller One-Thumb and the escaped sorcerer-slayer Cime—had
decided that the best cover for them was that which her magic provided: they need not do more.
Her brother Tempus knew that Lastel was actually One-Thumb, and that she was with him, but he
would hesitate to reveal them: he had given his silence, if not his blessing, to their union. Within
reasonable limits, they considered themselves safe to bargain lives and information to both sides in
the coming crisis. Even now, with the war barely under way, they had already started. This night's
work was her pleasure and his profit. When they reached his modest east-side estate, she showed
him the portion of what she had done to the first Hazard which he would like best—and most
probably survive, if his heart was strong. For her service, she demanded a Rankan soldat's worth of
black krrf, before the act. When he had paid her, and watched her melt it with water over a flame,
cool it, and bring it to him on the bed, her fingers stirring the viscous liquid, he was glad he hadn't
argued about her price, or about her practice of always charging one.
***
Wizard weather blew in off the sea later that night as quickly as one of the Sanctuary whores
could blow a client a kiss or a pair of Stepsons disperse an unruly crowd. Everyone in the suddenly
mist-enshrouded streets of the Maze ran for cover; adepts huddled under beds with their best
warding spells wrapped tighter than blankets around shivering shoulders; east-siders bade their
jesters perform and their musicians play louder; dogs howled; cats yowled; horses screamed in the
palace stables and tried to batter their stallboards down.