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

Some unlucky ones did not make it to safety before a dry thunder roared and lightning flashed
and in the streets, the mist began to glitter, thicken, chill. It rolled head-high along byway and alley,
claws of ice scrabbling at shuttered windows, barred doors. Where it found life, it shredded bodies,
lacerating limbs, stealing away warmth and souls and leaving only flayed carcasses frozen in the
streets.
 A pair of Stepsons—mercenary special forces whom the prince's marshal, Tempus,
commanded—was caught out in the storm, but it could not be said that the weather killed one: the
team had been investigating uncorroborated reports that a warehouse conveniently situated at a
juncture of three major sewers was being used by an alchemist to concoct and store incendiaries.
The surviving partner guessed that his teammate must have lit a torch, despite the cautions of
research: human wastes, flour, sulphur and more had gone in through those now-nonexistent doors.
Though the problem the team had been dispatched to investigate was solved by a concussive
fireball that threw the second Stepson, Nikodemos, through a window into an intersection, singeing
his beard and brows and eyelashes, the young Sacred Band member relived the circumstances
leading to his partner's death repeatedly, agonizing over the possibility that he was to blame
throughout the night, alone in the pair's billet. So consumed was he with grief at the death of his
mate, he did not even realize that his friend had saved his life: the fireball and ensuing conflagration
had blown back the mist and made an oven of the wharfside; Wideway was freed from the vicious
fog for half its length. He had ridden at a devil's pace out of Sanctuary home to the Stepsons'
barracks, which once had been a slaver's estate and thus had rooms enough for Tempus to allow
his hard-won mercenaries the luxury of privacy: ten pairs plus thirty single agents comprised the
team's core group—until this evening past…
Sun was trying to beat back the night, Niko could see it through his window. He had not even
been able to return with a body. His beloved spirit-twin would be denied the honor of a hero's fiery
bier. He couldn't cry; he simply sat, huddled, amputated, diminished and cold upon his bed,
watching a sun-ray inch its way toward one of his sandaled feet.
Thus he did not see Tempus approaching with the first light of day haloing his just-bathed form
as if he were some god's own avatar, which at times—despite his better judgment—his curse, and
his battle with it, forced him to become. The tall, autumnal figure stooped and peered in the
window, sun gilding his yarrow-honey hair and his vast bronze limbs where they were free of his
army-issue woolen chiton. He wore no arms or armor, no cloak or shoes; furrows deepened on his
brow, and a sere frown tightened his willful mouth. Sometimes, the expression in his long, slitted
eyes grew readable: this was such a time. The pain he was about to face was a pain he had known
too well, too often. It brought to features not brutal enough by half for their history or profession the
slight, defensive smile which would empty out his eyes. When he could, he knocked. Hearing no
reply, he called softly, "Niko?" And again…
Having let himself in, he waited for the Stepson, who looked younger than the quarter-century
he claimed, to raise his head. He met a gaze as blank as his own and bared his teeth.
The youth nodded slowly, made to rise, sank back when Tempus motioned "stay" and joined
him on his woodframed cot in blessed shadow. Both sat then, silent, as day filled up the room,
stealing away their hiding place. Elbows on knees, Niko thanked him for coming. Tempus suggested
that under the circumstances a bier could still be made, and funerary games would not be out of
order. When he got no response, the mercenary's commander sighed rattlingly and allowed that he
himself would be honored to perform the rites. He knew how the Sacred Banders who had
adopted the war name "Stepsons" revered him. He didn't condone or encourage it, but since they
had given him their love and were probably doomed to the man for it—even as their original leader,
Stepson, called Abarsis, had been doomed—Tempus felt responsible for them. His instructions and
his curse had sent the gelded warrior-priest Abarsis to his death, and such fighters as these could
not offer loyalty to a lesser man, to a pompous prince or an abstract cause. Sacred Bands were the
mercenaries' elite; this one's history under the Slaughter Priest's command was nearly mythical;