"Niven, Larry - Limits (SS Coll)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

"You're quite right. They're hiding something," Rordray said absently. He was carving the meat from a quarter of ox and cutting it into chunks, briskly, apparently risking his fingers at every stroke. "What of it? Don't we all have something to hide? They are my guests. They appreciate my food."

"Well," said his wife, "don't we all have something worth gossipping about? And for a honeymooning couple-"

At which point Estrayle burst into a peal of laughter.

Arilta asked, "Now what brought that on?" But Estrayle only shook her head and bent over the pale yellow roots she was cutting. Arilta turned back to her husband. "They don't seem loving enough, somehow. And she so beautiful, too."

"It makes a pattern," Rordray said. "The woman is beautiful, as you noticed. She is the Duchess's lady-in-waiting. The man serves the Duke. Could Lady Durily be the Duke's mistress? Might the Duke have married her to one of his men? It would provide for her if she's pregnant. It might keep the Duchess happy. It happens."

Arilta said, "Ah." She began dumping double handfuls of meat into a pot. Estrayle added the chopped root.

"On the other hand," Rordray said, "she is of the old Minterl aristocracy. Karskon may be too, half anyway. Perhaps they're not welcome near Beesh because of some failed plot. The people around here are of the old Minterl blood. They'd protect them, if it came to that."

"Well," his wife said with some irritation, "which is it?"

Rordray teased her with a third choice. "They spend money freely. Where Docs it come from? They could be involved in a theft we will presently hear about."

Estrayle looked up from cutting onions, tears dripping past a mischievous smile. "Listen for word of a large cat's-eye emerald."

"Estrayle, you will explain that!" said her mother.

Estrayle hesitated, but her father's bands had stopped moving, and he was looking up. "It was after supper," she said. "I was turning down the beds. Karskon found me. We talked a bit, and then he, well, made advances. Poor little man, he weighs less than I do. I slapped him hard enough to knock that lovely patch right off his face. Then I informed him that if he's interested in marriage he should be talking to my father, and in any case there are problems he should be aware of. . ." Her eyes were dancing. "I must say he took it well. He asked about my dowry! I hinted at undersea treasures. When I said we'd have to live here, he said at least he'd never have to worry about the cooking, but his religion permitted him only one wife, and I said what a pity-"

"The jewel," Rordray reminded her.

"Oh, it's beautiful! Deep green, with a blazing vertical line, just like a cat's eye. He wears it in the socket of his right eye."

Arilta considered. "If he thinks that's a safe place to hide it, he should get a less flamboyant patch. Someone might steal that silver thing."

"Whatever their secret, it's unlikely to disturb us," Rordray said. "And this is their old seat of royalty. Even the ghost . . . which reminds me. Jarper?"

The empty air he spoke to remained empty. He said, "I haven't seen Jarper since lunch. Has anyone?"

Nobody answered. Rordray continued, "I noticed him hovering behind Karskon at lunch. Karskon must be carrying something magical. Maybe the jewel? Oh, never mind, Jarper can take care of himself I was saying Jarper probably won't bother our guests. He's of old Minterl blood himself. if he had blood."

They stuffed wool around the door and around the windows. They propped a chair under the doorknob. Karskon and Durily had no intention of being disturbed at this point. An innkeeper who found his guests marking patterns on the floor with powdered bone, and heating almost fresh blood over a small flame, could rightly be expected to show annoyance.

Durily spoke in a language once common to the Sorcerer's Guild, now common to nobody. The words seemed to hurt her throat, and no wonder, Karskon thought. He had doffed his silver eye patch. He tended the flame and the pot of blood, and stayed near Durily, as instructed.

He closed his good eye and saw green-tinged darkness. Something darker drifted past, slowly, something huge and rounded, that suddenly vanished with a flick of finny tail. Now a drifting current of luminescence congealing, somehow, to a vaguely human shape.

The night he robbed the jewel merchant's shop, this sight had almost killed him.

The Movement had wealth to buy the emerald, but Durily swore that the Torovan lords must not learn that the jewel existed. She hadn't told him why. It wasn't for the Movement that he had obeyed her. The Movement would destroy the Torovan invaders, would punish his father and his half-brothers for their arrogance, for the way they had treated him for the loss of his eye. But he had obeyed her. He was her slave in those days, the slave of his lust for the Lady Durily, his father's mistress.

He had guessed that it was glamour that held him: magic. It hadn't seemed to matter. He had invaded the jeweler's shop expecting to die, and it hadn't mattered.

The merchant had heard some sound and come to investigate. Karskon had already scooped up everything he could find of value, to distract attention from the single missing stone. Waiting for discovery in the dark cellar, he had pushed the jewel into his empty eye socket.