"Charles Stross - Merchant princes 02 - The Hidden Family" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

shut. Folded, the bike was a beast. She could get the thing comfortably on her
back but would be hard put to carry anything else. Hmm. "Back in a minute." She
shouldered the bike pack and marched to the back door that opened on Paulette's
yard. "Here goes nothing," she muttered, and pulled out her locket.

Half an hour later she was back without the bike, stagger-

ing slightly, shivering with cold, and rubbing her sore forehead. "Oh, I really
don't need to do that so fast," she groaned.

"If you will do that with no preparation—" Paulette began to say waspishly.

"No, no." Miriam waved her away. "I took my pills, boss, honest. It's just
really cold over there."

"Where did you stash it?" Paulie asked practically.

"Where your back wall is, over on the other side, where there's nothing but
forest. Brrr. Up against a tree, I cut a gash in the bark." She brandished her
knife. "Won't be hard to find if we go over from here: Main thing will be
walking to the road, the nearest one is about half a mile away. Better go in the
morning."

"Right," Paulette said skeptically. "About the rent."

"Yeah." Miriam nodded. "Look, give me fifteen minutes to recover and I'll get my
coat. Then we can go look over that building, and if it's right we'll go
straight on to the bank and move another whack of cash so you can wave a deposit
under their nose." She straightened up. "We'll take Brill. There's a theatrical
costume shop we need to check out; it might speed things up a bit." Her
expression hardened. "I'm tired of waiting, and the longer this drags on the
harder it'll be to explain it to Angbard. If I don't get in touch soon, I figure
he'll cut off my credit until I surface. It's time to hit the road."

Two days later, a frigid morning found Miriam dozing fitfully on a lumpy,
misshapen mattress with a quiedy snoring lump to her left. She opened her eyes.
Where am I? she wondered for a moment, then memory rescued the day. Oh. A pile
of canvas bags before her nose formed a hump up against the rough, unpainted
planks of the wall. The snoring lump twitched, pushing her closer to the edge.
The light streamed in through a small window, its triangular tiles of glass
uneven and bubbled. She'd slept fully dressed except for her boots and cloak,
and she felt filthy. To make matters worse, some-

thing had bitten her in the night, found her to its taste, and invited its
family and friends along for Thanksgiving.

"Aargh." She sat up and swung her feet out, onto the floor. Even through her
wool stockings the boards felt cold as ice. The jug under the bed was freezing
cold too, she discovered as she squatted over it to piss. In fact, the air was
so chilly it leached all the heat out of any part of her anatomy she exposed to