"Michael Swanwick - Cold Iron" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

She touched it, and a numinous sense of essence flowed up her arm. In a way unlike anything she had
ever felt before the volume spoke to her. It was real! Beyond any doubt or possibility of delusion, the
book was a true grimoire. Here, within her grasp, was real magick; recipes for hellfire and vengeance,
secrets capable of leveling cities, the technologies of invisibility and ecstatic cruelty, power enough to
raise the dead and harrow Hell itself.

For a long, timeless instant she communed with the grimoire, letting it suffuse and possess her. At last its
whispered promises faded and were still.

She dug it out of the papers.

It was too big to carry in one hand. Jane stuck the stolen nail parings in her mouth, where she could hold
them between lip and gum, and seized the book with both hands.

At that instant there was a long, shrill whistle. She turned, and there in the doorway stood the
shadow-boy, held back by the fetish-bundles nailed to the jamb, urging her out with anxious sweeps of
his arm. Beyond, she saw that the Sand Slinger had been brought under control. Rooster was held
captive by one of the hogmen. The spectators were breaking up, some into small knots to discuss what
they'd seen, others turning away, returning to their jobs.

Cradling the book in her arms, she ran from the room. It weighed a ton, and she staggered under its
weight. But she wasn't going to give it up. It was hers now.

The shadow-boy stood in open daylight, as close to visible as he ever came. "What took you so long?"
he whispered fearfully. "He'll be coming soon."

"Here." She thrust the book at him. "Take this back to the dormitory, quick, and hide it under my
blanket." When he didn't move, she snapped, "There's no time for questions. Just do it!"

In a voice close to tears, the shadow-boy said, "But what about my lunch?" His head turned yearningly to
where the lake hag leaned over her cart, staring slack jawed at the aftermath of Rooster's fight. She had
yet to begin her second swing through the factory.

"You can have mine," Jane dredged her somewhat flattened sandwich from her apron pocket, and
slapped it down atop the grimoire. "Now go!" An indistinct motion that might have been a shrug, and the
shadow-boy was gone. Jane did not see him leave. It was as if he had simply dissolved into the gloom
and ceased to be.

She raised a hand to her mouth to spit out the stolen nail parings, and simultaneously saw Blugg all the
way across the foundry, squinting straight at her. Jane stood in an exquisite paralysis of exposure.

Then Rooster darted free of the hogman and shouted something up at the giant. With a roar of outrage,
the Sand Slinger seized the first weapon that came to hand, and hurled it.

Lightning flashed.

The afterimage of the molten iron that splayed from the flung ladle burned across Jane's eyes. Voices
rose in a babble of fear, laced through with urgently shouted orders. High above them all, Rooster
screamed an agonized scream.