"Lawrence Watt-Evans - Ethshar 6 - The Spell of the Black Dagger" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watt-Evans Lawrence)

tea house on her right.

That meant that the only light in the alley came from the cold and distant
gleam of the stars overhead, and the firelight of Grand Street behind her.
Such limited illumination was not enough; the alley appeared utterly black.

She hesitated, hoping her eyes would adjust, but the longer she lingered this
close to Grand Street, the more likely, even with the tea house closed, that
she would be spotted and questioned. She crept forward into the darkness,
moving by feel, as if blind.
The wall of the house felt solid and smooth and unbroken, and as she advanced
into the darkness she began to worry that she might have made a mistake. There
might not be any entrance back here.

She set her jaw. The whole point of an alley, she reminded herself, was to let
people in the back of a house. And even if this particular alley wasn't here
to let people into the back of the big comer house, there must be
windows—houses need ventilation, and the larger the house the more windows it
would need.

Of course, her pessimistic side reminded her, those windows needn't be within
reach of the ground, especially for a girl her size.

Maybe she should have planned this out more carefully, she thought, taken a
look at the house by daylight, maybe found out whose house it was, instead of
just yielding to a whim like this.

But she was here now, and it would be cowardly to turn back.

All the same, she thought, if she didn't find an entrance soon she might do
best to just head home and try again another day.

Then, finally, her hand struck a doorframe, and a smile crept unseen across
her face.

She stood and waited, and at last her vision began to adjust.

Yes, it was a door, though she could just barely make out the outline and
could see no details at all. She tried the handle.

It was locked, naturally.

She grinned, drew her belt knife, and fished the lockpick from her hair. The
darkness didn't matter for this; picking a lock was all done by feel anyway.
This was her chance to put her lessons with old Cluros and all her practice at
home to the test.

Five minutes later she had the door open and had slipped carefully inside,
moving as quietly as she could. The lock had been a simple one; only
inexperience, the weight of the bolt, and Tabaea's natural caution had kept