"Martha Wells - Wheel of the Infinite" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wells Martha)

muddy bank. By the time she had picked a quantity and scrambled back up to more solid ground, the
green cavern had become a pitch-black hole.
She decided to make her way along the river until she was at the right point to strike out for the road
again. She stumbled along, barefoot because no pair of sandals would have lasted half a day in this mess,
her patched robes tied up to keep her from tripping, a bundle of stinking ivibrae crammed under her belt,
and covered with mud from feet to nose. Her braids kept falling into her eyes and some were fraying
apart, revealing how much grey was mixed in with the dark strands. Smiling, she wondered what the
court of Kushor-An at Duvalpore would have thought of her now. Not much, not much, she chuckled
to herself. Rastim was right: their luck was so bad it was beginning to be funny. Perhaps it was the
Ancestors, tired of her importunities at last, willing to drown the whole of the Great Road just to
inconvenience her poor self. Maskelle smiled at the thought. Add hubris to the list of crimes, if it
wasn’t there already.
The twilight had deepened into night now and the river was a menacing roar to her right; she saw a
flicker of light ahead along the bank. Staggering toward it, sodden and chilled, she hoped that it was a
river traders’ outpost and that there might be such a thing as a cup of warm tea before she had to walk
back through the jungle to the road. Or maybe a half-bottle of rice wine. I’m getting old, she thought
sourly. But that was nothing new. As she drew closer to the light she could hear raucous voices, a great
many raucous voices.
She was close enough now for the lamps lit along the balconies to show her the outline of the place. It
perched on the edge of the bank, wooden and ramshackle, half of it hanging out over the rushing river
and supported by heavy log pilings. Several small boats were tied up under it, and splintered wood, rope,
torn sail and the wreckage of fishtraps were caught among them and the pilings. The windows glowed
with light and many people moved about inside. It’s a traders’ outpost true enough, she thought, but it
doesn’t belong to river traders, not any longer. Raiders and river pirates must be using it for the night,
though they couldn’t have been here long—Imperial patrols would periodically sweep the riverbanks to
clear them out. She hadn’t seen any boat traffic on the river, but had put that down to the rain and rough
water. She let out her breath in resignation.
Raiders were as vicious as the moray, the small lizards that hunted the river in packs. Not only
drunken laughter came from the inhabitants of the outpost—there were shrieks, thumps, crashes, even
roars, like a menagerie. Common sense told her to head into the jungle so she could get back to make
the posset for Killia’s girl and retire to her own cold supper and damp bed. But this kind of thing had
been her business, in one way or another, for many long years, and old habits died hard. There was a
crash as a body came flying through the latticework of one of the windows over the dock. That decided
her; this she had to see.
She walked up the rickety steps to the nearest doorway and elbowed her way inside. The place was
full of river trash, as filthy and muddy as Maskelle herself, except river trash were usually filthy and
muddy by choice. Their clothes were tattered rags or pillaged finery, like the torn silk trousers and vest of
the one lying unconscious on the floor. They stunk of uncured leather, unwashed person, and rice liquor,
and the bad light reflected off sweat-slickened skin and wild dirty hair. They packed the rickety wooden
gallery that ran along this floor and even staggered around in drunken battle on the lower level, which was
awash in dirty water as the rising river encroached on it. Every one of them was yelling like the mad. The
resemblance to the Court at Duvalpore is striking, Maskelle thought, watching them ironically. She
winced from the din and considered leaving; the place was so smoky from the badly tended lamps that
she couldn’t see what was happening anyway.
Swearing under her breath, she looked toward the far end of the gallery where there was a raised
platform for the upper level loading deck. The giant pulleys and tangled ropes of the old cargo crane hung
heavily over it, the arm suspended out over the lower floor, designed to raise bales through the wide
doors that opened over the river in the wall behind the deck, swing them inside the building and lower
them down to the large area below. Several people seemed to be standing and talking there in almost a
sane manner. She started toward them, trying to peer through the smoke and shadow. Frustration made