"Michelle West - The Confidence Game" - читать интересную книгу автора (West Michelle)

face, inserted the knife under the thread that held them together, and prepared to slice.

“So you don’t know where she’s from, and you don’t know why she’s moving in.” Shaan leaned in and
tried to get Tod’s attention by winking suggestively. “And you don’t know what her business is.”

Tod frowned. “Nothing unlawful,” he uttered through closed teeth, trying hard to avoid Shaan’s
suggestion. “Not after Morrn.”

“Poor Morrn,” Shaan was saying, shaking his head. “A good chap, he was.” Then his color came up
again and he leered. “Shame if that’s true about the girl, though. You’ll have lost your chance to get
deflowered.”

Tod put his knife down before he could damage any more of his book. A protest lodged in the back of
his throat, that he was twenty-seven and well past the deflowering age, but he wasn’t really willing to start
cataloging his experiences for Shaan’s amusement. Now Shaan was on his feet, strolling around the room
as he continued to bark stale laughs at his own dull joke. Where was he going? What was he looking for?

The mechanical clock started chiming.

“Damn and blast,” Shaan muttered, “is that thing right?”

Speechless with relief, Tod nodded. Shaan’s workday was as irregular as his own. While Tod did most
of his bookbinding work out of his home rather than going into Origh, Shaan didn’t go into town until the
end of the day. Like most of Dabion’s commoners, Shaan’s family had never strayed from the work that
named them. The Wheelwrights did their business in the late hours, mending and fitting the Justices’
carriages with wheels at times when the carriages were not needed, so as not to disturb the process of
the law.

“Good luck on the roads,” Tod put in, glad to change the subject. “They were all blocked up this
morning. Something going on in the middle of town. Public Force all over.” They cracked the chandler’s
skull, he thought but didn’t say. There were mystics there, the guards arrested them, they’re sure to be
executed. Tod felt ashamed, using them to shut up Shaan. But there was nothing he could do.

Shaan tapped out his pipe onto Tod’s hearth, muttering under his breath. He was overbearing and he had
no love for the Public Force, but he would never take the risk of saying what he truly thought of them
aloud. “Well, if there’s something to be found out, I’ll find it out. I’ll miss your renter’s arrival, though.
Give her my regards!” He winked and raised his hand in cheery farewell as he let himself out.

Tod lifted his hand and smiled tightly.

When Shaan was gone he took a dustpan, swept up the ashes from the man’s pipe, and carried them out
to dump in the street, in front of Shaan’s door. “No wind?” he challenged the sky, expecting a gust to
blow the ash back into his home. He looked up the street and saw no thin silhouette approaching
opposite Shaan’s thick one; Elzith was late enough that she would not have to deal with the man yet.

But where was she? Somehow the excuse of riots and guards in Origh did not feel like the answer.

Tod looked down to check that the ash pile was still lying quietly in place. As he turned back toward his
own door his eyes grazed over the herb boxes that were arrayed along Shaan’s front wall. Beside them
lay a little pile of tools: trowel, spade. And concealed along the length of one of the boxes, a long,