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

heavy-handled rake. It was too large for such small gardening. Shaan might have used it for keeping the
grass on the hill, but Tod knew he did no such work. Under a casual sprinkling of dirt, the tines were
rusty with disuse. Tod stood before his door, where Elzith had stood that afternoon, his head tilted at the
same angle hers had been as he looked at the partly hidden rake.

He’d felt uneasy with Shaan in his house this afternoon, but then he’d had no more than a suggestion that
the man was a criminal. He hadn’t been able to imagine glass breaking under a heavy wooden handle, or
the brittle sound of it shattering and the shower of glassy shards. Your neighbor’s a thief.

Tod shivered and darted into his house.

It was too late for any more work. Tod would go to the printer’s tomorrow to replace the quarto that
he’d damaged. He still had more to do; he’d fallen behind, but that would wait until later. In the last hour
of his day, he would turn to matters of his own.

He did not follow the usual tradition. Tod Redtanner was a bookbinder. His family—father, aging
grandfather with hands gnarled beyond use, two elder brothers following in the business of tanning—had
all ridiculed him. A foolish trade, bookishness. Weak and unmanly. Only the Justices were so learned,
and he had no reason to act so proud. Tod had tried to learn the family craft; he’d been no good at it. He
had failed at everything from dressing the skins to mixing the dyes that gave the leather its characteristic
red tone, a family heritage handed down like an inheritance. He, the youngest, had received nothing. At
eighteen, after four fruitless years of apprenticeship, Tod had left his family.

It had been Morrn’s suggestion to lease the cottage, to block the inner stairs and make two separate
flats, to sublet the lower one to him. Tod had gone along with everything, these plans fed to him by
someone he hardly knew. If Tod hadn’t been so blind with shame and anger at his family, he might have
realized how bad a plan it was. Morrn already had a criminal record—only petty crimes, he’d assured
Tod, but enough to blacklist his name with all the Lesser Justices who owned the tenements of Dabion.
That was why he wanted Tod’s name on the lease. If Tod hadn’t been so blind, he might have
recognized the trouble in store when he found Morrn’s still, but he fooled himself into using it to his own
advantage. He had already started drinking, two years earlier, when his brothers had taken him across
the border to Karrim, where distilleries and other illegal businesses operated out of the sight of the distant
Dabionian government. If he’d had less temper, Tod might have quietly cast aside his brothers’ influence.
But he had things to drown out, shame and dreams, nightmare faces, so he went to Morrn more than
willingly.

Noise from the street shook Tod from his unhappy thoughts. He went to the window. In the distance, a
cart rolled by. He ran to the back window, thinking Elzith might have walked past the door and was
headed down the steps, but he saw no one.

He sat down at his table again. It was no good to resurrect old guilt, he knew that. He should think of
other things. It did no good to fret over his new renter, either. She would be like the Healer who had
lived in his downstairs flat for the last three years. Like him, she would come and go as she pleased, with
no ties to Tod’s life. He had no reason to hope for anything else, no reason to feel sorrow over it. He
sighed, trying to convince himself, and reached for his needle.

Keller had taught him the bookbinding. Tod had gone to the printer looking for some sort of work shortly
after leaving his father’s house, on one of the rare mornings when he woke and remained sober long
enough to realize he had no money. He had wandered into town, knowing there was a wall in front of the
printer’s shop where public notices were posted and hoping that he would find advertisement for work.