"Asprin, Robert - Thieves' World 08 - Soul of the City" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asprin Robert)

And now Niko lurked in priestholes, palaces, and princely bedrooms, protected by
Randal (who had a Globe of Power similar to Roxane's own, and more powerful) and
the countermagical armor given Niko by the entelechy of dreams. Not once did
sweet Stealth venture riverward, though his de facto commander, Straton of the
Stepsons, rode this way on evenings to visit another witch.

This other witch, too, was an enemy of Roxane's-Ischade the necromant, whom by
rights the Stepsons should have hated more than they did Roxane, vilified in
their prayers as they nightly did Death's Queen.

There was some irony to that: Ischade, a tawdry soul-sucker with limited power
and unlimited lust, was a friend of the Stepsons, ally of the mercenary army
that was all that stood between Sanctuary and total chaos now that the town was
divided into blood feuds and factions as the Rankan Empire's grasp grew weak and
the Rankan prince, Kadakithis, was barricaded in his palace with some salmon
eyed Beysib slut from a fishy foreign land.

And Roxane, who'd been Death's Queen on Wizardwall and flown high, ruler of all
she once surveyed, was shunned by Stepsons and even by lesser factions in the
town-all but her own death squads, some truly dead and raised from crypts to do
her bidding, some only a hair's-breadth away from mossy graves like One-Thumb,
the Vulgar Unicorn's proprietor, a.k.a. Lastel, and Zip, guttersnipe leader of
the PFLS (Popular Front for the Liberation of Sanctuary) rebels who couldn't get
along without her help.

And Snapper Jo, of course, her single remaining fiend-a warty, gray-skinned,
wall-eyed beast, snaggle-toothed and orange-haired, whom she'd summoned from a
nearby hell to serve her-she still had Snapper, though lately he'd been taking
his spy's job of day-barkeep at the Vulgar Unicorn too much to heart, thinking
silly thoughts of camaraderie with humans (who'd no more accept a fiend as one
of them than the Stepsons had accepted Roxane).

And she had her snakes, of course, a fresh supply, whom she could witch into
human form for intervals (though Sanctuary's snakes weren't bred for
masquerading and turned out small, sleepy in cold weather, and even more dull
witted than the northern kind).

Still, it was a pair of snakes-a butler-snake and a bodyguard-whom she called to
build a fire in her witching room, to bring her chalcedony water bowl and place
it on a column of porphyry near the hearth, to stay and watch and wait with her
while she poured salt into the water and words came from her mouth to make the
salt into her will and the water bowl into the open wounds in Sanctuary. Not
wounds of flesh, but wounds of spirit-the arrogance of loyalty given and
withheld, the gall of greed, the acne of innocence, the lacerations of love, the
pustules of passion which prickled such hearts as Straton's, as Randal's. as
those of the prince/governor and his flounder-faced consort, Shupansea (fool
enough to keep snakes herself, thinking that Beysib snakes might be immune to
Nisibisi snake magic), and even as Niko's own consuming compassion for a pair of
children he wet-nursed like some useless Rankan matron.