"Asprin, Robert - Thieves' World 12 - Stealer's Sky" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asprin Robert)

nodded. "B-but I wouldn't dare even set foot in thatЧthat . . ."

"Careful, Taya," the spellmaster told her. "I own the place." He mir-
rored her nod. "The person waiting to see me right now will make the
perfect guide, Taya. He will do it for me."

Two people sat in Strick's waiting area below. One, muffled in her
costly shawl, was a mildly attractive noblewoman with a ghastly hairy
wart erupting from her nose. Yes, Strick could and would deal with that,
and be well paid for making her presentable again. The other, from
whom she kept herself well clear, was an oldster with a voice out of a
gravel pit. It was he that Strick's young assistant, Avenestra, beckoned to
rise and follow, and he did, banging his staff as he walked. He was
surprised to find someone else in Strick's office, and peered closely at her.
Unusually keen of eyeЧespecially at nightЧhe recognized the softly
weeping girl there with the white mage. She, meanwhile, glanced up at
him and shrank at sight of wrinkled brown hands emerging from an old
tan-once-brown robe with its hood all crumpled on his back and around
his shoulders. His face was darkly shadowed by a funny feathered hat
from some far place, doubtless to hide features ravaged by time and
disease and even worseЧif anything could be worse than time and dis-
ease to a very attractive young woman who had been concubine to the
prince-governor from Imperial Ranke. Once-Imperial Ranke.

"Skarth," Strick said, "this is someone who needs to vanish in the
Maze for a while."

The big hat nodded and its big bright yellow feather waggled tiredly.
"She also resembles someone I once was so rude as to bind and gag in a
certain bed in a certain large building!"

Taya gasped and looked at him sharply. He had entered with a limp,
bearing a staff or cane in one of those dark, aged hands. Now she also
saw an overdone black mustache, floppy as the feather and big and
droopy as Strick's oversized blond mustache.

"Taya is in disguise. Taya, this man is in disguise. Please, just wait
outside for a moment, will you? I need to impress on him the importance
of his job in escorting you."

"UhЧoh, oh, all right," Taya said, who was accustomed to being
asked to leave someone's presence and wait somewhere or other while
more important things happened than a prince's mere bedwarmer, and
hardly accustomed to thinking much for herself.

She rose, bulky and silly in yards and yards of S'danzo garb that
hardly went with the lavishly proportioned red wig. The white mage's

NIGHT WORK