"Cook, Glen - Black Company 03 - White Rose" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Glen)

"Bloody hell!" He slapped the weights off the corners of the chart, rolled the thin silk around a wisp of glass rod. He slipped the rod inside the shaft of a fake antique spear. That shaft was shiny with handling. "Besand would spot it in a minute," he grumbled.

He ground his teeth as his ulcer took a bite of gut. The closer the end drew, the greater was the danger. His nerves were shot. He was afraid he might crack at the last barrier, that cowardice would devour him and he would have lived in vain.

Thirty-seven years was a long time to live in the shadow of the headsman's axe.

"Jasmine," he muttered. "And call a sow Beauty." He flung the door-hanging aside, shouted downstairs, "What is it now?"

It was what it always was. Nagging unconnected with the root of her dissatisfaction. An interruption of his studies as a payback for what she fancied was his having misspent their lives.

He could have become a man of consequence in Oar. He could have given her a great house overstuffed with fawning servants. He could have draped her in cloth-of-gold. He could have fed her tumble-down fat with meat at every meal. Instead, he had chosen a scholar's life, disguising his name and profession, dragging her to this bleak, haunted break in the Old Forest. He had given her nothing but squalor, icy winters, and indignities perpetrated by the Eternal Guard.

Bomanz stamped down the narrow, squeaky, treacherous stairway. He cursed the woman, spat on the floor, thrust silver into her desiccated paw, drove her away with a plea that supper, for once, be a decent meal. Indignity? he thought. I'll tell you about indignity, you old crow. I'll tell you what it's like to live with a perpetual whiner, a hideous old bag of vapid, juvenile dreamsЕ

"Stop it, Bomanz," he muttered. "She's the mother of your son. Give her her due. She hasn't betrayed you." If nothing else, they still shared the hope represented by the map on silk. It was hard for her, waiting, unaware of his progress, knowing only that nearly four decades had yielded no tangible result.

The bell on the shop door tinkled. Bomanz clutched at his shopkeeper persona. He scuttled forward, a fat, bald little man with blue-veined hands folded before his chest. "Tokar." He bowed slightly. "I didn't expect you so soon."

Tokar was a trader from Oar, a friend of Bomanz's son Stancil. He had a bluff, honest, irreverent manner Bomanz deluded himself into seeing as the ghost of his own at a younger age.

"Didn't plan to be back so soon. Bo. But antiques are the rage. It surpasses comprehension."

"You want another lot? Already? You'll clean me out." Unsaid, the silent complaint: Bomanz, this means replenishment work. Time lost from research.

"The Domination is hot this year. Stop pottering around, Bo. Make hay, and all that. Next year the market could be as dead as the Taken."

"They're notЕ Maybe I'm getting too old, Tokar. I don't enjoy the rows with Besand anymore. Hell. Ten years ago I went looking for him. A good squabble killed boredom. The digging grinds me down, too. I'm used up. I just want to sit on the stoop and watch life go by." While he chattered, Bomanz set out his best antique swords, pieces of armor, soldiers' amulets, and an almost perfectly preserved shield. A box of arrowheads with roses engraved. A pair of broad-bladed thrusting spears, ancient, heads mounted on replica shafts.

"I can send you some men. Show them where to dig. I'll pay you commission. You won't have to do anything. That's a damned fine axe, Bo. TelleKurre? I could sell a bargeload of TelleKurre weaponry."

"UchiTelle, actually." A twinge from his ulcer. "No No helpers." That was all he needed. A bunch of young hotshots hanging over his shoulder while he made his field calculations.

"Just a suggestion."

"Sorry. Don't mind me. Jasmine was on me this morning."

Softly, Tokar asked, "Found anything connected with the Taken?"

With the ease of decades, Bomanz dissembled, feigning horror. "The Taken? Am I a fool? I wouldn't touch it if I could get it past the Monitor."

Tokar smiled conspiratorily. "Sure. We don't want to offend the Eternal Guard. NeverthelessЕ There's one man in Oar who would pay well for something that could be ascribed to one of the Taken. He'd sell his soul for something that belonged to the Lady. He's in love with her."

"She was known for that." Bomanz avoided the younger man's gaze. How much had Stance revealed? Was this one of Besand's fishing expeditions? The older Bomanz became, the less he enjoyed the game. His nerves could not take this double life. He was tempted to confess just for the relief.

No, damnit! He had too much invested. Thirty-seven years. Digging and scratching every minute. Sneaking and pretending. The most abject poverty. No. He would not give up. Not now. Not when he was this close.

"In my way, I love her, too," he admitted. "But I haven't abandoned good sense. I'd scream for Besand if I found anything. So loud you'd hear me in Oar."

"All right. Whatever you say." Tokar grinned. "Enough suspense." He produced a leather wallet. "Letters from Stancil."