"Cook, Glen - Garrett 07 - Deadly Quicksilver Liesuc" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Glen)

I was afraid of that.

Having a no-strings, no-complications friendship can
have its own complications.

The small front room had grown quiet. I paused
to eavesdrop. Not one obscenity marred the precious
silence. T.G. Parrot was asleep again.

I thought about making it that jungle pigeon's last
nap, the beginning of the big sleep, the longest voyage,
the ...

Boom boom boom.

I peeked through the peephole. By-the-numbers
Garrett, that's me. Fixing to live a thousand years.

All I saw was a smallish redhead facing three-quarters
away, staring at something. That little bit did all that
pounding? She was stronger than she looked. I opened
the door. She continued staring up the street. I leaned
forward cautiously.

The neighborhood pixie teens were chucking rotten
fruits off the cornices and gutters of an ugly old three-
story half a block up Macunado. A band of gnomes

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GLEN COOK

below dodged and cursed and shook their walking
sticks. They were all old, clad in the usual drab gray,
with whiskers. Not beards, whiskers, like you see in
paintings of old-time generals and princes and mer-
chant captains. All gnomes seem to be old and out of
fashion. I've never seen a young one or a female one.

One spry little codger, chanting a colorful warsong
about discount rates and yam futures, pegged a broken
cobblestone hard enough to actually hit a pixie. It did
a somersault off a gargoyle's head. The gnomes
pranced around and waved their sticks in glee and
sent up an ave to the Great Arbitrager. Then the pixie
brat opened his wings and soared. His laughter was a
mocking squeak.