"Debra Doyle & James MacDonald - Mageworlds 04 - The Gathering Flame" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doyle Debra)

obligation to tender his associate any more than the minimum of deference.
Stepping past Nivome, the armsmaster opened the door and glanced out into the hall. As he had
expected, Warham-mer's second-in-command was nowhere in sight. Hafrey stepped back into the
room and closed the door before addressing the Minister of Internal Security directly for the first time.
"The copilot's away. We should be going as well."
The minister's expression of disapproval didn't change. "You, maybe. I'm staying right here."
"The word Her Dignity used was 'leave.' "
Nivome didn't move from his position against the wall. "The Domina of Entibor should not be
wandering the streets of Waycross unprotected."
Ser Hafrey allowed himself a faint smile. "I doubt that she will be."
He bowed-the slight inclination of formal politeness, nothing more-and added, "Nevertheless, we
must all comport ourselves according to our inclinations. I'll wait for you at the ship."
The armsmaster departed from the Double Moon without looking back, and made a slow and
introspective passage through Waycross to the docks. All along the dockside thoroughfares, the ranks of
grounded starships waited in their bays, each enclosure separated from the next by privacy walls looming
even taller than the ships themselves.
The gates of Warhammer's bay stood open. From the look of things, the Innish-Kyllan
dockworkers had begun to off-load cargo while the captain and his copilot worked off their nerves and
excess energy along the Strip.
Ser Hafrey lingered in the shadows for a while, watching as the skipsleds ran in empty and
departed stacked high with shrouded loads-the pick of the loot from Metadi's Optician run. The
worklights mounted on top of the privacy walls were harsh and blue-white, mimicking in their spectra the
suns of another world.
Warhammer was an ugly vessel, at least to the armsmas-ter's exacting eye-a huge, flattened disk
that stood on heavy metal landing legs. Its cargo doors gaped open, with ramps leading down to the floor
of the bay. A shower of blue-white sparks rained from the underside of the freighter, where somebody
was making repairs to the skin of the ship.
After a few minutes Hafrey moved away again, continuing toward his own ship: an Entiboran
Crown courier, small and fast and discreetly armed against the day when speed alone would not answer.
He showed his identification to the scanner at the entry force field and walked through the main
passageway to the bridge. Once there, he settled back in the command chair, laced his fingers in his lap,
and closed his eyes, calming himself and bringing his thoughts into a better order.
If all went well, he told himself, matters would proceed as he intended. If not, then he would deal
with reality as it developed. Ser Hafrey was old-far older than he gave others to understand, or than he
ever admitted even in his most private thoughts-and he had schooled himself long ago to accommodate
the universe when it decided to change itself around him.

"Whoever locked the door," Perada said, "it wasn't me."
She regarded the captain uncertainly as she spoke. She'd been expecting an older man; not as
old as Ser Hafrey, perhaps, but at least someone well into the middle of life. Jos Metadi, however,
looked barely a decade older than she was herself.
Tall and tawny-haired, he wore dark trousers and a spidersilk shirt underneath a crimson velvet
coat fastened with massive gold buttons. An odd combination, she would have thought-but thanks to Ser
Hafrey's preliminary report, she knew that rich, almost gaudy, clothing was the traditional mark of a
prominent captain, an advertisement of his success in the same way that the heavy blaster, its holster tied
down to his thigh, was a mark of his violent profession.
Metadi had come a long way in a short time, then, and he wanted to go even farther. A good
sign, she hoped. Just the same, he was an untried quality. Veratina's court on Entibor hadn't contained
anyone like him; neither had the finishing school on Galcen. She drew a breath and tried for a note of
careful detachment.