"Watt-Evans,.Lawrence.-.Ethshar.4.-.The.Blood.of.a.Dragon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragon Stories)

He wouldn't want to bereally poor, living out in the Hundred-Foot Field or something, but a tenement apartment wouldn't have been all that bad.
Would it?
Maybe it would. If he were going to be rich, then, why couldn't he have been born to the nobility? Living in the Overlord's palace would be fun, wouldn't it?
Speculation was pointless, of course. Hehad been born the son of a successful merchant, and he was stuck with it.
He sighed, and trudged on.
When his funds, energy, and ingenuity were all largely exhausted, and most of the magicians had long since closed their shops, he headed wearily home, stumbling now and then as he dodged the ox-droppings on Arena Street.
He reached home long after his mother had cleared away the dinner dishes, and in fact she would have been in bed and asleep had she not waited up for him. She was angry enough to refuse to feed him anything but the left-over heel of the loaf of bread that had been served with supper.
He ate that, and drank water from a crystal goblet he got down from the kitchen cupboard himself. He consumed this sorry excuse for a meal while sitting morosely in his room, staring out the window into the courtyard behind the house and trying to think what he could do with his life.
Magic, it appeared, was out. Whether he really had no talent at all, of any sort, or whether Thetheran had a grudge against him and had somehow coerced all the others into turning him down, he wasn't sure, but at any rate, magic was out.
At least, if he stayed in Ethshar of the Spices, magic was out. What if he were to sail off somewhere on one of his father's ships? Might he find more obliging magicians in, say, Ethshar of the Sands, or Morria in the Small Kingdoms?
It wasn't likely. Everyone agreed that Ethshar of the Spices was the greatest city in the World, its merchants the richest, its wizards the most powerful, its overlord the wisest.
And he wouldn't have his father there to pay his apprenticeship fee, if he went somewhere else.
Well, then, he would just forget about magic and try something else.
But what elsewas there? He'd wanted to be a wizard for as long as he could remember. He had never seriously considered anything else.
Well, now it was time to consider, so what else was there?
He could apprentice to a merchant, of course, or a pilot, either a harbor pilot or a ship's pilot. His father would have no trouble at all arranging those.
Or he could sign on as a sailor, and try to work his way up to captain. Commanding his own ship, sailing free across the waves-that sounded nice.
But it probably wasn't. The sea captains he'd met were mostly foul-tempered men who didn't seem to enjoy their work particularly. And there were storms and pirates, and while it was all very romantic and heroic to battle storms and pirates, Dumery remembered Captain Senallon, a big, robust, cheerful man who had rumpled Dumery's hair, taught Dumery a few interesting swear words, showed him how to tie a few knots, and who had never come back from an ordinary run up to Ethshar of the Rocks. His ship sailed out and was simply never seen again. A report eventually came that a pirate had caught him off Shan on the Sea, but that was never confirmed.
And Daddy had been furious about that, not because Captain Senallon was dead and his widow and children bereft, but because the cargo was lost and Doran of Shiphaven was out goods valued at some seventeen pounds of gold.
Sailing anywhere didn't sound very appealing after all, Dumery decided as he swallowed the last stale mouthful of bread.
Maybe he should just wait and join the city guard, then.
One had to be sixteen to join the guard, of course, and Dumery's family was sufficiently well-known that lying about his age probably wouldn't work, at least not for long, so that would mean a four-year wait. And after that four years, it would mean living in the barracks under the city wall or over in Camptown, spending his time marching back and forth or standing guard at a gate somewhere or going up and down the streets collecting taxes for Lord Azrad. That was not really a very exciting life, when one actually sat down and thought about what was involved; it was no wonder that the guard got most of its recruits from failed apprentices, boys who had been kicked out by their masters for stealing or disobedience or incompetence, or whose masters had died before the apprenticeship was completed.
Of course, life in the guard could be exciting if there were a war or something, but Ethshar hadn't been in a war for over two hundred years-not a real war, anyway. The Great War had ended back in 4996, or maybe 4998, or something-Dumery wasn't really very good at history, particularly not remembering dates-and he wasn't sure if there had been any little wars since then.
A war would be exciting but dangerous, too. And while Dumery didn't think he was really all that bothered by danger-hecertainly didn't consider himself a coward-he didn't care to depend on the chance of something as dangerous as a war to make his life interesting.
No, not the guard, then.
What did that leave?
Well, there were ship chandlers, and ropemakers, and coopers, and sailmakers, and shipwrights, and shopkeepers of every sort, and none of them looked very appealing. Most of them involved a lot of standing around haggling with customers, and hauling dirty, heavy objects around, and they didn't pay all that well, either.
The brothels in Shiphaven made plenty of money, and the gamblers and gamers, but Dumery didn't think one got into those trades through apprenticeship. He really wasn't very sure.
Being a gambler might be interesting-but it had its risks. What if you lost? The gods of luck could be fickle, everyone knew that. And losing opponents could be hostile; Dumery had seen a sailor knifed over a stupid little game of three-bone once. The stake had only been about four silver pieces-Dumery had spent more than twice that in testing fees today.
The sailor had lived, and in fact his wound really wasn't very serious at all, but any occupation where one ran a significant risk of being stabbed wasn't quite what Dumery had in mind.
As for running a brothel-well, just now, at age twelve, he was embarrassed just thinking about it. And surely, one didn't get into it through an apprenticeship.
He sighed, and gulped the last of his water.
He'd have to findsomething, but right now he couldn't think of a single possibility.
Maybe he would do better in the morning.
He left the goblet by his bed for his mother to pick up, and went to sleep.


Chapter Five
When the sunlight poured through his window the next morning, thick as honey and warm as a purring cat, Dumery still hadn't thought of any non-magical occupation he cared to pursue.
He told his mother that at breakfast. He couldn't tell his father, because Doran had left early to make sure an outgoing ship caught the morning tide without leaving any of its cargo behind on the docks.
"You can do anything you like," Falщa the Slender told her son as she poured herself tea.
Dumery started to contradict her. "Except wizardry," she added hastily, cutting him off.
He glowered silently for a moment, then said, "But I don't know what I like."
Dessa snickered; Dumery glared at her, and she turned away, smirking.
"Look around, then," Falщa said as she picked up her cup. "See what you can find."
"Look where?" Dumery asked.
She lowered the cup and looked at him in mild exasperation.
"I'velooked all over Shiphaven," he explained.
"Then look elsewhere," she suggested. "It's a big city. Why not go to the markets and look around?"
"The markets?" Dumery thought that over.