"David Drake - Birds Of Prey" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

froze the thug, not the twenty inches of bare steel in Perennius' hand. The fellow dropped his weapon and
rushed on.

"Let him go," Perennius ordered as Gaius lunged to catch the man. He was nothing but flotsam on a dirty
stream. Perennius, a cloaked figure in the shadows, would be forgotten by nightfall. The death the agent
had been so willing to offer would be forgotten also, until it came calling again in a tavern brawl or a
drunken misstep. The thug did not matter to the world, and to Perennius he was only the latest of the
hundreds who, for one reason or none, had considered killing him.

More interesting than that exchange was the head of the cat which was both banner and probable
occasion for the mob. The great canines winked like spear-points from the upper jaw. Perennius had
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seen cats as big, but he had never seen one similarly armed. The folk surging down the street past the
agent were inured to strangeness by the beast shows of the Circus, but this was to them also a unique
marvel, an omen like a cow which spoke or thunder from a clear sky. It was reason enough for riot; it,
and the barren wasteland of their lives.

Perennius felt the cat grin at him as it was swept past; but the feeling, of course, was nonsense.

Ten minutes after the head of the mob had passed, the street was empty enough that Gaius and
Perennius could walk against what had been the flow. The agent was weary from a journey of over a
thousand straight-line miles - and he had not traversed them in a straight line. He was used to being
weary. He was used to being delayed as well. Throughout the past six months, Perennius had been
delayed repeatedly because the draft transferring funds to his account in Antioch had not arrived.

The agent had made do because he was the sort of person who did make do. Perennius had never
learned patience, but he knew the value of restraint and the power of necessity. The banker in Antioch
had advanced some money and more information when he understood precisely what alternatives the
stocky Imperial agent was setting before him. The sum Perennius had set as the bottom line for both of
them to walk out of the room alive would not bankrupt the other, even if the "mistake" in Rome were
never cleared up.

The banker never seriously considered the possibility that Perennius was bluffing.

The mob had not done a great deal of damage, since its racket was warning enough for most potential
victims to drop their shutters or scamper out of the way. Half a dozen shopkeepers had dared a police
fine by spreading their merchandise out on the sidewalks in front of their alcoves. Anarchy had punished
them more condignly and suddenly than anything the law might have metered out. One old man moaned
in the remains of his trampled, looted woolen goods. His wife was chattering in Egyptian as she dabbed
blood from the pressure-cut in the fellow's scalp.

Perennius picked his way past them with more anger than sympathy. The Empire would work if
everyone obeyed its rules. No one knew better than the agent how great was the Empire's potential if it
would cling together, if its millions would accept what the Empire offered them in the knowledge that it
was more than they would get from chaos if each went his own way.