"Diane Duane - Feline Wizards 1 - The Book Of Night With Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duane Diane)

along the wall, foot before foot, no hurry. This segment of her road, the first used each day setting out and
the last to manage before getting home, was also the trickiest: no more than two inches' width of brick to
put her feet on as she went, nothing to catch her should she fall. Once she almost had, and afterward had
spent nearly half an hour washing and regaining her composure, horrified at what might have happened, or
worse, who might have seen her. Wasted time, she thought now, amused at her younger self. But we all
learn....
At the corner of the building Rhiow paused, looked around. Soft city-noise drifted up to her the hoot of
horns over on Third, someone's car alarm wailing disconsolately to itself four or five blocks north, the
rattle of trays being unloaded at the bakery eastward and around the corner. All around her, the sheer walls
of other apartment and office buildings turned blind walls and windows to the sight of a small black cat
perched on a two-inch-wide brick, ninety feet above the sidewalk of Seventieth Street. No one saw her.
But that was life in iAh'hah, after all: no one looked up or paid attention to any but their own affairs.
Except for a small group of public servants, of whom she was one. But Rhiow spent no more time thinking
about that than was necessary, especially not here, where she stuck out like an eye on a week-old fish
head. Her business was not to be noticed, and by now, she was good at it.
She measured the jump down to the parapet. No matter that she had done it a thousand times before: it was
the thousandth jump and one, misjudged, that would cheat you out of a spare life you had been saving for
later. Rhiow crouched, tensed, jumped; then came down on the cracked foot-wide concrete top of the
parapet, exactly where she liked to. She made the smaller jump down onto the surface of the roof, looked
around again, her tail twitching.
No one there. Rhiow stepped across the coarse cracked gravel as quickly as she could: she disliked the
stuff, which hurt her feet. She passed wire vent grilles and fan housings making a low moaning roar,
blasting hot air up and out of the air-conditioning systems below; summer was coming on, and the
unseasonably hot weather this last week had turned the city-roar abruptly louder. The smells had changed,
too, as a result. The air up here reeked of the disinfectant that the biggest ehhif-houses put in their
ventilating systems these days and also stank of lubricating oil, dust settled since last winter, sucked-out
food scents, mouth-smoke, garbage stored in the cellars until pickup day ...
After that, the fumes and steams coming up from the city street seemed fresh by comparison. Rhiow
jumped up on the streetside parapet, looking down. Seventieth reached east to the river, west to where her
view was blocked past Third by scaffolding for a new building and digging in the street itself, something
to do with the utility tunnels. The street was an asphalt-stitched pattern of paved and repaved blacktop,
pierced by the occasional gently steaming tunnel-cover, lined with the inevitable two long lines of parked
cars, punctuated by the ehhif walking calmly here and there. Some of them had houiff on the leash:
Rhiow's nose wrinkled, for even up here she could smell what the houiff left in the street, no matter how
their ehhif cleaned up after them.
No matter, she thought. It's just the way the city is. And better get on with it, if you want it to stay that way.

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 THE BOOK OF NIGHT WITH MOON



Rhiow sat down, curled her tail around her forefeet, and composed herself. Amusing, to be making the
world safe for houiff to foul the sidewalks in, but that was part of what she did.
Her eyes drooped shut, almost closed, so that she could more clearly see, and be seen by, the less physical
side of things. I will meet the cruel and the cowardly today, she thought, liars and the envious, the
uncaring and unknowing: they will be all around. But their numbers and their carelessness do not mean I
have to be like them. For my own part, I know my job; my commission comes from Those Who Are. My
paw raised is Their paw on the neck of the Serpent, now and always....
There was more to the formal version of the meditation, but Rhiow was far enough along in her work now,