"Diane Duane - Feline Wizards 2 - Majesty's Wizardly Service" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duane Diane)

Shadwell to change for the little spur line to Tower Gateway, and
stood there waiting for a few minutes. All around were four- or five-
story brick buildings, their brick all leached and streaked with many
years' weather, tired-looking: scattered among them were council
housing, ten-story blocks of flats done in pebble-dash and painted
concrete, looking just as weary. These were not slums any more: not
quite ... though his father never tired of telling Patel and his
mother how lucky they were to be able to afford someplace better. It
was true enough, though it meant Patel had a three-quarter-hour
commute to school every morning instead of a fifteen-minute walk.

No matter: today he was grateful enough not to have to walk more than
a few minutes carrying the Book From Hell. The train for Tower
Gateway came rumbling along, stopped and opened its doors. It was
crowded, and Patel slipped in through the door and put the book down
on the floor, bracing it between his shins lest it fall on someone's
foot and get him involved in what would probably be a completely
justified lawsuit for grievous bodily harm.

The train swung south the few blocks to Tower Gateway. There Patel
got out with his burden, walked along the platform and took the
escalator up through the tubelike corridor that led to the overpass
which avoided the mainline BR tracks: then down the other side again,
and out across the open concrete plaza from which jutted several
large slabs of ancient wall, not much more than fieldstones mortared
together -- a remnant of the old days when the City of London was all
the London there was, and that tiny square mileage had a proper
defensive wall of its own. Nothing to do, of course, with the other
walled edifice just this side of the river ...

As he went down the stairs to the underpass tunnel which dove under
the traffic stream of Minories Street, Patel glanced up and caught a
glimpse of crenellated tower against the clouds: one of the metal
windvane-banners mounted on a pinnacle of the Tower's outer wall
stood frozen in mid-swing against the wind, then spun suddenly to
point west in a gust off the Thames. Sky's getting nasty, Patel
thought. Might rain. Hope it stops by the time I'm above ground again
...

He headed through the underpass, breathing a little harder now from
the weight he was carrying: am I getting out of shape? I can't wait
to get rid of this thing ... and up the stairs on the far side: past
some more "islands" of old preserved City wall, and then down again
into the Tower Hill Underground station.

He pushed his train ticket into the turnstile before him, waited for
the machine to spit it out again. The turnstile's oblong vertical
pads snapped open before him as he plucked the ticket out of the
machine's steel mouth, and Patel pushed through, along with about a
hundred other people, making his way toward the stairs leading to the