"04 - Emperor and Clown 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Dave)

It was all so obvious now. Too late.
And the boy ... man ... Rap?
At best he was chained in some awful dungeon somewhere, under peril of the
sultan's jealousy. At worst he was already dead, although she feared that death
itself might not be the worst.
Even that last awful night in Krasnegar, Kadolan should have realized that a
stableboy who knew a word of power was no ordinary churl. And somewhere on his
journey he had learned a second word; he had become an adept, a superman. That
was an astounding feat in itself, but even two words of power could not save him
now.
To and fro ... to and fro ... Kadolan paced and paced.
She had been Inosolan's chaperon and counselor. She should have given better
advice.
She had tried, she recalled. She had been inclined to trust Rasha, where
Inosolan had not. What better things might then have happened? Who now could
know? Kadolan had warned against the flight into the desert, which had ended so
ignominiously, in defeat and forced return. But Kadolan had not been insistent
enough.
So Inosolan was doomed to a life of harem captivity, bearing sons in an alien
land. Her kingdom was lost, abandoned by the impire and the wardens to the
untender mercies of the Nordland thanes.
And the boy Rap was dead or dying, and that guilt tortured Kadolan worse than
anything.
Love or mere loyalty, neither should be so cruelly repaid.
She had never put much stock in magic. She was not a very imaginative person,
she knew, and she had never quite believed in the occult-not even when she had
sensed the death of Inosolan's mother and gone racing back to Krasnegar, fleeing
from Kinvale at three days' notice to catch the last ship before winter. In
retrospect, that had been a miraculous premonition, and yet she had refused to
believe, she had never told anyone. Holindarn had accepted that her arrival was
a merely a fortunate coincidence. Inosolan had been too young to wonder about it
at all.
The balcony had grown insufferably hot below the weltering sun. Reeling with
weariness from her endless pacing, Kadolan tottered indoors and sank into a
padded chair.
By the palace standards, her new quarters were almost an insult-old and shabby,
absurdly overfurnished with ugly statuary in the style of the XIVth Dynasty,
which must be loot from some long-forgotten campaign. It was almost as if she
had been locked up in a boxroom until someone figured out what to do with her.
Why, oh, why would Inosolan not answer her messages?
Had they ever reached her?

3
Farther down the hillside, in the middle of the city, evening shadows lay cool
and blue across Sheik Elkarath's jeweled garden, and the air was fragrant with
jasmine and mimosa. The earliest stars twinkled, fountains tinkled.
Master Skarash was definitely tipsy now. He reached for the wine bottle and
discovered that it was empty. He tossed it into a hibiscus. How many did make?
What did it matter? What was the cost of a few bottles of wine against the
profits to be made from a major business partnership? Opportunities like this