"Doris Egan - Ivory 01 - The Gate of Ivory" - читать интересную книгу автора (Egan Doris)

Julia was gone, my friends were goneтАФI did have some money, because
they'd left it for me at the hotel. I've spent the last two years trying to
make enough money to buy passage back." And barely making enough to
live on. But if I let myself see how impossible it was, I'd go crazy.

"Have you made friends here?"

"I don't see that that's any of your business, gracious sir."

He brought out another coin. This was a good day for me.

"No real friends, no relatives, no guildmates. No one to care if I live or
die, which was a problem when my tourist badge expired." Among the
higher classes of Ivory, murder is considered a practical craft, rather like
needlepoint. A noble who wants to keep his hand in might pick off a
passing stranger on the way home from a hard day in government.
Tourists are exempt, by Imperial decree; they wear large red badges,
prominently displayed. When mine expired, flickering to a burnt-out
black, my spirits went out with it.

"I want to hire you," he said, a slight variation on his first statement: I
might want to hire you.
 "For what?"

"To read cards. Not these," he said, seeing my eyes go to the Tarot deck
in front of me, and dismissing it with a contemptuous gesture. "I have my
own cards. Come with me and I'll test you on them."

This could get too deep for me to swim out. "Gracious sir, I'd better tell
you right now that I 'm as phony as any other magician on Ivory. I can't
read cards. I just make them up."

"You think our sorcerers are fakes." He smiled. "You've been here two
years, but you still haven't learned much about Ivory. Rest easy, your lack
of talent doesn't matter. The virtue is in my cards, not in the person using
them."

He put out his hand and helped me up.

And so I met Ran Cormallon. His office was a house in a street I had
never seen before, in a quiet part of town. The furnishings told me he was
wealthy, but I had known that much from the way he was dressed. There
were six beautifully appointed roomsтАФtapestries, paintings, computer
screens in cabinets of inlaid marble-woodтАФall empty of people. We walked
over wine-colored rugs embroidered with intricate calligraphy.

The innermost room of the top floor contained one large marble-topped
desk with one chair behind it. I thought that Cormallon would sit, but he
motioned me to it. "Open the drawer." I did so, slowly. A corner of gold
caught my eyeтАФa case for a pack of cards? Seeing my hesitance,