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

honored their contracts. I'd work for them myself if they made the offer.
For certain, if it was that young sparklehawk who was here today doing
the offering." She grinned. Irsa was fifty-eight; she had nine children, and
about as many teeth. "I don't ask questions," she went on, "no, I was well
brought up. But if he's paid you already, that's a good sign."

I'd trust Irsa's judgment about the ways of Ivory before my own, or in
fact before anyone's I'd met so far. I said, "What about my membership in
the Association? If I let it lapse, will I be able to get in again?"

She shrugged. "It's a risk. If youтАФ" A man in a red embroidered robe
leapt suddenly on an older man in brown who had been fingering the
bronze cups in an adjoining stall. The two fell, pushing Irsa's cart back
and upsetting one of her piles of fruit. She pulled the cart back farther as
they scrabbled on the ground. She was standing perfectly still, her eyes
following two rolling pellfruit across the dirt. The man in red had a
hotpencil, which he pressed against the other's temple. The victim's face
contorted. "It's not fair," he said, in a shaking voice. "You
weren'tтАФsupposed toтАФ"

"I was within touching distance," said the man in red.

The other was dead. Irsa went to pick up her pellfruit, stooping with a
look of disgust on her face. "Aristocrats, both of 'em," she said as she
returned to me, one large round fruit in each hand. She raised an arm to
wipe sweat off her face with the back of her robe. "You'd think they had
better places for that sort of thing. Why, dear," she said to me, "you look a
bit scretchy. It's all this sun, makes everything seem more important than
it is. I know you weren't brought up to it, dear, but so what if two fools
choose to end their quarrel in front of us? It's happened before, it will
happen again. Ishin na' telleth!" She looked around for something to give
me to cheer me up, and ended by giving me what she gave anyone in
distress: a piece of fruit. It was all she had to offer.

I asked the innkeeper where I stayed for the name of a reliable
bathhouse. I usually carried jars of water from the well in the innyard up
to my room, but I felt I deserved a treat.

"Asuka baths are good," he said to me. I'd just paid my last week's bill,
and I could see him wondering.
 "A good day in the Square," I said, smiling. He'd been patient about my
not knowing the customs when I first came here. I could have paid him
the next three months in advance, but I didn't want him to wonder too
much. At that time I still had to carry all my money in the belt around my
waist. No Ivoran bank would accept me, since I wasn't on the Net.

"Well, it'll make up for the fluteplayer. He's off."

"The fluteplayer's gone?" I'd heard him play every evening since I came.