"Clayton Emery - Lost Empires 03 - Star of Cursrah" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emery Clayton)

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 Dedicated to
the All-Seeing and Ever-Unwavering Sages of the Publican's Library in the Rye
 1
The Year of the Gauntlet (1369 DR)

"Here he comes."
"Reiver .. . what'sтАФhey!"
Amber and Hakiim jumped back as their friend dashed by. Bony elbows and knees jutted from
Reiver's ragged clothes, and bare feet slapped the tar-dappled, salt-streaked planks of the wharf.
Pouches on his belt flopped, and a bundle tied with cod line thumped against his back. Red-faced,
short of breath, he nevertheless grinned as he passed his two friends.
"Things to do . . ." he said. "Meet me back here."
"Hoy, you lot," bellowed someone down the docks. "Stop that thief!"
Amber and Hakiim hopped onto a pyramid of cotton bales to see over the sailors, dockhands, and
porters' mules that crowded the wharf. "He's done it again," Hakiim laughed. "Come on, let's catch
him."
Laughing, Amber held the jeweled jambiya in her crimson sash and streaked after Hakiim. She
flicked her kaffiyeh aside. To catch Reiver, she'd need breath to run, and the headscarf was blowing in
her face.
Memnon, also called the Gateway to the Desert, the Scarlet City, and the City of Soldiers, was a
jumble of contrasts. Squat buildings of brilliant glazed bricks were surmounted by tall, thin towers
with domes of gold leaf. Walls were thick, gates high and solid, streets narrow and crowded, yet
everywhere stretched arches and fluted pillars and stone-cut fretwork that gave an airy effect, as if the
city might take wing. Every flat surface was decorated with a painting or mosaic, and every pocket
that could hold dirt sprouted roses or sunflowers or honeysuckle vines coiling toward a sky of molten
gold.
The city was a living tribute to its creator, the Great Pasha Memnon, a monstrous, fire-breathing
genie hunter. Memnon's efreet armies had burned down forests so Shanatar's dwarves might build a
city in his name, and in that city, genies were painted and etched everywhere. Efreet statues supported
iron braziers where crabs boiled and peppers sizzled, oathbinder genies frowned from building-
spanning mosaics overlooking the market's transactions, marids clung to high corners as gargoyle
waterspouts, harim servant genies glared from doorknockers, even noble djinn swung as string puppets
from the kiosks of toymakers.
Memnon was busy and crowded, but Reiver was as tall as he was skinny, and his kaffiyeh a twist
of rags every color of the rainbow, so Amber and Hakiim could spot him bobbing amidst the market
day crowd. Accustomed to pursuit, Reiver cut into the first cross street and dashed into the maze of the
city bazaar, the Khanduq of the Coin-mother, that sprawled for five blocks and twisted upward two
and three stories. Zigzagging nimbly as a goat on a mountainside, the thief cut around a rug merchant
and ducked into an alley.
Hakiim gasped, "We'll never catch him now. He knows the alleys better than any cat."