"Jane S. Fancher - Dance of the Rings 3 - Ring of Destiny" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fancher Jane S)

The flask tapped his elbow. He took if and another swig,
ignoring the expectant look on the lump's face.
Twenty-seven. Damned baby. Damned babe who'd been
calling the shots for the entire Syndicate of Nodes for ten
years.
As he'd called the shots in the Crypt that night. With
what he now recognized as typical arrogance, Mikhyel had
played to that scutly prejudice, seamlessly slipping into the
part of a gutter whore, and subsequently controlling, such
as they could be controlled, the majority of the scuts, buy-
ing him and his brothers one night of peace, time for them
to get free of the Crypt. But arrogance was all that had
connected the pale, thin, beardless young hillerman to the
man the underworld knew as Hell's Barrister.
A name, so rumor had it, given him by his own brother.
That sleek, dark hair and hiller-smooth jaw had thrown
them all, including Ganfrion, and he'd grown up in the
Khoramali, in a hiller village where his large, hairy body
had made him as out of place as dunMheric had been in
Rhomatum's Crypt.
That beardso indelibly part of the Barrister image
had just as mysteriously reappeared, much too soon after
Mikhyel escaped the Crypt. Ganfrion had assumed, on that
first meeting after his release from the Crypt, that the beard
was fake, applied to disguise an otherwise embarrassing
hiller connection to the first family of Rhomatum . . . would
still believe that if he .hadn't personally watched Mikhyel's
valet, Raulind, trim and shave it on a daily basis.
That beardwas just one more in a long line of the
mysteries that surrounded his employer.
What was Mikhyel dunMheric like?
"Lives up to his name," Ganfrion answered at last, then
cleared his throat and spat, aiming at a nearby rock.
"Which name?" the lump asked quickly. Too quickly for
him this morning.
The damp splotch traced a mostly red path down the
stone.
"Take your pick."
His employer was above all else a Rhomandi. Mikhyel
lived and breathed for the City named for his ancestor. He
was more the Rhomandi in that sense than his legally enti-
tled brother had yet proven to be. And he was a dun-
Mheric: definitely a man formed by his cursed father.
And Hell's Barrister? Mikhyel dunMheric was as fair . . .
"nd as ruthless . . . as any man ever birthed.
"I wouldn't cross him, if I were you." Ganfrion drew
hard on the flask and passed it again.
"And you gave the oath." The raised flask was a silent
toast to his perceived daring.
Gave? He wouldn't put the matter that way. He'd had