"Lynn Flewelling - Raven's Cut" - читать интересную книгу автора (Flewelling Lynn)

sharp knife of his and made the cut. He wouldn't let me watch what he did after that, but pushed me
away and bent over the body, making a low sniffling noise. I began to guess, then. I'd heard of assassins
who got hard in the cods when they killed, so I figured Raven was one of these, and ashamed for me to
see. After a moment he cut his hank of hair and tucked it away.
"Why is it you do that?" I asked about the hair, pretending like I hadn't noticed the rest.
"To remember them by," he said, all smiles, same as before.
He kept at it, too, until Master had a stern talk with him about making a show of things and leaving
identifying marks. Sometimes our clients wanted things showy, but then it was their choice what was
done. The bits of hair might go unnoticed, but Raven's cut was just too regular for safety.
"You're a great snuffer, an artist, and artists have their pride," Master told him, calm as always. "But this
has got to stop, for your sake and ours. You don't want to get us into trouble, now, do you? What about
Skut here? You wouldn't want to bring the Watch down on his head just to satisfy your vanity, eh?"
That seemed to get through to him. He swore on the Four he wouldn't do a thing that would hurt "the
sweet boy," as he always called me.
If he harbored any ill feelings about this curtailing of his style, he took it out on his victims. On our next
job he broke the man's neckтАФtwisted the head right around so the poor bastard was looking out over
his own ass when we left him. The next time he slammed the man's head against a stone wall until the
skull was pulped like a melon, breathing hard and snuffling all the time.
He was different after that, not happy like he had been before. In fact, as autumn went into winter, he got
so low-spirited we were all worried for him. He'd fall into black moods after a job, and hole up in that
bare little room of his to sulk.
That was a harsh winter, the worst in years. We were up to our asses in snow, and how the wind blew!
It put a damper on business for a few months, and we all started to feel a bit sulky ourselves.
One bitter cold night I woke to find Raven sitting on the edge of my bed, resting one big hand on my
chest, right over that spot he favored. It scared the piss out of me, until I saw the sadness in his eyes.
"I like to kill, Skut!" he said, and the quavering of his voice nearly broke my heart. I knew he meant
killing in his own special way. To tell you the truth, it made me a bit nervous, this habit of his, but he was
my pick, my recruit, and my friend, too. I hated to see him so miserable.
"Well," I whispered, hoping to Bilairy I was doing right. "Maybe you could do a few on your own, if you
get my meaning." That lit him right up. "Only keep it quiet!" I warned, not entirely comfortable with the
gleam this put in his eye. "Dump 'em in the harbor with rocks on, for hell's sake. You don't want Master
hearing of spare bodies lying about with your mark on them."
I thought I'd fixed things up right. We could have changed his name to Lark, cheerful as he was after that.
On the job he killed to order, neat-handed as a Helm Street tailor. I never knew when he slipped out on
his own, or how often, except that some mornings he seemed in higher spirits than usual. If I worried
about anything, it was that he'd freeze to death, out on his own some night. We lost Marta in one storm.
By the Four, you never saw such a winter.
Rhiminee hardly ever had much snow, and none that ever stayed long, but that year it fell and fell, and the
winds blew it up into drifts high as houses. I re-member watching children sliding down drifts from
second-floor windows. The snow stayed on like that until the spring rains, and then it melted down like
dirty sugar loaves. That's when I got the first inkling of how wrong I'd been in my judgment of Raven.
Bodies showed up in those melting drifts, and more floated up through the breaking ice in the harbor.
They were found in cellars that had been buried all winter long, in alleys, under bridgesтАФupper and
lower city alike. There are always some like that, left over from murders in the long dark months, but
nothing like this! A regular plague of corpsesтАФsometimes five or six a day all during the thaw.
It was soon clear to even the most thick-headed Watchman that a good many of them had met the same
end. These were all men or sturdy youths, and all had wounds on their chests. Most of them were from
the poorest parts of the city, men who wouldn't be missed. No one thought to count up stabbed women,
but Marta was among them, I have no doubt.
But all that came out later. This was early days yet, but as soon as I heard the first rumor of it, I was off