"David Freer - The Forlorn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Freer Dave)

A bilberry is an innocuous thing on its own. Dusty purple and the size of a fingernail. However, several
hundred thousand of them, if they materialize inside someone's body, are more deadly than any toxin can
be. Blis didn't even scream. There was no air in his lungs to do so.

For long moments she simply stared at the remains of the man lying in a pool of his own blood into which
was slowly seeping a deep purple juice. Then she looked at her own purple and red splattered arms,
staggered away, and threw up. For a while she simply wept and shivered. Gradually a measure of
emotionally washed-out calm descended on her. She looked at the door. The guard would be expecting
sounds of pain. She screamed. It was not difficult to put real anguish into that scream. She tiptoed across
and bolted the door as quietly as she could. The door was a heavy oak one, and the bolt a solid bar of
steel. It was intended to isolate her apartment from possible assassins, but it would never stop a
determined assault with a battering ram. She knew she had very little time.
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Her father, on one of those occasions when he had been pleased with her, had said that she had a
scalpel mind. She was accustomed to thinking herself far more intelligent than everybody else. It didn't
feel that way now. She dithered.

Could she bribe the guards? But if she failed, they'd break in here. She hugged herself in desperate
self-pity. Could she hide? If she was not apparent, they'd tear this place apart. Under the bed or in the
wardrobes, the only hiding places she could think of, would be the first places they'd search. Could she
escape? Her apartments were six stories up. Could she arm herself, at least? She looked across at Blis's
dagger, which lay in a pool of swirled purple and red, and retched. It took her a good few more minutes
to decide what to do. She tore strips of sheet and knotted them, screaming occasionally for good
measure. She would hang the sheet rope out of the window, andthen hide.

She opened the window, kicking off her jewelled slippers and climbing onto the broad sill. There were
bars on the outside. For a moment her heart fell. She'd forgotten those. Careful inspection suggested that
she could get through them. She tied the sheet rope to them and dropped it down. It was still a long way
short. She'd better just try and see if she could actually squeeze between the bars. Resolutely not looking
down, she searched for the best way. The bars were welded into a sort of outwardly bulging box,
allowing the window to swing open to the outside. Where the bars were attached to the wall there was
just a little more space. She'd just see if her head and shoulders could go through . . .

She was committed, and more than halfway through when the door to her apartments was blown apart
in a burst of purple fire. Fear made the rest easy. She was perched on the window ledge outside the bars
and out of direct sight when the Morkth burst into what had once been her withdrawing room. A few
moments later there were the sounds of combat, but this too lasted only seconds. Then there was silence.

Suddenly, just as she was thinking about going in again she heard more sounds. Running footsteps came
to the open window, and then she heard the rasping sibilant speech of the Morkth. The words, as
always, were hard to make out. But they definitely included the order to search below. She looked down
for the first time since she'd begun to squeeze out between the bars. She could see the streets from here.
They were full of fighting. The black-clad Morkth-man brigades were everywhere. She didn't want to be
down there, even if her frail sheet rope had reached. Perhaps she could go sideways or . . . up. And
she'd better make up her mind, quickly. At the moment folk were too busy to look up, but even now