"Simon R. Green - Hawk and Fisher 2 - Winner Takes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Simon R)

Fisher shrugged quickly. "It's just been a bad day, that's all."

"IsobelтАж"

"Forget it, Hawk." Fisher shot him a sudden smile. "At least we'll never want for
work, while the Northside still stands."

Hawk and Fisher turned down Martyrs' Alley, and made their way out onto the
Harbourside Promenade. The market stalls quickly disappeared, replaced by
elegant shop-fronts with porticoed doors and fancy scrollwork round the
windows, and an altogether better class of customers. The Promenade had been
"discovered" by the Quality, and its fortunes had prospered accordingly. Of late it

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had become quite the done thing for the minor aristocracy to take the air on the
Promenade, and enjoy a little fashionable slumming. There were goods for sale on
the edge of the Northside to tempt even the most jaded palates, and it did no harm
to a gentleman's reputation to be able to drop the odd roguish hint of secret
dealings and watch the ladies blush prettily at the breath of scandal. Not that a
gentleman ever went into the Northside alone, of course. Each member of the
Quality had his own retinue of bodyguards, and they were always careful to be
safely out of the Northside before dark.

But during the daylight hours the Promenade was an acknowledged meeting place
for the more adventurous members of the Quality, and as such it attracted all
kinds of well-dressed parasites and hangers-on. Scandalmongers did a busy trade
in all the latest gossip, and confidence tricksters strolled elegantly down the
Promenade, eyeing the Quality in much the same way as a cruising shark might
observe a passing shoal of minnows. Hawk and Fisher knew most of them by
sight, but made no move to interfere. If people were foolish enough to throw away
good money on wild-sounding schemes, that was their business and nothing to do
with the Guards. Hawk and Fisher were just there to keep an eye on things, and
see that no one stepped out of line.

For their part, the Quality ignored Hawk and Fisher. Guards were supposed to
know their place, and Hawk and Fisher were notorious throughout Haven for not
having the faintest idea of what their place was. In the past, members of the
Quality who'd tried to put them in their place had been openly laughed at and, on
occasion, severely manhandled. Which was perhaps yet another reason why Hawk
and Fisher had spent the past five years patrolling the worst section of Haven.

The sun shone brightly over the Promenade, and the Quality blossomed under its
warmth like so many eccentrically colored flowers. Youngsters wearing party
colors hawked the latest editions of the Haven newspapers, carrying yet more
details of candidates' backgrounds, foul-ups, and rumored sexual preferences. A
boys' brigade of pipes and drums made its way along the Promenade, following a
gorgeously colored Conservative banner. The Conservatives believed in starting