"Greenwood, Ed - Elminster 05 - Elminster's Daughter_v1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Greenwood Ed)

Six merchants sat in those chairs on this chill night in the early
spring of the Year of Rogue Dragons, staring stonily at each other. The
glittering glances of five of them suggested that the health of the
sixth man, who sat alone at one end of the table, would not continue to
flourish for more than a few breaths longer had it not been for the
presence of the two impassive bodyguards who stood watchfully by his
chair, cocked and loaded hand-crossbows held ready and free hands
hovering near sword-hilts.

That sixth man said something, slowly and bitingly.


Outside, in the night, a shadow moved. An unseen witness to the
merchants' meeting leaned closer to the only gap in the shutters across
the windows of that upper room. Clinging head-downward to the carved
stone harpy roof-truss nearest to the shutter, the shadow sacrificed as
much balance as she dared, and strained to hear. Her slender arms were
already quivering in the struggle to keep herself from plunging to the
dark, cobbled street below.


"There are really no more excuses left to you, sirs," the man who sat
apart told the others, smirking. "I will have my coins this night -- or
the deeds to your shops."

"But --" one of the men burst out, and then bit off whatever else he'd
been going to say and looked helplessly down at the bare table before
him, face dark with anger.

"So you'll ruin us, Caethur?" the next man man asked, his voice
trembling. "You'd rather turn us out onto the streets than bleed us for
another season? When you could set your hook at a higher rate, grant us
more time, and keep us in debt forever, paying you all our days and
yielding you far more coin than our stones are worth?"

Secure in the strength of the two murderous bodyguards at his back,
Caethur leaned forward with a widening -- and not very nice -- smile on
his face and replied triumphantly, "Yes."

He leaned back in his chair, very much at his ease, steepled his hands,
and murmured over the resulting line of fingertips, "It will give me
great pleasure, Hammuras, to ruin you. And you too, Nael. And especially
you, Kamburan."

He moved his eyes in his motionless, smiling face to the other pair of
seated merchants and added with a sigh, "Yet it almost pains me to visit
the same fate upon you two gentlesirs. Why, I'd almost be inclined to
give you that extra season Hammuras speaks of, if, say, something
happened to still Kamburan's oversharp tongue forever. Why --"