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

and not even a laughable challenge to most.

To come to their notice -- save as a passing amusement -- would be to
die.

So here she crouched, desperate for coins to buy food for her belly and
all too apt, these days, to fall into rages.

Rage is something a thief who expects to live to see the dawn can ill
afford.

She sighed soundlessly. Oh, she was lithe and acrobatic enough to prowl
the rooftops, but not comely enough to seek the warm and easier coin --
hers if she could dance unclad inside festhalls. No, she was just one
more lonely outlander scrambling to make a dishonest living on the
streets of Waterdeep. Scrambling because she lacked the weapons of a
noble name or a shop of her own to make forging a dishonest living
comparatively easy.

Scowling, Narnra drew forth the purse she'd snatched earlier in that
street fight in Dock Ward. A gang of thieves, that must have been, to
set upon two merchants that way, and she'd raced in and plucked their
prize, so they'd be looking for her...

All for three gold coins -- mismatched, from as many cities, but all
heavy and true metal -- six silvers, four coppers, and a claim-token to
a lockbox somewhere in Faerun that she knew not. Well, they would have
to serve her.

From inside the top of her boot she drew a larger yet lighter purse,
drew open its throat-thong with two fingers, checked that the cloak was
laid beside her in just the right position, and shifted herself a
fingerlength closer to the edge of the roof, ducking low.

So far as she could tell, the moneylender had no more guards left. He
was wearing some sort of daggerclaw, shielded from idle eyes by a cloak
he was carrying draped over that arm, but he moved like a man wary and
alone. He'd hastened through Lathin's Cut to reach the High Road, and
there waited in the first deep doorway for a Watch patrol to pass, and
fallen in close behind it. He looked like any respectable merchant
caught in the wrong part of the city late at night and trying to wend
his way safely home.

If he was going to avoid the scrutiny of the standing Watchpost ahead,
where the great roads met, he would have to turn aside just below her,
in only a few paces more. His gaze flicked upward, and Narnra held her
breath and kept very still, hoping she looked like a rooftop gargoyle.
Caethur strode on, slowing and stepping wide so as to look around the
corner, then drawing in toward it, to duck around close to the wall.