"Joe Haldeman - Blood Brothers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

No, not a spell, though nearly as swift, don't you think? That's the virtue of coadjuvant
poisons. The first ingredient you had along with everyone else in the sauce for the
sweetmeats. Everyone but me. The second part was in the wine, part of its sweetness.
He runs his thumbnail along the block, collecting a pinch of krrf, which he rubs between
thumb and forefinger and then sniffs. You really should try it. Makes you feel young and
brave. But then you are young and brave, aren't you.
He carefully wraps the krrf up and retrieves the gold. Excuse me. I have to go change. At
the door he hesitates. The poison is not fatal; it only leaves you paralyzed for a while.
Surgeons use it.
The man stares at the floor for a long time. He is conscious of drooling and other loss of
control.
When the host returns, he is barely recognizable. Instead of the gaudy robe, he wears a
patched and stained houppelande with a rope for a belt. The pomaded white mane is gone;
his bald scalp is creased with a webbed old scar from a swordstroke. His left thumb is
missing from the second joint. He smiles and shows almost as much gap as tooth.
I am going to treat you kindly. There are some who would pay well to use your helpless
body, and they would kill you afterwards.
He undresses the limp man, clucking, and again compliments himself for his charity and
the man for his well-kept youth. He lifts the grate in the fireplace and drops the garment
down the shaft that serves for disposal of ashes.
In another part of town, I'm known as One-Thumb; here, I cover the stump with a
taxidermist's imitation. Convincing, isn't it? He lifts the man easily and carries him through
the main door. No fault of yours, of course, but you're distantly related to the magistrate
who had my thumb off. The barking of the dogs grows louder as they descend the stairs.
Here we are. He pushes open the door to the kennels. The barking quiets to pleading
whines. Ten fighting hounds, each in an individual run, up against its feeding trough,
slavering politely, yawning gray sharp fangs.
We have to feed them separately, of course. So they don't hurt each other.
 At the far end of the room is a wooden slab at waist-level, with channels cut in its surface
leading to hanging buckets. On the wall above it, a rack with knives, cleavers, and a saw.
He deposits the mute staring man on the slab and selects a heavy cleaver.
I'm sorry, Amu. I have to start with the feet. Otherwise it's a terrible mess.

There are philosophers who argue that there is no such thing as evil qua evil; that,
discounting spells (which of course relieve an individual of responsibility), when a man
commits an evil deed he is the victim himself, the slave of his progeniture and nurturing.
Such philosophers might profit by studying Sanctuary.
Sanctuary is a seaport, and its name goes back to a time when it provided the only armed
haven along an important caravan route. But the long war ended, the caravans abandoned
that route for a shorter one, and Sanctuary declined in statusтАФbut not in population, because
for every honest person who left to pursue a normal life elsewhere, a rogue drifted in to
pursue his normal life.
Now, Sanctuary is still appropriately named, but as a haven for the lawless. Most of them,
and the worst of them, are concentrated in that section of town known as the Maze, a
labyrinth of streets and nameless alleys and no churches. There is communion, though, of a
rough kind, and much of it goes on in a tavern named the Vulgar Unicorn, which features a
sign in the shape of that animal improbably engaging itself, and is owned by the man who
usually tends bar on the late shift, an ugly sort of fellow by the name of One-Thumb.

One-Thumb finished feeding the dogs, hosed the place down, and left his estate by way