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

drained itself, then disappeared. "Very good. Thank you. Cheated, now? My, oh my. Stolen?
Hee. What could you have that I need?"
"It's only we who need it, Mizraith, and I don't know why you would want to cheat us out
of itтАФespecially me. You can't have many commissions more lucrative than mine."
"You might be surprised, Lastel. You might be surprised. Tea!" The girl decanted a cup
of tea and brought it over, as if in a trance. Mizraith took it and the girl sat at his side,
playing with her hair. "Stolen, eh? What? You haven't told me. What?"
"Krrf," he said.
 Mizraith gestured negligently with his free hand, and a small snowstorm of gray powder
drifted to the rug and disappeared.
"No." One-Thumb rubbed his eyes. When he looked at the pillows, they were pillows;
when he looked away, they turned to blocks of gold. "Not conjured krrf." It had the same
gross effect but no depth, no nuance.
"Twenty grimales of black krrf from Caronne," Amoli said.
"Stolen from both of us," One-Thumb said. "It was sent to me by a man in Ranke,
payment for services rendered. Your son Marype picked it up at the caravan depot, hidden
inside a cheese. He extracted it somehow and sold it to this woman, AmoliтАФ"
"Amoli? You're the mistress of a ... of the Slippery Lily?"
"No, the Lily Garden. The other place is in the Maze, a good place for pox and slatterns."
One-Thumb continued. "After he sold it to her, it disappeared. He brought it to me last
night. This evening, it disappeared from my own strongbox."
"Marype couldn't do that," Mizraith said.
"The conjuring part, I know he couldn'tтАФwhich is why I say that you must have been
behind it. Why? A joke?"
Mizraith sipped. "Would you like tea?"
"No. Why?"
He handed the half-empty cup to the girl. "More tea." He watched her go to the samovar.
"I bought her for the walk. Isn't that fine? From behind, she could be a boy."
"Please, Mizraith. This is financial ruin for Amoli and a gross insult to me."
"A joke, eh? You think I make stupid jokes?"
"I know that you do things for reasons I cannot comprehend," he said tactfully. "But this
is seriousтАФ"
"I know that!" He took the tea and fished a flower petal from it, rubbed it away. "More
serious than you think, if my son is involved. Did it all disappear? Is there any tiny bit of it
left?"
"The pinch you gave to my eunuch," Amoli said. "He may still have it."
"Fetch it," Mizraith said. He stared slack jawed into his tea for a minute. "I didn't do it,
Lastel. Some other did." "With Marype's help."
"Perhaps unwilling. We shall see.... Marype is adept enough to have sensed the worth of
the cheese, and I think he is worldly enough to recognize a block of rare krrf and know
where to sell it. By himself, he would not be able to charm it away."
"You fear he's betrayed you?"
Mizraith caressed the girl's long hair. "We have had some argument lately. About his
progress . . . he thinks I am teaching him too slowly, withholding . . . mysteries. The truth is,
spells are complicated. Being able to generate one is not the same as being able to control it;
that takes practice and maturity. He sees what his brothers can do and is jealous, I think."
"You can't know his mind directly?"
"No. That's a powerful spell against strangers, but the closer you are, to a person, the
harder it is. Against your own blood . . . no. His mind is closed to me."
Amoli returned with the square of parchment. She held it out apologetically. "He shared it