"Robin Hobb - Assassin 1 - Assassin' s Apprentice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hobb Robin)

my attention as his keener senses overrode my duller ones.
Kerry and I would be sent to fetch a navigator gone to say good-bye to his
wife, or to bear a sampling of spices to a buyer at a shop. The harbormaster
might send us running to let a crew know some fool had tied the lines wrong and
the tide was about to abandon their ship. But I liked best the errands that took
us into the taverns. There the storytellers and gossips plied their trades. The
storytellers told the classic tales, of voyages of discovery and crews who
braved terrible storms and of foolish captains who took down their ships with
all hands. I learned many of the traditional ones by heart, but the tales I
loved best came not from the professional storytellers but from the sailors
themselves. These were not the tales told at the hearths for all to hear, but
the warnings and tidings passed from crew to crew as the men shared a bottle of
brandy or a loaf of yellow pollen bread.
They spoke of catches they'd made, nets full to sinking the boat almost, or
of marvelous fish and beasts glimpsed only in the path of a full moon as it cut
a ship's wake. There were stories of villages raided by Outislanders, both on
the coast and on the outlying islands of our Duchy, and tales of pirates and
battles at sea and ships taken by treachery from within. Most gripping were the
tales of the Red-Ship Raiders, Outislanders who both raided and pirated, and
attacked not only our ships and towns but even other Outislander ships. Some
scoffed at the notion of the red-keeled ships, and mocked those who told of
Outislander pirates turning against other pirates like themselves.
But Kerry and I and Nosy would sit under the tables with our backs braced
against the legs, nibbling penny sweet loaves, and listen wide-eyed to tales of
red-keeled ships with a dozen bodies swinging from their yardarms, not dead, no,
but bound men who jerked and shrieked when the gulls came down to peck at them.
We would listen to deliciously scary tales until even the stuffy taverns seemed
chilling cold, and then we would race down to the docks again, to earn another
penny.
Once Kerry, Molly, and I built a raft of driftwood logs and poled it about
under the docks. We left it tied up there, and when the tide came up, it
battered loose a whole section of dock and damaged two skiffs. For days we
dreaded that someone would discover we were the culprits. And one time a tavern
keeper boxed Kerry's ears and accused us both of stealing. Our revenge was the
stinking herring we wedged up under the supports of his tabletops. It rotted and
stank and made flies for days before he found it.
I learned a smattering of trades in my travels: fish buying, net mending,
boat building, and idling. I learned even more of human nature. I became a quick
judge of who would actually pay the promised penny for a message delivered, and
who would just laugh at me when I came to collect. I knew which baker could be
begged from, and which shops were easiest to thieve from. And through it all,
Nosy was at my side, so bonded to me now that I seldom separated my mind
completely from his. I used his nose, his eyes, and his jaws as freely as my
own, and never thought it the least bit strange.
So the better part of the summer passed. But one fine day, with the sun
riding a sky bluer than the sea, my good fortune came at last to an end. Molly,
Kerry, and I had pilfered a fine string of liver sausages from a smokehouse and
were fleeing down the street with the rightful owner in pursuit. Nosy was with
us, as always. The other children had come to accept him as a part of me. I
don't think it ever occurred to them to wonder at our singleness of mind. Newboy