"Huff, Tanya - What Ho, Magic!" - читать интересную книгу автора (Huff Tanya)

"Okay, Leo," he muttered, "what am I supposed to do now?"
Leo, being dead, didn't answer.
Kelly wormed her way back from the edge of the docking pit and sat up in the shelter of the door alcove. "Those irradiated morons scratched the enamel trying to break open the hatch," she growled.
Erik peered over the edge, then up at Kelly. "Don't you think we should worry more about getting past two full squads of my uncle's men?" he asked.
"That's my livelihood we're talking about, kid. No one wants to hire a ship that looks like a piece of junk." She ran her hand through her hair and her brow furrowed. "Oh yeah, speaking of business." With a minimum of contact Ц a white-knuckled grip on his shoulders and a quick release Ц she turned the boy to face her and looked him in the eye. "Do you know what a contract is?"
He nodded. "It's where you promise to do something if the other person does something for you."
"Basically," Kelly agreed. "But where I come from it's more. Contracts are about the only law we have in Company space and no one ever, ever, breaks one." She searched his eyes, making sure he understood. "You and I, we need to make a contract."
"I don't have anything to promise."
"Not now you don't, but you will. Someday, you'll be Shahinshah." Shahinshah of a decaying empire, perhaps, but over five hundred stars remained under the Imperial flag and Kelly liked doing business in the empire; it was a system absurdly easy to take advantage of. "I'll take you home and you'll pay me when you're Shahinshah. Deal?"
He thought about it. "But I don't want to go home. I want to stay with you and be a smuggler."
Kelly gritted her teeth and stopped herself from throttling in the boy. "You can't," she said shortly.
His lower lip went out. "I can do what I want. I'm the Heir to Infinity."
"But if you're the Heir to Infinity, then you have to go home and be Shahinshah."
"Why?"
"Because that's what the Heir to Infinity does. And if you're not the Heir, then you can't do what you want and you can't stay with me but you still have to go home." Taking a deep breath, she realized that the logic appropriate for an eight-year-old rather remarkably resembled the logic appropriate for customs agents.
His eyes narrowed as he considers it. "Oh, all right," he said at last. "Deal."
She held out her hand. "Touch your palm to mine." When he did, she breathed a sigh of relief. If anyone ever found out she'd gone back for the kid before they had a contract, she'd never hear the end of it. Smiling suddenly, she plucked Gripe's gun from his hand. "Now, go down there and turn yourself in."
"What!"
"They won't shoot Ц your uncle seems to want you alive Ц but they will group around you. That'll let Val know we're here and give her a clear shot a both squads at once. I'll finish off any she misses."
"What if they don't recognize me?"
"So it's a good idea, not a great one." She scrambled out of his way and swept a gracious hand toward the stairs. "Don't forget to duck."
At the top of the stairs, Erik paused and looked down into the docking pit. The twenty men in the black and blue of the Atabeg's livery were very large and very well armed. He glanced back at Kelly who gave him a thumbs-up. "No one ever, ever, breaks a contract," he reminded himself, and started his descent.
He'd left the stairs and swaggered out onto the cracked bedrock floor of the pit before anyone noticed him. Suddenly, all weapons pointed in his direction.
"Hi, guys," he chirped brightly, raising his hands above his head. "Remember me?"
"It's the Heir," breathed an Immortal and received a backhanded rebuke from his squad leader.
"It's the enemy of the Atabeg, may he live forever," corrected the leader. "Take him."
So intent were they on the boy, not one of the Immortals noticed the freighter's externals follow them as they ran. They didn't notice but Erik did. When the covers snapped off the gun ports, he hit the dirt. Nineteen of the twenty had no time to wonder why as energy beams burned them where they stood.
Missed me! thought the twentieth, diving for cover. A shot from the edge of the pit corrected him and finished the fight.
"Holy suns." Erik stood and looked around. "It worked!"
"Of course, it worked," Kelly snorted as she swerved around a pile of char. With a sharp, impatient toss of her head, she propelled him toward the ship. "But whatever your uncle pays these guys, it isn't enough."
The Atabeg stepped over the trembling and abased body of Company Commander Gripe. "Demote him," he said coldly.
His aide hurried to catch up. "Demote him to what, Most Exalted?"
"Compost."
"At once, Most Exalted."
"And when you've done that," the Atabeg's voice was inhumanly calm, "you find me that woman and the boy."
The smoke from a dozen sticks of incense rolled languidly through the air of the Shahinshah's private quarters. The Defender of Infinity lay stretched out on a massage table, receiving the loving ministrations of three of his wives while his vizier paced the length of the room and tried not to sneeze.
"Еour agent has not reported in so I can only conclude he failed. As we still have no idea who harbors your son, may His Magnificence never dim; getting to your nephew may be his only hope. I suggest we put a tracer in space at the point where we received the last broadcast from our agent and follow the energy residue of his ship. That should lead us straight to your nephew and we can proceed with eliminating him from there."
He paused and pinched his nose, his face purpling with the suppressed explosion of air. It was a capital offense to sneeze in the presence of the Beloved of the Multitudes.
"Do I have your approval, Oh Greatest of Kings Who Stops the Planets in Their Turning?"
The Shahinshah raised a pudgy hand, heavily encrusted with rings, and waved it aimlessly in the vizier's general direction. "Do what you wish, Sakar," he sighed. "Whatever happens, it won't be the first son I've lost. Perhaps I shall try to get another this evening."
Two of his wives giggled. The third, safely out of sight, rolled her eyes.
Kelly had just brought the Valkyrie back into real space when Erik crashed into the control room.
"Val says you once broke the bank at Cortellno three nights in a row!"
Kelly sighed. "Val makes it sound more interesting than it was."
"My grandmother has played there and she says that Cortellno can't be broken." Erik threw himself into the other couch, eyebrows red exclamation points. "You must be some kind of a cardsharp!"
"Not me, kid." Her lips twisted into a strange sort of a smile. "My brother's the cardsharp in the family; I'm strictly amateur. Now, sit still. We're coming up on a ship."
Against a backdrop of stars, and not many of them, the other ship showed as a tiny silver triangle.
"Where are we?"
"It's sort of a trading center for ships out of Company space," Kelly explained. "Sometimes we need to meet away fromЕfromЕ"
"Away from the law," Val finished dryly.