"Robert Jordan - Conan 02 - The Invincible" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jordan Robert)

Chapter II
The purple-domed and many-spired city of Shadizar was known as 'the Wicked,' but the debauches of
its high-chinned nobles, of their cruel-eyed wives and pearl-draped daughters, paled beside the everyday
life of that part of the city known as the Desert. In those narrow, twisting streets and garbage-strewn
alleys, haven of thief, kidnapper, murderer, and worse, the price of a body was silver, the price of a life
copper, the price of a soul not worth speaking of.

The big youth lounging on the bed upstairs in the tavern of Abuletes, in the heart of the Desert, had no
thought of those who might be coughing out their lives in the fetid squalor outside. His eyes, sapphire blue
beneath a square-cut black mane, were on the olive-skinned woman across the small room, who was
adjusting the gilded brass breastplates that displayed rather than concealed her swelling bilobate chest.
The rest of her attire consisted of transparent pantaloons, slashed from waist to ankle, and a gilded girdle
of no more than two fingers' breadth, slung low on her rounded hips. She wore four rings, green peridot
and red almandine on her left hand, pale blue topaz and red-green alexandrite on her right.

"Do not say it, Conan," she said without looking at him.

"Say what?" he growled. If his unlined face proclaimed that he had seen fewer than twenty winters, his
eyes at that moment said they had been Winters of iron and blood. He tossed aside his fur covering with
one massive hand and rose to dress, as always first seeing that his weapons were close to hand, the
ancient broadsword in its worn shagreen sheath, the black-bladed Karpashian dagger that he strapped to
his left forearm.

"I give to you freely what I sell to others. Can you not be satisfied with that?"

"There is no need for you to follow your profession, Semiramis. I am the best thief in Shadizar, in all
Zamora." At her laugh, his knuckles whitened on his leather-wrapped sword hilt. He had more reason for
his pride than she knew. Had he not slain wizards, destroyed liches, saved one throne and toppled
another? What other of his years could say half so much? But he had never spoken of these things even
to Semiramis, for fame was the beginning of the end for a thief.

"And for all your thievery," she chided, "what do you have? Every copper you steal drips from your
fingers like water."

"Crom! Is that why you will not be mine alone? The money?"

"You're a fool!" she spat. Before he could say more, she flounced out of the room.

For a time he sat frowning at the bare wooden walls. Semiramis did not know half of his troubles in
Shadizar. He was indeed the most successful thief in the city, and now his successes were beginning to
rebound on him. The fat merchants and perfumed nobles whose dwellings he robbed were making up a
reward to put an end to his depredations. Some of those self-same men had hired him upon occasion to
retrieve an incriminating letter or a gift given indiscreetly to the wrong woman. What he knew of their
secrets was likely as big a reason for the reward as his thefts. That, and their hot-eyed daughters, who
found it delightfully wicked to dally with a muscular young barbarian.
With a grunt he got to his feet and slung a black Khauranian cloak edged in cloth-of-gold around his
broad shoulders. These ruminations were gaining him nothing. He was a thief. He should be about it.

As he made his way down the rickety stair into the crowded common room, he ground his teeth. In the
center of the room Semiramis sat on the lap of a mustachioed Kothian kidnapper in a striped cloak of