"Robert Jordan - The Wheel of Time 00 - New Spring" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jordan Robert)

women and did not open his mouth. Then a jutnosed man named Nazar Kurenin rode in front of
Bukama's eyes, and he did not blink. The young guard surely had been born after the Blight
swallowed Malkier, but Kurenin, his hair cut short and wearing a forked beard, was twice Lan's
age. The years had not erased the marks of his hadori completely. There were many like Kurenin,
and the sight of him should have set Bukama spluttering. Lan eyed his friend worriedly.
They had been moving steadily towards the centre of the city, climbing towards the
highest hill, Stag's Stand. Lord Marcasiev's fortress-like palace covered the peak, with those of
lesser lords and ladies on the terraces below. Any threshold up there offered warm welcome for
al'Lan Mandragoran. Perhaps warmer than he wanted now. Balls and hunts, with nobles invited
from as much as fifty miles away, including from across the border with Arafel. People avid to
hear of his 'adventures'. Young men wanting to join his forays into the Blight, and old men to
compare their experiences there with his. Women eager to share the bed of a man whom, so fool
stories claimed, the Blight could not kill. Kandor and Arafel were as bad as any southland at
times; some of those women would be married. And there would be men like Kurenin, working
to submerge memories of lost Malkier, and women who no longer adorned their foreheads with
the ki'sain in pledge that they would swear their sons to oppose the Shadow while they breathed.
Lan could ignore the false smiles while they named him al'Lan Dai Shan, diademed battle lord
and uncrowned king of a nation betrayed while he was in his cradle. In his present mood,
Bukama might do murder. Or worse, given his oaths at the gate. He would keep those to the
death.
'Varan Marcasiev will hold us a week or more with ceremony,' Lan said, turning down a
narrower street that led away from the Stand. 'With what we've heard of bandits and the like, he
will be just as happy if I don't appear to make my bows.' True enough. He had met the High Seat
of House Marcasiev only once, years past, but he remembered a man given entirely to his duties.
Bukama followed without complaint about missing a palace bed or the feasts the cooks
would prepare. It was worrying.
 No palaces rose in the hollows towards the north wall, only shops and taverns, inns and
stables and wagonyards. Bustle surrounded the factors' long warehouses, but no carriages came to
the Deeps, and most streets were barely wide enough for carts. They were just as jammed with
people as the wide ways, though, and every bit as noisy. Here, the street performers' finery was
tarnished, yet they made up for it by being louder, and buyers and sellers alike bellowed as if
trying to be heard in the next street. Likely some of the crowd were cutpurses, slipfingers, and
other thieves, finished with a morning's business higher up or headed there for the afternoon. It
would have been a wonder otherwise, with so many merchants in town. The second time unseen
fingers brushed his coat in the crowd, Lan tucked his purse under his shirt. Any banker would
advance him more against the Shienaran estate he had been granted on reaching manhood, but
loss of the gold on hand meant accepting the hospitality of Stag's Stand.
At the first three inns they tried, slate-roofed cubes of grey stone with bright signs out
front, the innkeepers had not a cubbyhole to offer. Lesser traders and merchants' guards filled
them to the attics. Bukama began to mutter about making a bed in a hayloft, yet he never
mentioned the feather mattresses and linens waiting on the Stand. Leaving their horses with
ostlers at a fourth inn, The Blue Rose, Lan entered determined to find some place for them if it
took the rest of the day.
Inside, a greying woman, tall and handsome, presided over a crowded common room
where talk and laughter almost drowned out the slender girl singing to the music of her zither.
Pipesmoke wreathed the ceiling beams, and the smell of roasting lamb floated from the kitchens.
As soon as the innkeeper saw Lan and Bukama, she gave her blue-striped apron a twitch and
strode towards them, dark eyes sharp.
Before Lan could open his mouth, she seized Bukama's ears, pulled his head down, and
kissed him. Kandori women were seldom retiring, but even so it was a remarkably thorough kiss