"Nancy Kress - The Flowers of Aulit Prison" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

"Oh, yes ... here. He paid for two musical tributes to his ancestors last year, made a
donation to the Rafkit Haddon Priest House ... Oh! And he was chosen to honor the ancestors
of the house of Choulalait!"
She sounds awe-struck. I nod. "We know about that, of course. But is there anything
else?"
"No, I don't think so ... wait. He paid for a charity tribute for the ancestors of his clu
merchant, Lam Pek Flanoe, a poor man. Quite a lavish tribute, too. Music, and three priests."
"Kind," I said.
 "Very! Three priests!" Her young eyes shine. "Isn't it wonderful how many truly kind people
share reality?"
"Yes," I say. "It is."
I find the clu merchant by the simple method of asking for him in several market squares.
Sales of all fuels are of course slow in the summer; the young relatives left in charge of the
clu stalls are happy to chat with strangers. Lam Pek Flanoe lives in a run-down neighborhood
just behind the great houses by the sea. The neighborhood is home to servants and
merchants who provide for the rich. Four more glasses of pel in three more pel shops, and I
know that Maldon Pek Brifjis is currently a guest in the home of a rich widow. I know the
widow's address. I know that that Pek Brifjis is a healer.
A healer.
Sick brain talks to itself. You not kill your sister.
I am dizzy from four glasses of pel. Enough. I find an inn, the kind where no one asks
questions, and sleep without the shared reality of dreams.


It takes me a day, disguised as a street cleaner, to decide which of the men coming and
going from the rich widow's house is Pek Brifjis. Then I spend three days following him, in
various guises. He goes a lot of places and talks to a lot of people, but none of them seem
unusual for a rich healer with a personal pleasure in collecting antique water carafes. On the
fourth day I look for a good opportunity to approach him, but this turns out to be
unnecessary.
"Pek," a man says to me as I loiter, dressed as a vendor of sweet flatbreads, outside the
baths on Elindel Street. I have stolen the sweets before dawn from the open kitchen of a
bake shop. I know at once that the man approaching me is a bodyguard, and that he is very
good. It's in the way he walks, looks at me, places his hand on my arm. He is also very
handsome, but that thought barely registers. Handsome men are never for such as me. They
are for Ano.
Were for Ano.
"Come with me, please," the bodyguard says, and I don't argue. He leads me to the back of
the baths, through a private entrance, to a small room apparently used for private grooming of
some sort. The only furniture is two small stone tables. He checks me, expertly but gently, for
weapons, looking even in my mouth. Satisfied, he indicates where I am to stand, and opens a
second door.
Maldon Pek Brifjis enters, wrapped in a bathing robe of rich imported cloth. He is younger
than Carryl Walters, a vigorous man in a vigorous prime. His eyes are striking, a deep purple
with long gold lines radiating from their centers. He says immediately, "Why have you been
following me for three days?"
"Someone told me to," I say. I have nothing to lose by an honest shared reality, although I
still don't fully believe I have anything to gain.
"Who? You may say anything in front of my guard."
"Carryl Pek Walters."