"Mercedes Lackey - It Takes A Thief" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

miss breakfast, which would certainly please Kalchan's sadistic notion of what
was amusing.
See yaтАФbut not till dark, greaseball!
He shot out the door without a backward look, into the narrow street. This was
not an area that throve in the morning; those who had jobs were usually at
them
by dawn, and those who didn't were generally out looking for something to put
some money in their pockets at least that early, or were sleeping off the
results of drinking the vile brews served in the Hollybush or other
end-of-the-alley taverns. The Hollybush was, in fact, located at the end of
the
alley, giving Uncle Londer the benefit of giving custom no chance to stumble
past his door.
There were other children running off up the alley to lessons as well, though
not all to the same place as Skif. He had to go farther than they, constrained
by his uncle's orders. If Skif was going to have to have lessons, his uncle
was
determined, at least, that he would take them where Uncle Londer chose and
nowhere else.
Every child in this neighborhood was running eagerly to their various teachers
for the same reason that Skif did; free and edible breakfast. This was an
innovation of Queen Selenay's, who had decided, based on her own observation,
that a hungry child doesn't learn as well as one with food in his belly. So
every child in Haven taking lessons who arrived on time was supplied with a
bacon roll and a mug of tea in winter, or a buttered roll and a piece of fruit
in summer. Both came from royal distribution wagons that delivered the
supplies
every morning, so there was no use in trying to cheat the children by
scrimping.
But if a child was late, he was quite likely to discover that his attendance
had
been given up for the day and someone else had eaten his breakfast, so there
was
ample incentive to show up on time, if not early, for those lessons, however
difficult or boring a child might find them.
Skif had no intention of missing out on his share. His stomach growled as he
ran, and he licked his lips in anticipation.
Unless luck went his way, this might be the only really edible food he'd get
for
the rest of the dayтАФand there was no doubt in his mind that the rest of the
children in his group were in the same straits.
The narrow, twisting streets he followed were scarcely wide enough for a
donkey
cart. The tenement houses, three stories tall including the attics, leaned
toward the street as if about to fall into it. There was not enough traffic to
have worn away the packed, dirty snow heaped up against the walls of the
houses
on either side, and no incentive for the inhabitants to scrape it away, so
there
it would remain, accumulating over the course of the winter until it finally