"Jay Lake - To Live Forever" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lake Jay)

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After five minutes and more of knocking, a reddened eye, mostly obscured
with pale hair, peeped through a judas hole in the door. тАЬIs subtlety a lost art among
the gentlemen of Port Edward?тАЭ

Dismas struck a pose, cane touching the muck between his feet. тАЬSome
notices are best served with enthusiasm.тАЭ

тАЬAnd are the Children such idiots they might not hear you?тАЭ

тАЬMost pause to say that name aloud,тАЭ said Gestas, тАЬeven here among the
despised, meaty reek of our city.тАЭ

тАЬWe are all barbarians, crouched at the gates of the world,тАЭ grumbled the
owner of the eye. тАЬWhence did you come then? Are you both of the Lost?тАЭ

тАЬHe is,тАЭ Dismas nodded at Gestas, тАЬthough he has made up for it well enough
these past decades. I shipped on the CTS MichaelтАЩs Rowboat, in the Second
Emigration.тАЭ

тАЬWho was captain of that ship? Merry Jack Battiste?тАЭ

Dismas stiffened. тАЬMerry Jack was the CoDep agent, may the Pilots take his
eyes. You know perfectly well none of us groundworms ever met a captain in the
flesh, but ours was a Farsi woman named Yasmeen Ibrahimi.тАЭ

тАЬCome in then, but be warned.тАЭ The door swung open. тАЬThereтАЩs some in here
with no use for gentlemen, and quick to cut in with their ideas, if you take my
meaning.тАЭ
 Dismas bowed, sweeping back his cape to show the bronze foil at his side.
The two gentlemen walked into the darkness of the smithy. In the narrow hallway
within, Gestas could tell that Ahasuerus the smith was a tired man. It showed in his
voice, in the stoop of his shoulder, in the odd slackness of his skin.

тАЬI have never seen a man with white hair,тАЭ Gestas whispered to Dismas, who
shushed him.

Ahasuerus led them to a workroom, two stories high and quite deep. What
had once been windows were filled with cruder stonework, the carefully laid arches
now only punctuation for a stolid wall.

An unlit furnace dominated one end of the room, surrounded by chains
leading into high shadows from which depended ladles, buckets, and lengths of
trough. It was flanked by two bronze kilns that seemed to have seen more recent
use. The floor was littered with oddments, wooden vises, copper shavings, broken
barrels, ropes, debris far too varied to surrender to a casual inventory. There was no
sign of the threatened confederates, but judging from the smithтАЩs muscles, Gestas
was certain Ahasuerus needed little help in dealing with unwanted guests.