"Glenda Larke - Heart of the Mirage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Larke Glenda)

ought to have known better. I should have taken a litter.
I focused my attention. The people in the houses I ignored; those in the
surrounding streets I allowed my senses to touch, taking note of their
proximity, checking if they were a potential threat by testing their emotions.
I found an irate woman and several sulky
children, a man consumed with an as-yet-unsatisfied lust in the company of a
woman who seemed unenthusiastic тАФ a whore perhaps? тАФ and, out of sight down a
parallel street, a crowd of young people exuding drunken amusement. No one I
need worry about.
My follower was another matter. I flicked my senses behind and felt his
emotions as a black cloud of violence and avarice, too full of malevolent
anticipation to be ignored. Damn the man. Around the next corner, I stepped
into the nearest recessed doorway of the lane to wait, and felt for my knife.
It wasn't there, of course. No one carried a knife into an audience with the
Exaltarch.
With growing badtemper and exasperation, I tracked the progress of my pursuer.
When he rounded the corner into the lane and found I was no longer in sight,
he hesitated a moment, then began to run. I hitched up my wrap and stuck out a
foot at the precise moment he drew level; predictably, he sprawled face down
in the dirt. I was on him before he had even determined what had happened,
pinning him down with a knee in the middle of his back, immobilising him still
further by twisting his right arm up behind him. I assessed him quickly: an
ill-dressed individual, foul-smelling, not all that young, with neither the
strength nor the skill to resist. His clothes were ragged, but I saw some
embroidery on what was left of the collar: Quyr beadwork, unless I was much
mistaken. Rebellion within the Quyr region and legionnaire attempts to subdue
the insurgents had forced many Quyriots out of their mountain homes. Some had
made their way to Tyr in search of a living тАФ honest or otherwise; doubtless
this man was one such.
'What did you want, helot?' I asked.
'N-nothin',' he stuttered in shock. 'Was just walkin' тАФ'
I tightened my grip. 'Your first lie,' I said. 'The next earns you a broken
bone. Why were you following me?'
'I wasn't, Domina тАФ'
I shifted my hold slightly and broke his little finger. He yelped in pain and
disbelief.
'Why were you following me?'
He was silent, so I began to apply pressure on his next finger.
'Don't тАФ!' he yelled, too late.
'Were you after my purse? Shall I add a third finger to the tally?'
He howled briefly, but increased pressure soon brought a more comprehensible
mumble of admission. His disbelief had melted into fear, his outrage vanished
into a numbed acceptance, a common enough emotion of the underprivileged when
faced with their superiors.
'Any other reason?'
'No тАФ I swear in the name of the Goddess! Lady, please тАФ'
I felt the truth of his answer and released the pressure a little. Ordinarily
I would have continued to question him until I found a way I could use him;
I'd have held the threat of imprisonment over him and enlisted him in my army
of informants, but now тАФ what was the use? I was off to Kardiastan and had no