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

wasn't. It was never easy to accustom oneself to a place like that.
Stacked like chicken coops in Tyr's fowl market, two high and two deep, the
cages lined a rutted alleyway
always sodden with the muck washed from cage floors. Scum-covered puddles of
stagnant slime made walking a hazard; vermin lurked in every crevice. At
night, and during the day too sometimes, some of them emerged to feed on the
caged.
Each cage differed in size from the next: some were so cramped they could
barely contain a grown man bent double; others were large enough to house ten
or twelve adults тАФ and did. Each had iron bars on all four sides, a slab floor
below and a slab roof above. Each contained nothing but prisoners and blankets
rotted with urine. They were sluiced once a day, but there was no privacy, no
real shelter from the weather or fellow prisoners, no protection from a
sometimes hostile public. In this, the desert-season, the place crawled with
flies and maggots, and reeked with fever. In the snow-season, only the
generosity of people who donated blankets saved the incarcerated from freezing
to death.
To condemn a man тАФ or woman тАФ to a year in the Cages was as good as telling
them they had an appointment with the Vortex of Death, a passage to Acheron.
The law courts of Tyr might have been fair and just, but the punishment system
was run by demoted military men, disgraced legionnaires. It was an irony
Rathrox delighted in. 'True justice is to be found in the Cages,' he told me
once, 'not in the verdicts handed out in pristine courtrooms. I loathe men who
know the theory of law, yet never sully their lily-white feet by walking into
the Snarls.'
I ignored the Cages for the time being and went straight to the Warden's
office, which was in a solid stone building nearby. Inside the door, burning
incense pebbles did their best to conquer the less attractive smells and the
miasma of disease wafting in
from outside. The Warden himself was out and it was the Sub-warden I saw, a
man called Hargen Bivius. He was seated behind the Warden's desk when I
entered, his feet on the desktop and a jug of wine in his hand. His eyes
slitted with sullen dislike the moment he saw me, but he didn't move. 'Ligea,'
he drawled, 'and dressed in all her finery, too. We are honoured. But careful,
m'dear, around here you could dirty the hem of your oh-so-pretty wrap.'
I refused to be drawn to anger. 'Dorus the Jeweller's son тАФ Markis, I believe
his name is тАФ what cage is he in?'
It took him a while to decide to move. Finally he placed the jug on the desk
with careful deliberation and swung his feet to the floor so he could consult
a wax tablet in front of him. A wisp of incense smoke drifted between us,
swirling delicately as it was caught on his breath. With infuriating slowness,
he ran a dirty finger down the column of names impressed on the tablet and at
last gave me the information I wanted. 'Number twenty-eight. One of our more
luxurious accommodations тАФ it's high enough to stand up in, is number
twenty-eight. At your request, I believe. A lover of yours, perhaps? Hard up
these days are you, Compeer?'
I suppressed a sigh. 'He's well?'
'As can be expected.' The sourness of his breath drowned the aroma of the
incense stones.
'He is to be kept in good health.'