"Fritz Leiber - Ill Met in Lankhmar" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leiber Fritz)

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ILL MET IN LANKHMAR

Fritz Leiber

Silent as specters, the tall and the fat thief edged past the
dead, noose-strangled watch-leopard, out the thick, lock-
picked door of Jengao the Gem Merchant, and strolled
east on Cash Street through the thin black night-smog of
Lankhmar.
East on Cash it had to be, for west at Cash and Silver
was a police post with unbribed guardsmen restlessly
grounding and rattling their pikes.
But tall, tight-lipped Slevyas, master thief candidate,
and fat, darting-eyed Fissif, thief second class, with a
rating of talented in double-dealing, were not in the least
worried. Everything was proceeding according to plan.
Each carried thonged in his pouch a smaller pouch of
jewels of the first water only, for Jengao, now breathing
stertoriously inside and senseless from the slugging he'd
suffered, must be allowed, nay, nursed and encouraged to
build his business again and so ripen it for another pluck-
ing. Almost the first law of the Thieves Guild was never
to kill the hen that laid eggs with a ruby in the yolk.
The two thieves also had the relief of knowing that
they were going straight home now, not to a wife. Arath
forbid! --or to parents and children, all gods forfend!
but to Thieves' House, headquarters and barracks of the
almighty Guild, which was father to them both and
mother too, though no woman was allowed inside its ever-
open portal on Cheap Street.
In addition there was the comforting knowledge that
although each was armed only with his regulation silver-
hilted thief's knife, they were nevertheless most strongly
convoyed by three reliable and lethal bravoes hired for
the evening from the Slayers' Brotherhood, one moving
well ahead of them as point, the other two well behind
as rear guard and chief striking force.
And if all that were not enough to make Slevyas and
Fissif feel safe and serene, there danced along soundlessly
beside them in the shadow of the north curb a small, mal-
formed or at any rate somewhat large-headed shape that
might have been a very small dog, a somewhat under-
sized cat, or a very big rat.
True, this last guard was not an absolutely unalloyed
reassurance. Fissif strained upward to whisper softly in
Slevyas' long-lobed ear, "Damned if I like being dogged
by that familiar of Hristomilo, no matter what security