"Wildcards - 05 - Down And Dirty" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

want anything personal between us. You started that. If it's to continue and
become meaningful, I have to be the only one in your bed. It's the way I am.
It's the only way I can give myself to anyone."
Chrysalis stared at him for several seconds before replying. "Whomever else I
sleep with is no concern of yours," she finally drawled in the British accent
that Brennan, with his ear for languages, knew was faked.
He nodded. "Then I'd better be going." He stood and turned.
"Wait." She stood too. They looked at each other for a long moment, and when she
spoke, it was in a conciliatory voice. "At least have your drink. I'll go
downstairs and fill the decanter. You can have your drink and we ... we can
talk."
Brennan was tired and had no other place in Jokertown he wanted to be. "All
right," he said softly. Chrysalis wrapped herself in a silk kimono spattered
with whisps of smoke shaped like galloping horses and left him with a smile that
was more shy than enigmatic.
Brennan paced the room, watching his image shift across the myriad antique
mirrors that decorated the walls of Chrysalis's bedchamber. He should get out,
he told himself, and leave well enough alone, but Chrysalis was as fascinating
out of bed as in it. His best intentions to the contrary, he knew that he needed
her companionship and, he admitted to himself, her love.
It had been more than ten years since he'd allowed himself to love a woman, but
as he'd been discovering since his arrival in Jokertown, the emotions that he
allowed himself weren't the only ones he felt. He couldn't live on hate alone.
He didn't know if he could love Chrysalis as he'd loved the French-Vietnamese
wife whom he'd lost to Kien's assassins. He didn't even want to love a woman
while he was on Kien's trail, but despite all his fixity of purpose, despite his
Zen training, what he wanted and what actually happened were often two entirely
different things.
He stood in the silence of Chrysalis's bedroom, studiously not thinking about
his past. Long minutes passed and he suddenly realized that Chrysalis should
have returned.
He frowned. It was almost inconceivable that something could happen to Chrysalis
in the Crystal Palace, but the habitual caution that had saved Brennan's life
more times than he cared to remember made him assemble his bow before going
after her. He would feel foolish if he bumped into her in the dark, but he had
'felt foolish before. It was preferable to feeling dead, a sensation he was more
intimately acquainted with than he liked.
Chrysalis wasn't in the corridors of the third floor, nor on the stairway
leading down to the taproom, but he heard murmuring voices as he crept down the
stairs.
He drew an arrow, placed it on the string of his bow, and peered around the edge
of the stairwell where it opened up into the back of the taproom. He gritted his
teeth. He had been right to be cautious.
Chrysalis was standing before the long, polished-wood bar that ran almost the
entire length of the taproom. The whiskey decanter, still empty, was forgotten
on the bar next to her. Her arms were crossed and her jaw was clenched. Her lips
were compressed in a thin, angry line.
Two men bracketed her and a third sat facing her at a table in front of the bar.
Brennan coud discern few details in the dimness of the night-light that burned
above the bar, but the men all had hard, tough faces. The one facing her drummed