"Paul McAuley - The Book of Confluence 02 - Ancients of Days" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mcauley Paul J)

"When your rat-boy agrees with me," Tamora told Yama, "then you know I must be right.
Perhaps the best thing to do would be to do nothing. In any case, you should not leave this place,
Yama. We are protected by law and custom only as long as we stay within the boundaries of the
Department of Vaticination. I know that you want to begin your search for the records of your
bloodline. But be patient. In a decad, the Department of Indigenous Affairs will take this place,
no matter how well we train the thralls. Then we can search together, as we agreed. You're
already wounded, and we have been misled about the kind of troops we were to command, and
our employers plot against each other. It's clear someone here has allied themselves to Indigenous
Affairs, and hopes to make a bargain after assassinating their rivals. It doesn't matter who is
plotting against who, for there's no honor to be won here. The defense is simply a matter of form
before the inevitable surrender. Like all of Gorgo's little jobs, this has nothing to commend it.
Another reason to kill him, when we are done here."
Gorgo was the broker who had given Tamora this contract. He had tried to kill Yama
because Yama had cost him the commission on a previous job and because he suspected that,
with Yama's help, Tamora might free herself of her obligation to him. Yama had killed him
instead, riddling him with a hundred tiny machines, but Tamora had not seen it and she did not or
would not believe in what she called Yama's magic tricks.
"If we find out more," Yama said, "then we can end the plot before it begins."
"Grah! And if you leave here before the end of the contract, you'll be assassinated. You will
stay here, for your own safety."
"I can take care of myself."
Tamora said sharply, "How is your wound? Does it trouble you?"
"A headache now and then," Yama admitted.
He had the beginning of a headache now. He felt as if his skull was too small to contain his
thoughts, as if his brain was a bladder pumped up by a growing anger. Red and black sparks
crawled at the edge of his vision. He had to stifle an impulse to draw his knife and do some harm.
He said, "I will not make the same mistake again. And I will do as I will."
Pandaras said, "Perhaps my master should leave now. Go and find the records of his
bloodline, for that's why he is really here."
Tamora suddenly whirled, smashing her stave against the plinth with such force that it
snapped in two. She glared at the splintered stub in her hand, then threw it hard and fast down the
length of the Basilica. "Grah! Go then! Both of you! Go, and accept what falls out. Death, most
likely. Even if you dodge the hirelings of the Department of Indigenous Affairs, you know
nothing about the Palace, and it is a dangerous place."
"I will come back," Yama said. "I promised that I would help you and I was taught to keep
my promises. Besides, I hope to learn something here. Is not one of the attributes of this
Department the ability to find lost things?"


Chapter Two
THE EYE OF THE PRESERVERS
IT WAS THE custom of the Department of Vaticination that everyone, from senior
pythoness to lowliest collector of nightsoil, took their evening meal together in the refectory hall
of the House of the Twelve Front Rooms. The pythonesses and their domestic staffтАФthe
secretary, the bursar, the chamberlain, the librarian, the sacristan, and a decad of holders of
ancient offices which had dwindled to purely ceremonial functions or nothing more than empty
titlesтАФraised up on a platform at one end of the refectory; the thralls ranged around the other
three sides. The refectory was not a convivial place. Yama supposed that there had once been
tapestries muffling the bare stone wallsтАФthe hooks were still in placeтАФand perhaps rugs on the
flagstone floor, but now the gloomy high-ceilinged hall was undecorated, and lit only by the