"Shirley Meier & S. M. Stirling - Fifth Millenium 03 - The Cage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Meier Shirley)

Prologue
Habiku, you son of two brothers, I'm coming home. It's
taken me two damned years. Three shipwrecks, outrunning
piratesтАж You sold me off so far away you never thought I'd
escape or make it back. I hope you're alive so I can kill you.
Habiku Smoothtongue. Your flowery speeches arent going to
save you this time. Nothing will.
Chapter One
THE SLAF HIKARME COUNTING HOUSE BRAHVNIKI:
DELTA OF THE BREZHAN RIVER SVARTZEE, NORTH
SHORE
TENTH IRON CYCLE, THIRD DAY, YEAR OF THE
STEEL MOUSE
Late autumn, 4973 A.D.)

The clerk looked up from scattering sand on the page and
ostentatiously returned his attention to the ledger, trimming his
pen with a deft scrit-scrit against the razor fastened in the
mouth of the inkwell. One had to show this sort of poor trash
that the Slaf Hikarme was a respectable House. He looked down
his nose at the two women.

"I'm sorry, Teik," he said. "The Head Clerk is a very busy man.
Do you have an appointment?" There was a vast difference
between his side of the oak counter and theirs; a mercantile
house in a trading city dealt with many questionable types, of
necessity. Still, he was the guardian of the inner rooms, of
respectability, property, order, especially against unseemliness
like thisтАФthis ragamuffin.

The clientele were watching with interest, nine in a hall
meant for twenty. A pity the House had fallen into such financial
difficulty. The other two clerks kept their heads industriously
bent over their ledgers, but he could feel their attention as well.
He cleared his throat.

Oddly, the Zak woman who stood across the long wooden
divider that split the outer chamber seemed neither daunted nor
angry. Purebreed, he estimated, with a covert glance up from
under his lids. Disturbingly familiar, though he couldn't think
where he would have met such riffraff. Scarcely four feet tall,
skin pale under its weathered tan, eyes and hair raven-black;
none of the swagger you saw in a tavern bravo, but there were
well-used knives in her belt, two more in her boots and a stiletto
hilt peeking out from one sleeve. Plain dark grey tunic and
trousers and cloak, stained with salt spray.

Off a ship in from the Mitvald, then, even if her accent was
F'talezonian and that mother city of her race was far upriver.
Nothing unusual in Brahvniki.