"Thieves World - Beyond The Veil" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morris Janet E)

lurched and fumbled their way through the thinning crowds.
Belize looked up: an early-rising moon, full and pale, smiled down on him. An
armored cavalryman wearing the yellow-lined mantle of the "special" occupation
forces didn't: "You don't have one of these, traveler." The soldier, frowning
down on him from his saddle, tapped an embroidered armband. "You'd better find a
guest house. Curfew's in effect." This last was spoken around a chunk of lamb
pulled from its wooden skewer and into the soldier's mouth by teeth bright in
the light of torches being lit along the rows of wooden stalls, goat's-hair
tents, and brightly colored yurts of the souk.
As the "special" kneed his horse on by, Belize took a chance and asked for the
stalls of Palapot the traderЧa chance because the special forces in Tyse were
Grillo's men. A chance because the armband he'd seen had on it the unit device
of the StepsonsЧbulls and lightning boltsЧwhich marked the wearer as one of the
Riddler's own elite squad of Sacred Band pairs and seasoned mercenaries (just
the men whose attention he did not want to attract). A chance because the
rider's fine-featured face was Syrese, not local, and the sharp eyes in it had
sized him up with cold and minute precision.
Belize knew his own kind when he saw one; the mounted officer was no less
observant.
The rider turned in his saddle, his helmet swinging by his knee, his bare head,
in profile, somehow vaguely familiar. "Sure you don't want the mercenaries'
hostel? Or the east barracks?"
Belize had to fill the pause the soldier left empty. "Palapot the horse trader.
I'll swap this horse and then find a bed."
"Swap it? You ought to put it out of its misery. The only place you'll get
anything for that poor beast is in the free zone. And," the soldier looked up at
the sky, "you don't have any time to speak ofЧcurfew's upon us." He cast the
half-eaten skewer of lamb into the dust, then with his free hand motioned to the
rapidly clearing street. "Palapot will still be there tomorrow. As for that
horse, you owe it at least one good night's rest. It'll end up in somebody's
stew pot if you trade it looking like that. Come on, citizen, I'll ride with you
as far as the first guest house."
Belize had to agree, had to show his papers when he got thereЧwhich was, he
thought, what the special was waiting for, since the tall officer in
cavalry-issue leather and mail had insisted on escorting him inside and stayed
on, chatting with the innkeeper, after he'd been given a room key and a chit to
stable his horse around the back. He looked back once at the short-haired Syrese
leaning on the counter and caught the Stepson unabashedly staring after him.
"Life to you, Belize," said the other, a professional's farewell.
He didn't answer with a mercenary's responseЧ Belize wished no man life, or
glory. The Stepson had guessed wrong, after all. Belize wasn't a member of the
mercenaries' guild, nor a professional soldier. He was an assassin.
The guest house the Stepson had escorted him to was at the Tysian city limit,
where Commerce Avenue and Peace Falls, the adjoining township which observed no
curfew, cut into Tysian discipline and Tysian jurisdiction. He had only to
stable his horse, secret his effects in his room, cross a street no wider than
an alley, and he would be within a stone's throw of Commerce. The Stepson had
done him a favor, showing him to the merchants' quarter which abutted the souk
and spilled over into Peace Falls' anarchic bustle.
The inn was called the Dark Horse; he memorized its salient featuresЧback doors,