"Kate Novak - Finders Stone 1 - Azure Bonds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Novak Kate)

she
realized, but then it was equally likely she lost it or even hocked it.
She slipped her shirt of light chain over her head but decided against
attaching
the breast, shoulder, arm, and knee plates. She felt a rocking sensation in
the
pit of her stomach. I know there was a sea trip. Did I get this. . . tattoo
before I sailed or after I arrived?
She pulled on her hard-soled boots. The soft leather uppers reached nearly to
her knees. She checked for her daggers. Each boot pocket held a slender,
balanced wedge of silvered steel. All that remained on the chair was her plate
mail and her cloak. Her fire-scorched longsword and the eagle-shaped barrette
she used to keep her hair in place lay on the dresser. Worse than her missing
pack, there was no money among her belongings, but she was still too concerned
about the tattoo to worry about money.
This memory loss and tattoo may be nothing, she tried to tell herself as she
reached for the barrette. Holding the silver clasp in her teeth she wound up
her
long reddish hair and bound it to the back of her head with the barrette. She
remembered Ikanamon the Gray Mage telling her about the time he got so drunk
and
obnoxious that his fellow party members had a vulgar scene involving centaurs
tattooed on his backside. Maybe this is just a prank, too, she reassured
herself. A clerical cure will get rid of it for me.
The small hairs on the back of her neck rose, and Alias realized that she was
being watched. Turning slowly toward the window, she locked gazes with a
reptilian creature peering in at her from the alley.
Looking like a cross between a lizard and a troglodyte, the beast's head just
reached above the level of the windowsill. His snout was thinner and more
refined than the lizard men Alias had fought before, and he had a huge fin
which
began just between his eyes and continued over the top of his skull. He had no
lips, only sharp, disjointed teeth, and his eyes were the yellow of dead
things.
In his claws he held the smaller of the two dogs Alias had heard earlier. The
puppy, unharmed, had short, white hair, not long as Alias had imagined. Both
creatures watched her with an intense curiosity, the lizard still as stone,
the
puppy wagging its tail, with its pink tongue lolling stupidly out of one side
of
its mouth.
Alias reacted instantly with the practiced grace of an experienced
adventuress.
She drew one of the daggers from her boot and, with a flick of her tattooed
wrist, shot it at her observer. The creature pitched backward without a sound,
but the dog fell into the room with a frightened yip. The dagger sank half an
inch into the oak window frame.
Grasping her flame-seared sword, Alias flung herself across the room in one
fluid motion When she reached the window, however, the creature was gone and
the