"Pierce, Tamora - The Circle Opens 01 - Magic Steps" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pierce Tamora)

open the door and spoke quietly to the guards. They looked at him, startled,
then parted. The man, who wore a captain's pair of concentric yellow circles on
his sleeve, waved Sandry in sharply.
She dismounted and passed her mare's reins to Kwaben. "Stay with the horses,"
she told her guards. "I think the rest of Uncle's escort are on that side
street." They nodded.
The provost's captain stood aside as she walked into the building, then closed
the door and lowered the thick oak bar that locked it. To her eyes door and bar
gleamed with the pale traces of magic. So did the dimly lit hall that went to
the rear of the building on this floor, and the narrow stair that reached the
upper stories.
"Please reconsider, my lady," the man told her gruffly. This is not an occasion
for noble sightseers."
Sandry met his eyes. "You are Captain Qais?" she inquired.
He bowed stiffly.
"I will not reconsider," she said flatly. "My great-uncle has been ill. He tends
to forget it, so I remember for himЧand, it seems, for you. Where is he?"
"Upstairs, my lady."
Turning her back on him, Sandry climbed. The gleam of spell-signs lit her way;
none of the stair lamps were burning. Since the captain didn't have her power to
see magic, he missed the next stepЧthey were uneven, to trick robbers into
banging their toes just as he did. He cursed; when she looked back at him, he
waved her on.
When she reached the top of the stairs, two hallways lay before her. One led to
the rear of the building; the other cut across it. In the hall to her right, she
saw only a flagstone floor, lamps in wall sconces, and closed doors. In the
section to her left, the hall sported complexly pat terned silk carpetsЧspelled,
like everything else she had seen, with magic to protect and confuse anyone who
was not allowed there. The lamps on this side were set in polished brass
fixtures and circled with precious glass. Two mahogany benches were placed here.
On them sat the three surly bodyguards who had attended Jamar Rokat earlier that
morning, all in manacles. They looked confused, bewildered, and angry. Three
Provost's Guards stood over them, baton weapons in hand.
"Why won't you believe us?" demanded the youngest of the three when he saw the
captain. "We heard nothing, nor saw it neither. He went in, the door was
lockedЧwe never so much as heard a scream!"
"And the evidence shows you as liars," replied Captain Qais. "You'll give up the
facts when our truthsayers have a go at you." To Sandry he said, "Why don't you
wait for his grace here?"
She walked ahead of him into the open room past the captives. He mustn't know
that she was nervous; she did her best to hide it. She was no hardenedЧwhat had
Pasco called themЧHarrier, that was it. She was not one of those, but if her
great-uncle was in this mess, that was where she had to be as well.
Inside was a plain office belonging to Jamar Rokat's secretary or assistant, it
would seem. Sandry walked through the open door at the back of the room into the
next office and halted. Her uncle sat on the window seat, keeping out of the way
of the Provost's Guards who were going over the room inch by inch. They each
wore the silver braid trim on their sleeves that marked then as in vestigators,
not street Guards.
There was blood everywhere. The hacked body of the man who had greeted them so