"Joel Rosenberg - 04 - The Heir Apparent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rosenberg Joel C)

Your offer is rejected, Guildmaster Yryn. I don't see the need for a truce, since we already have you
defeated.

Individually, both Home and the empire outnumber your vicious band of flesh-peddlers. Together, we are
stronger than you and all your allies. If that wasn't so, you would have long since destroyed us. As things
stand, your guild can't operate at all in Holtun or Bieme; your slavers are easy prey in Khar and much of
Nyphien; I have heard of caravans being assaulted in Sciforth, and near Lundeyll and Ehvenor.
EventuallyтАФcount on it!тАФwe'll cut into your seaborne raids onto Salket and Melawei. Even sooner,
raiders will be operating at the gates of Pandathaway.

Or perhaps inside the gates of Pandathaway?

We are going to overrun you. If not in my generation, then in my son's or my grandson's. The only
question is how and when you will be defeated, not whether.

тАФKarl Cullinane

Karl Cullinane, Ahrmin thought. I can't take a breath without having to worry about Karl Cullinane.

He was angry with himself. If only Ahrmin had been a bit cleverer, Cullinane a bit less lucky the last
time.

If only the rest of the guild hadn't stayed his hand since the last time.

"Masters, friends, and brothers," Slavers' Guildmaster Yryn said, his slate-gray eyes flashing as he shook

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his massive head slowly, "hidden in this overpolite scorn is a sad truth." He paused, likely more for effect
than anything else, "And that sad truth," he went on, "is that Karl Cullinane is almost correctтАФI say
again: almost." He turned to Ahrmin. "Which is why, Master Ahrmin, by order of the council, permission
to attack him is again denied."

"NoтАФ"

"Yes." Yryn tapped a thick finger against the parchment scroll, then drummed his nails on the age-
smoothed oak of the table while most of the other dozen masters nodded in agreement. "You will leave
Karl Cullinane alone," Yryn said. "For the good of the guild."

"For the good of the guild." Ahrmin carefully kept the scorn in his voice to a bare minimum as he
repeated the words. The others respected calm and self-control; a display of temper would only, could
only, lower his status in the Slavers* Guild Council.

Turning the ruins of the right side of his face away from the others, he sat back in his chair, forcing
himself to be calm. Anger wouldn't help.

It was tempting to let it flow. The idiotsтАФeven after all this time, they didn't understand. Despite the