"Joel Rosenberg - Hour of the Octopus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rosenberg Joel C)

"Your arrangement? Myself, I've always liked to snick out the pieces of core, reassemble the apple,
then set it upon a bed of mint leaves, a twist of caramelized sugar to replace the stem, but I am sure that
you have a better idea. Ah. Very pretty. Certainly: you've not done wrong to spread it out along the rim
of the plate, like a stack of fallen tiles. Very pleasing to the eye. Ah, and you brush the apple lightly with
the juice of a lemon. Very good; it will not turn brown in the air.
"And next, the oysters and sausage. A strange but inter-esting combination, I've always thought,
wonderful if han-dled properly, but ever-so-dependent on preparation, andтАФoh, I am sorry. I do talk
too much. Prepare it as you wish. HmmтАж slicing off the top of a puff pastry, eh? Not my choice of a
presentation, mind, but an interesting one.
"Yes, I do always heat the pan before adding the dab of butter, a shaking of two peppers in the pan,
the barest scraping of horseradish. And then the oysters. They are fresh; this very hour, a runner arrived
with them from Bergeenen, carefully packed in ice. The oysters, oh wise one, not the runner.
"HmmтАж I would probably have opened the shells with a different knife, but each to his own; the
blood will wash off, and you should be healed within the month.
"They do plump up prettily, don't they? And they are tasty as they sit on top of the sausage.
"Pour the tea into the mug, and the tray is ready, you think. I can but bow and nod. Very well; you
may bring it in. Me? Don't be silly. When it is asked who is the fool boiled the egg to indigestibility, who
is the dolt who served the apple sliced far too thinly to be properly crunched between his teeth, who is
the blockhead who served the cooked oysters and undercooked sausage thick with congealed fat in a
stale puffery, the answer will not be that I did it, I can assure you of that.
"You had better run, now. It is already the hour of the hare, and Lord Toshtai will be expecting his
simple break-fast of egg, apple, and oysters with sausage right now. Oh, yes, the simple breakfast is for
Lord Toshtai; the more complex one is for Lord Arefai, who hunts this morning. Had I not mentioned
that? Oh.
'Timing is, after all, everything."
1
horning, Breakfast, an Invitation, and Other Petty Indignities
Timing is, as my father used to say, everything.
No, I'm getting it wrong, as usual. I mean, he probably still does say itтАФI have no reason to think
Gray Khuzud dead, and less to think he's changed his mindтАФbut I haven't seen him for some time now.
He is right, of course; my father has always had that an-noying tendency. It doesn't apply just to
juggling, although that's one of the places.
Consider, if you will, the knife-and-apple act. After the drunk act, I'd say it was Gray Khuzud's best.
But if you put it at the head of the show, as an opener, not only will it not get the applause it should, but it
will rob the rest of the show of some of its own virtue.
Not good.
Which isn't to say that there is a right time for every-thing. For some things there is no correct time.
We all can agree that there's no good time for one's piles to act up; similarlyтАФand contrary to what our
beloved ruling class believesтАФthere is no such thing as a right time to be woken to go hunting.
He came for me in the hour of the dragon.
 I was in the middle of a dream, although even sleeping
I had been vaguely aware of somebody sliding open the panel between my bedroom and the outer
room of my suite.
"Kami KhuzudтАФI mean, Kami Dan'Shir, wake up." Something large and stupid hit me between the
shoulder blades.
Even through the shattered remains of half-forgotten dreams of soaring silverhorns and fast-picked
zivvers, I could tell that the rasp was the voice of Bek De Bran, a dull and blocky soldier who had
recently been reassigned to protecting Arefai, whatever that portended.
It meant something; everything always means some-thing. The only problems are what and how
important is it? When you're mingling with members of our beloved ruling class, it's sometimes every bit