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

I didn't voice my limited sympathy at how this was such a dreadful imposition on his time. It appeared
he was forced to cut back to what sounded like a mere one full af-ternoon of massage, two evenings
pronging peasant girls and no more than that with his concubines, and perhaps as few as three morning
hunts. It's important that those of us of the lower classes show proper sympathy with the bur-dens of our
beloved ruling class.
Lord Toshtai's chief huntsman, Garvi Denten, and his gamekeeper, Deroy Rawn, were waiting for us
outside the hunting shelter, where open wooden cages and leather har-nesses stood stacked neatly on the
bare dirt.
I had seen the two of them only from a distance. Neither acrobats nor dan'shirs spend much time
around huntsmen; this was my first chance to examine them closely.
Most men who spend their lives outdoors develop a tan to their skins, but Garvi Denten was red as a
brick, and shaped like one, blocky and solid, from the thick, scarred neck where his studded collar hung
loosely, to the splayed toes at the end of his massive feet. Dressed in a burlap overshirt and drawstring
muslin pantaloons, he looked rather more like a peasant than a hereditary bourgeois, and a pretty
disreputable peasant, at that.
Deroy Rawn, on the other hand, was dark and smooth where his master was red and rough. His skin
was the color of urmon tea, his face freshly shaven beneath the well-oiled mustache that decorated his
upper lip. The fin-gers of his hands, as he gestured at the darkness of the hunting lodge, were long and
aristrocratic, the nails clean and unbitten.
A conclusion that I didn't have to raise kazuh for: Deroy Rawn was a pompous ass, despite the
meaning of his name. Huntsmen are bourgeois; gamekeepers are only middle class. It's an anomaly, and if
I were the Scion I'd reclassify gamekeeping as a bourgeois profession. After
all, head gamekeeper is almost as common a route to chief huntsman as assistant huntsman is.
But Deroy Rawn was trying to make it look as though he were the bourgeois, and that spoke of a
self-important view of his position and himself.
They both bowed deeply at Arefai as the lord dis-mounted.
Arefai dropped easily to the dirt and walked smoothly to the two men, while I climbed painfully down
out of the saddle and staggered behind.
Well, the upper classes have to have tougher bottoms than the rest of us; they spend most of their
time sitting down while somebody else does something for them, whether it's a cook feeding them, a
troupe of acrobats and musicians entertaining them, or a horse carrying them. It's surprising that their
women don't tend to grow immensely broad of beam.
I didn't like the sneer on Deroy Rawn's lip, so I made a calculated bow to the two huntsmenтАФnot
terribly deep, and a bit perfunctory: a bow of equals, or perhaps of a gra-cious senior.
"I am Eldest Son Discoverer-of-Truths," I said, intro-ducing myself formally. Old Shai is formal for
everything but names; we introduce ourselves in modern language on formal occasions, or when we are
battering each other about with inappropriate formality.
Deroy Rawn was holding a bow and a packet of arrows for Arefai, and had to spread a cloth and set
them downтАФ carefully; he didn't want to let either touch the groundтАФon top of one of the cages in order
to return my bow. His face was smooth and impassive, but I already had the idea we weren't going to
become fast friends.
His return bow was a bit too shallow. The smart thing to do was ignore it, but Arefai had noticed me
notice, and was watching to see what I would do.
So was I, actually. I went on, as though I hadn't finished introducing myself: "тАФkazuh Dan'Shir, and
historical master of truth-discovery."
Garvi Denten muffled a smile as he bowed deeply, only
a hair less than he would have done before a noble. "I am Eats Chicken," he said, "Huntsman to the
third genera-tion."
Deroy Rawn had to bow even more deeply than his master. "I am Passes Wind," he said.
/ take it you have not gotten permission to change your name, I didn't quite say. I could see how