"Joel Rosenberg - Omnibus 03 - To Home and Ehvenor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rosenberg Joel C)

memory, or maybe just out of habit.

"Meet you at the stables," I told Tennetty and Jason.

She nodded and sprinted for the back staircase, while Jason maintained a dignified walk. I headed up to
the two-room suite my wife and I shared. Well, maybe it was a three-room suite, if you included the
secret passage to the room next door, although the room next door was unoccupied, and the passage
was barred from our side. I like the idea of having a back way out; I'm cautious enough that I don't want
anybody else to have a back way in.

Kirah lay stretched out on the bed, the blankets having slid aside, revealing one long leg almost to the
hip. Sunlight splashed on her long, golden hair, her breasts rising and falling with her gentle breathing, her
arms spread wide, her mouth just barely parted, all trusting and innocent and vulnerable and lovely.

I felt cheated: I wanted to reach over and hold her for a moment before I left, but I couldn't. Not while
she was sleeping, ever. One of the rules. Not mine. Kirah has her own way of enforcing her rules. Call it
passive-aggressive, if you likeтАФbut ithurts her when I push things.

Damn.

I exchanged my cotton trousers for leather onesтАФyou can get cut by the brushтАФand after I'd buttoned
the fly I shrugged into a hunting vest, and then the double shoulder holster that Kirah had made for me. I
belted my shortsword around my waist, tucked an extra brace of throwing knives never mind exactly
where.

An oak box with a trick catchтАФyou have to push down on the top of the box while you press up on the
latchтАФheld my two best pistols, loaded, oil-patched, and ready to go; I slipped them into the holster. A
nice design: it held one pistol a bit too high, but the other, held in place by a U-shaped spring hidden in
the leather, was held slantwise under the armpit, butt-forward. Draw, cock, and bang.
 Me, I'd rather store most of my guns safely unloaded, and eventually I'd be able to. Jason's twin sixguns
were the first on this side, but they wouldn't be the last. With Jason's revolver and speedloader, it's flip,
slip, slam, and blamтАФflip the cylinder out, slip the Riccetti-made speedloader into place, slam the
cylinder shut, letting the outer shell of the speedloader fly where it may, and thenblam. And that's
worst-case; most of time, I'd keep the revolver loaded, trusting Lou Riccetti's unlicensed modification of
the Ruger transfer-bar safety to keep the gun from goingbang unexpectedly.

On the other hand, it takes more than a minute to load a flintlock, and I've never,ever been in a situation
where I've said to myself, "Gee, it'd be nice to have a loaded gun in about a minute."

Never. It's eithernah , or it'snow.

A small gunmetal flask of extract of dragonbane sat on the bureau, carefully sealed with wax, secondly
because I don't like the reek of the gooey stuff, but mainly because a good friend of mine is highly allergic
to it, being a dragon. While creatures with the sort of magical metabolisms that can be harmed by
dragonbane had long been driven away from the Eren regionsтАФhumans and magical creatures tend not
to get alongтАФthere had been rumors about things coming out of Faerie, and out on the Cirric Jason had
seen a few creatures he couldn't identify.

So I slipped the flask into my vest.