"Charles Stross - Examination Night" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

he had balls. That's why I had him sent down, you see. It was a forgone conclusion that if he
stayed he'd try something silly. But Sebastian is a lilly-livered weakling if ever I've seen one. A
nasty piece of work, but too scared of shadows to kill his elder brother and take his father's
castle by force: he'll probably end up as privy councillor to some scheming duke, or wind up
gracing some dungeon, I don't doubt. But he isn't a conqueror: he doesn't have the cast-iron
gall for it. Not like most of the lunatics and villains who come to me for teaching!"
"Your students sound a marvelous bunch," commented Anya. "With lieges like that,
who needs enemies?"
"I do!" said Vargas, grinning humourlessly. "If I didn't I'd go soft in the head. At least it
keeps me in on my toes. Your predecessors didn't have so much trouble, and look where
they wound up!"
"The predecessors of my order," she corrected. "Things are very different now. I was
a babe in arms when the Dark Pretender took to the field and the clouds rained blood for a
week. Do you remember? The crows were too fat to fly, and the stench ... afterwards I had
only to look at my father's face to see what that did to people."
"We can't all have parents like that." Vargas hiccuped violently and frowned. "I well
remember his service. But tell me, what brought you hence today? We had barely realised
that there was a Pretender to the dark powers commencing the rite of binding when you
arrived тАУ"
"There's synchronicity in all things," said Anya. "Word came to us from afar, you
realise. Three innocents died to put me here, five hundred leagues in an eye-blink. We
judged it sufficiently important."
Vargas turned pale. "You don't mean ..?"
She nodded. For the first time this evening she looked her age: the final battle of the
war she had been born in was a good four decades past. "'In the defense of good, it is
sometimes necessary to use the tools of evil,'" she quoted. "If our ancestors had not been so
high-minded, things would never have reached the point of war. If the Invigilation had been
set up earlier ..."
"Hindsight is easy," said Vargas. "In those days we didn't have the same sense of
urgency, you understand. It had been centuries." He picked up and drained his wine glass.
Then he hiccuped again. "I hate this age," he said gloomily. "To be compelled to brutality
against one's better nature тАУ"
"Is that the only reason you consort with devils?" demanded Anya: "ask yourself, is it
really?"
Vargas nodded, then reached for a walnut. Picking up his brass callipers, he
remarked: "Not all of us are mad, you see. But I suppose it's easier for those who are to
succeed at this unfortunate profession. Of the past seven students I have taught only two
have graduated with honour. And of the past eleven, two have died insane. I don't hold myself
to blame; if the other five had only been pure of mind ..."
The walnut disintegrated in shards of black corruption.
"They all concealed a rotten heart, and that led to their downfall."
"I see," Anya said drily as she stared at the wormy mass. Why are they always
optimists? Even in the most unlikely guise? "I see that it's been a full two bells since I sent
that student of yours to pry out his crony. Do you suppose I should go and find out what's
happened to him?" She stared at Vargas with such intensity that he blinked and looked away.
"I think so," he said. "I really think so. That catamite of his was a nasty piece of work."
Anya stood up. "What catamite?"
Vargas blinked again. "Didn't you know?" His face sagged, as if all the muscles
supporting it had been severed. "I thought you must! The way you sent him тАУ Sebastian and
Zevon are notorious. They live together openly, you see, although it's a crime hereabouts; the