"Charles Stross - Merchant princes 02 - The Hidden Family" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

"You always told me not to gossip," Miriam accused.

"Gossip is as gossip does." Iris cracked a smile. "Keep your powder dry and your
allies briefed."

"I'llтАФ" Miriam took a sip of her coffee. "Okay," she said, licking her dry lips.
"This is going to take a long time to tell, but basically what happened was, I
took the shoe box home and didn't do anything with it until that evening. Which
probably wasn't a good thing, because ..."

She talked for a long time, and Iris listened, occasionally prompting her for
more detail but mostly just staring at her face, intently, with an expression
somewhere between longing and disgust.

Finally Miriam ran down. "That's all, I guess," she said. "I left Brill with
Paulie, who's looking after her. Tomorrow I'm going to take the second locket
and, well, see if it works. Over here or over there." She searched Iris's face.
"You believe me?" she asked, almost plaintively.

"Oh, I believe you, kid." Iris reached out and covered her hand with her own:
older, thinner, infinitely familiar. "IтАФ" She paused. "I haven't been entirely
honest with you," she admitted. "I had an idea this was going to get weird
before I gave you the box, but not like this. It seemed like a good time to pass
it on when you began sniffing around their turf. Large-scale money laundering is
exactly the sort of thing the, this Clan, would be mixed up in, and I suspectedтАФ
well. I expected you to come back and ask me about it sooner, rather than simply
jumping in. Maybe I should have warned you." She looked at Miriam, searchingly.

"It's okay, Ma." Miriam covered Iris's hand with her other.

"No, it's not okay," Iris insisted. "What I did was wrong! I should haveтАФ"

"Ma, shut up."

"If you insist." Iris watched her with a curious half-smile. 'This second
knotwork designтАФI want to see that. Can you show me sometime?"
"Sure." Miriam nodded. "Didn't bring it with me, though."

Her mother nodded. "What are you going to do next?"

"I'mтАФ" Miriam sighed. "I warned Angbard that if anybody touched a hair on your
head, he was dead meat. But

now there's a second bunch after me, and I don't have a hotline to their boss. I
don't even know who their boss is."

"Neither did Patricia," murmured Iris.

"What did you say?"