"Stross, Charles - The Hidden Family (v1.1)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

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

"I'llЧ" 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. "IЧ" 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 suspectedЧwell. 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 haveЧ"

"Ma, shut up."

"If you insist." Iris watched her with a curious half-smile. 'This second knotwork designЧI 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'mЧ" 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?"

"I'd have thought it was obvious," Iris pointed out quickly. "If she'd known, they wouldn't have gotten near her." She shook her head. "A really bad business, that." For a moment she looked angry, and determinedЧthe same expression Miriam had glimpsed in a mirror recently. "And it hasn't gone away." She snorted. "Give me your secret phone number, girl."

"My secretЧwhat?"

Iris grinned at her. "Okay, your dead-letter drop. So we can keep in touch when you go on your wanderings. You do want to keep your old mom informed of what the enemies of freedom and civilization are up to, don't you?"

"Ma!" Miriam smiled right back. "Okay, here it is," she said, scribbling her new, sanitized mobile number down on a piece of paper and sliding it over to Iris.

"Good." Iris tucked it away quickly. "This locket you foundЧyou think it goes somewhere else, don't you?"

"Yes. That's the only explanation I can come up with."

"To another world, where everything will of course be completely different." Iris shook her head. "As if two worlds wasn't already one too many."

"And mystery assassins. Don't forget the mystery assassins."

"I'm not," said her mother. "From what you've been telling me ..." She narrowed her eyes. "Don't trust any of them. Not the Clan, not even the one you bedded. They're allЧthey sound likeЧa bunch of vipers. They'll screw you as soon as you think you're safe."

"Ma." Miriam began to blush. "Oh, I don't trust them. At least, not to do anything with my best interests at heart."