"Jonathan Stroud - Bartimaeus 3 - Ptolemy's Gate" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stroud Jonathan)

I should have mentioned that in contrast to all the centaurs and ogres at my side, I'd been
wearing a human guise that night. It happened to be that of a girl: slender, long dark hair,
feisty expression. Not based on anybody in particular, of course.

The speaker appeared around the edge of the public convenience and paused to sharpen a nail
against a snaggy bit of pipe. No delicate guise for him; as usual he was decked out as a one-
eyed giant, with lumpy muscles and long blond hair braided in a complex and faintly girly way.
He wore a shapeless blue-gray smock that would have been considered hideous in a medieval
fishing village.

"A poor sweet damsel, too frail to pry herself free." The cyclops considered one of his nails
carefully; finding it a little long, he bit at it savagely with his small sharp teeth and rounded it off
against the pebbledash wall of the lavatory.

"Mind helping me up?" I inquired.

The cyclops looked up and down the empty road. "Better watch out, love," he said, leaning
casually on the building so that its downward pressure increased. "There's dangerous characters
abroad tonight. Djinn and foliots . . . and naughty imps, who might do you a mischief."

"Can it,Ascobol," I snarled. "You know full well it's me."

The Cyclops's single eye batted becomingly under its layer of mascara. "Bartimaeus?" he said in
wonder. "Can it possibly be . . . ? Surely the great Bartimaeus would not be so easily snared!
You must be some imp or mouler cheekily adopting his voice and . . . But, noтАФI am wrong! It is
you." He raised his eyebrow in an affectation of shock. "Incredible! To think the noble
Bartimaeus has come to this! The master will be sorely disappointed."


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 Jonathan Stroud - Bartimaeus 3 - Ptolemy's Gate



I summoned my last reserves of dignity. "All masters are temporary," I replied. "All humiliations
likewise. I bide my time."

"Of course, of course." Ascobol swung his apelike arms and did a little pirouette. "Well spoken,
Bartimaeus! You do not let your decline depress you. No matter that your great days are over,
that you are now as redundant as a will-o'-the-wisp!5 No matter that your task tomorrow is as
likely to be damp-dusting our master's bedroom as roaming free upon the air. You are an
example to us all."

5. Will-o'-the-wisps: small spirits who struggle to keep up with the times.Visible as flickering flames on
the first plane (although revealed on others to be more like capering squid), wisps were once employed
by magicians to lure trespassers off remote paths into pits or quags. Cities changed all that; urban
wisps have now been forced into lurking over open manhole covers, to rather less effect.


I smiled, showing my white teeth. "Ascobol," I said, "it is not I who have declined, but my