"Michael Swanwick - The Raggle Taggle Gypsy - O" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

you leave. It'll look better."
 ****

"Have fun," Lord Eric said, and left the room.

Eric's men worked Crow over good. They broke his ribs and kicked in his face. A
couple of times they had to stop to get their breath back, they were labouring so
hard. He had to give them credit, they put their backs into the work. But, like Crow
himself, the entertainment was too boorish for its audience. Long before it was done,
most of the partyers had left in boredom or disgust.

At last he groaned, and he died.

Well, what was a little thing like death to somebody like Crow? He was
archetypalтАФthe universe demanded that he exist. Kill him here-and-now and he'd be
reborn there-and-then. It wouldn't be long before he was up and around again.

But not Annie.

No, that was the bitch of the thing. Annie was dead, and the odds were good she
wasn't coming back.

****

Among twenty smog-choked cities, the only still thing was the eye of Crow. He
leaned back, arms crossed, in the saddle of his Harley, staring at a certain door so
hard he was almost surprised his gaze didn't burn a hole in it.

A martlet flew down from the sky and perched on the handlebars. It was a little bird,
round-headed and short-beaked, with long sharp wings. Its eyes were two stars
shining. "Hail!" it said.

"Hail, fire, and damnation," Crow growled. "Any results?"

"Lord Taleisin has done as you required, and salted the timelines with songs. In
London, Nashville and Azul-Tlon do they praise her beauty, and the steadfastness of
her love. In a hundred guises and a thousand names is she exalted. From
mammoth-bone medicine lodges to MTVirtual, they sing of Lady Anne, of the love
that sacrifices all comfort, and of the price she gladly paid for it."

Still the door did not open.

"That's not what I asked, shit-for-brains. Did it work?"

"Perhaps." The bird cocked its head. "Perhaps not. I was told to caution you: even
at best, you will only have a now-and-again lady. Archetypes don't travel in pairs. If
it works, your meetings will be like solar eclipsesтАФprimal, powerful, rare and brief."
"Yeah, yeah."

The creature hesitated, and if a bird could be said to look abashed, then it looked