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

name, a mechanic dropped everything to check out their truck. They sat in the
stands, munching on a head of lettuce and watching the gladiators practise. An hour
later a slave came up to tell them it was fixed.

****

They bought a room at a tavern that evening and ordered the best meal in the house.
Which turned out to be sow's udders stuffed with fried baby mice. They washed it
down with a wine that tasted like turpentine and got drunk and screwed and fell
asleep. At least, Annie did. Crow sat up for a time, thinking. Was she going to wake
up some morning in a cold barn or on a piss-stained mattress and miss her
goose-down comforters, her satin sheets, and her liveried servants? She'd been
nobility, after all, and the wife of a demiurge.

He hadn't meant to run off with anybody's wife. But when he and some buddies had
shown up at Lord Eric's estates, intent upon their own plans, there Annie was. No
man that liked women could look upon Annie and not want her. And Crow couldn't
want something without trying to get it. Such was his nature тАФ he couldn't alter it.
He'd met her in the gardens out by Lord Eric's menagerie. A minor tweak of the
weather had been made, so that the drifts of snow were held back to make room for
bright mounds of prehistoric orchids. "Th'art a ragged fellow indeed, sirrah," she'd
said with cool amusement.

He'd come under guise of a musician at a time when Lord Eric was away for a few
years monkeying with the physical constants of the universe or some such bullshit.
The dinosaurs had been his target from the first, though he wasn't above boffing the
boss's lady on the way out. But something about her made him want her for more
than just the night. Then and there he swore to himself that he'd win her, fair and
without deceit, and on his own terms. "These ain't rags, babe," he'd said, hooking
his thumbs into his belt. "They're my colours."

****

They stayed in Rome for a week, and they didn't go to watch the games, though
AnnieтАФwho was born in an era whose idea of entertainment included public
executions and bear-baitingsтАФwanted to. But the deinonychi were by all accounts a
hit. Afterwards, they collected their reward in the form of silver bars, "as many,"
Carpophorus gleefully quoted his sponsor, Marcus, as saying, "as the suspension of
their truck will bear."

Marcus was a rich man from a good family and had political ambitions. Crow
happened to know he'd be dead within the month, but he didn't bother mentioning
the fact. Leave well enough alone, was his motto.

"Why did we wait around," Annie wanted to know afterwards, "if we weren't going
to watch?"

"To make sure it actually happened. Eric can't come in now and snatch back his
dinos without creating a serious line paradox. As I read it, that's considered bad
form for a Lord of Creation." They were on the streets of Rome again, slowed to a