"Jack vance - Tschai 2 - Servants of the Wankh" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

They arrived at the hostelry, a rambling edifice of three stories, with a
cafe on the front veranda, a restaurant in a great tall covered arbor to the
rear and balconies overlooking the street. A clerk at a wicket took their money,
distributed fanciful keys of black iron as large as their hands and instructed
them to their rooms.
"We have traveled a great dusty distance," said Anacho. "We require baths,
with good quality unguents, fresh linen, and then we will dine."
"It shall be as you order."
An hour later, clean and refreshed, the four met in the downstairs lobby.
Here they were accosted by a black-haired blackeyed man with a pinched
melancholy face. He spoke in a gentle voice. "You are newly arrived at Coad?"
Anacho, instantly suspicious, drew himself back. "Not altogether. We are
well-known and have no needs."
"I represent the Slave-taker's Guild, and this is my fair appraisal of your
group. The girl is valuable, the boy less so. Dirdirmen are generally considered
worthless except in clerical or administrative servitude, for which we have no
demand. You would be rated a winkle-gatherer or a nut-huller, of no great value.
This man, whatever he is, appears capable of toil, and would sell for the
standard rate. Considering all, your insurance will be ten sequins a week."
"Insurance against what?" demanded Reith.
"Against being taken and sold," murmured the agent. "There is a heavy demand
for competent workers. But for ten sequins a week," he declared triumphantly,
"you may walk the streets of Coad night and day, secure as though the demon
Harasthy rode your shoulders! Should you be sequestered by an unauthorized
dealer the Guild will instantly order your free release."


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Reith stood back, half-amused, half-disgusted. Anacho spoke in his most nasal
voice: "Show me your credentials."
" 'Credentials'?" asked the man, his chin sagging.
"Show us a document, a blazon, a patent. What? You have none? Do you take us
for fools? Be off with you!"
The man walked somberly away. Reith asked, "Was he in truth a fraud?"
"One never knows, but the line must be drawn somewhere. Let us eat; I have a
good appetite after weeks of steamed pulses and pilgrim plant."
They took seats in the dining room: actually a vast airy arbor with a glass
ceiling admitting a pale ivory light. Black vines climbed the walls; in the
corners were purple and pale-blue ferns. The day was mild; the end of the room
opened to a view of the Dwan Zher and a wind curled bank of cumulus at the
horizon.
The room was half-full; perhaps two dozen people dined from platters and
bowls of black wood and red earthenware, talking in low voices, watching the
folk at other tables with covert curiosity. Traz looked uneasily here and there,
eyebrows raised in disapproval of so much luxury: undoubtedly his first
encounter with what must seem a set of faddish and overcomplicated niceties,
reflected Reith.
He noticed Ylin-Ylan staring across the room, as if astonished by what she