"Martha Wells - City of Bones" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wells Martha)

City of Bones
Martha Wells
TOR
A Tom Doherty Associates Book New York




Copyright notice




Contents

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21


To Scott McCullar and Nancy Buchanan, for everything




Chapter One
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Somewhere else, in a room shadowed by age and death, a man readies himself to look into the
future for what may be the last time.
The day was long, and Khat was bored with bargaining. He leaned on one pole of the awning and
looked out into the dusty street, ignoring ArnotтАЩs wife, who was examining their find as if she had never
seen the like before and never wanted to again.
тАЬTwo days, no more,тАЭ ArnotтАЩs wife finally said, mopping the sweat from her brow with a corner of
her scarf and feigning disinterest.
Khat shook his head, irritated at this display of deliberate ignorance. His partner Sagai raised an
eyebrow in eloquent comment and said, тАЬThe lady has a mischievous sense of humor, and Arnot is an
honorable man. One hundred days.тАЭ
Khat smiled to himself and thought, The lady is a thief, and Arnot is a ratтАЩs ass. More dust rose in
the narrow street outside as pushcarts trundled by, piled high with wares destined for markets on the
upper tiers. The sun had started its downward progress into late afternoon, leaving the high canyon of the
street outside ArnotтАЩs shop in shadow. The heat was still stifling under the patched awning and must be
far worse in the shopтАЩs cavelike interior, dug out of the black rock of the cityтАЩs backbone, where Arnot
himself sat on his money chest and listened to his wife bargain.
The man in the shadowed room cups the fragments of bone in one hand. They are only a focus,
because the power to see beyond time is inside his thoughts and his blood and his living bones, not
in the dead matter in his hand.
The womanтАЩs laughter was a humorless bark. She said, тАЬNothing is worth that.тАЭ