"ab Hugh, Dafydd - Jiana 02 - Warriorwards" - читать интересную книгу автора (ab Hugh Dafydd)

hovering in the air around her, their eyes watched mournfully from sunken sockets in bare, bleached skulls. They worked their broken jaws as if trying to speak; but no sounds came forth. Jiana ignored their pleas.
She saw an inn across the street, the Jackanape. It was unfamiliar, but she began to thirst.
"I ought to stop in for a moment, just to ask around about slave girls in Bay Din. A drop. Maybe just one drop. ..." She trotted on by, licking her lips. The stables did not look noticibly closer.
(But what was the dream? She had dreamed it last night. It was a horrid dream, and He, Toq, the blooded boy-god, was in it.
(So what had he said? What about casting his shade three times? Three times, thrice beforeЧbeforeЧno, it was gone.)
Jiana passed under the Great Arch of Lilies, black stone frosted with the white flowers. The arch carried the Ruoy Mava Cemetery across the five great thoroughfares of Bay Bay. Jiana slowed to a cautious walk, for the Cenotaph was dark and evil, filled with footgrabs with queer ideas.
She passed the Hung Stallion Tavern and then Knicker Pickers, low dives both, and resolved to stop at the next teahouse for a tightener.
A deep, still eddy from the canal passed around three sides of the Pregnant Bull. Jiana paused on the walkway, and stared down into the blackness, drawn by an irresistable curiosity. Something was down there; she knew it.
Slowly, like an old wound pulling open again, she began to realize why the building and the pool looked familiar: it was where an old lover of hers, Tawn, had sunk to his death, clutching to his breast the stolen chest of gold he would not loose.
She stared at the rippling, oily water, and an icy chill crawled along her spine. Something was under the water, and it was rising.
Tawn? Come back to accuse with silent eyes and pointing finger?
Tiny, white things broke the surface; they rose higher,
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and Jiana gasped as she realized they were bloated, water-bleached hands.
"No!" she said through clenched teeth, anger overwhelming fear. She clutched her sword hilt and thumbed aside the catchlock. "You are dead, bucko, and that is how you are going to stay!"
The hands rose higher, and they were not the hands of Tawn after all. Instead, they were the hands, then the arms of a little girl.
She rose slowly from the waves, her long, black hair dripping down her face and back.
Jiana bit her lip, and dropped her hand nervelessly to her side. She tried to speak, but the words caught in her throat.
The little girl smiled, and her teeth were all filed to points. The Wolf Hour struck.
"I'll never be very far," laughed Jianabel, spitting out water. "And you'll always be mine!"
"Where the hell have you been?"
"Yes, my dearest sister; hell, indeed."
"Like it? You're going to stay there."
"It's tolerable," said Jianabel, stifling a yawn, "but I'll be ever so glad when you join me here. We belong together, you and I! Kiss kiss!" She blew two kisses at Jiana; they smelled like the gas from a bloated, watery corpse washed upon a beach.
Jiana looked at the girl; she felt none of the old helplessness, still in control.
"I slew you, once. I'm not ready to deal with you again, so piss off."
"I was you, once," whispered the hideous little girl. "You were me. I am the wolf within you still." Her eyes rolled up, and her tongue lolled out of her mouth. It was thick and black, as if she had been poisoned. She sank slowly into the oily water.
". . . never too far . . ." she promised, ". . . and you'll always be mine." The final word was lost in the gurgle of the water.
Jiana stared at the water; there was no trace now of the
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Dafydd ab Hugh
apparition. The shakes she had suppressed during the encounter returned with a vengeance.
(It was crawling. Something was crawling. Something was crawling down her throat. . . .
(It was a sort of a rhyme she dreamedЧToq dancing and singing a song of triumph. He would cast his shade three times over her life, before . . . before something, whackity-whackity, thirty-third.)
Taking a deep breath, Jiana moved quickly towards the teahouse, cursing at the top of her voice the son of a bachelor who had nailed the walkway boards.
The strongtea was hot, but not cheap. The Pregnant Bull, unlike its predecessor, was one of the more expensive establishments in the Maze, frequented by the sorts of successftil thieves, traitors, and highwaymen who were given nick-names by the constables: Black Mask, Gentleman Jarak, Mistress Catch-It.
But another batch haunted such tearooms and hid in the shadows. They were Briars, once rulers of the land, now ploughers in other people's gardens. They hid and they plotted, and plotted and planned. The Eagle dynasty followed their progress with amused contempt, for once in a few moons a Briar would loll an officer or a tax collector. Then slumming became hell, for the Eagles would beat the bushes for any Briars they could find, tearing apart tearooms and private houses with an energetic fervor.
Jiana spotted them at once in the Pregnant Bull; they sat in the open, listening to a small, dark singer. Jiana waited for her eyes to adjust to die light; then she sat at the bar and ordered a pot of tea all for herself.
A gentle man was passin by,
He asked for a drink as he got dry at the well below the
vaUey-o,
Green grows the lilly-o, Right among the bushes-o . . .
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"Can you spare a moment, master?"
The Briar was old and a bit deaf; at least he did not respond or turn to her.
"Old man," said Jiana, touching his hand. He turned, and blinked at her a few times. He was past his cups and into his pitchers, Jiana saw.
"Arah? I didna catch it, mistress."
"What do you know about slaves, somewhere around Bay Bay? I keep hearing about. . . ."
They chatted, Jiana pressing him for information in the guise of teatalk. She drank as she talked, the better to loosen my tongue and lubricate my ears, she told herself.