Читать «Rulers of the Darkness (хвв-4)» онлайн - страница 425

It was a big egg. The roar of its bursting was more a blow against the ears than an ordinary noise. The next thing Vanai knew, she was on her knees. She'd dropped the jar, and it had shattered, oil spilling and sliding across the cobbles of the market square. She cursed as she got to her feet. She wasn't the only one who'd fallen, or the only one who'd had something break, either.

When she staggered upright, she first started back toward the stall where she'd bought the olive oil. Then she started thinking straight, and realized she had more important things to worry about. Chief among them was that she couldn't afford to be recognized as a Kaunian at this of all moments. Forthwegians and Algarvians alike would assume she'd helped plant the egg, and she probably wouldn't last long enough to get shipped west.

That meant she had to return to the flat as fast as she could. Only when she headed back across the square did she realize how lucky she'd been not to have stood closer to the egg when it burst. Some people were down and shrieking. Other people, and parts of people, lay motionless. Blood was everywhere, puddling between cobblestones and splashed up onto walls and stalls the sorcerous energies hadn't knocked down.

The street by which she'd entered the square, the street on which the Forthwegians had been pulling down broadsheets, suddenly had an opening twice as wide as it had been. Fewer people- fewer whole people, anyway- and more body parts lay closer to where the egg must have been hidden. Gulping, trying to avert her eyes, Vanai picked her way past them, and past the crater the egg had blown in the ground.

By some miracle, one of the Algarvian constables who'd been on the street had survived. His tunic and kilt were half torn off him. Blood streamed down his face, and from cuts on his arms and legs. But he was up and walking, and in that state of eerie calm where he hardly seemed aware of his own injuries.

"Stinking Kaunians sneaking back from Zuwayza must've done this," he said to Vanai in Algarvian, as if to a superior. "Zuwayzin are supposed to be allies, curse 'em." He spat- spat red- and then noticed to whom he was talking. "Powers above, you probably don't understand a word I'm saying." Off he staggered, looking for an officer to brief.

But Vanai followed Algarvian well enough. She thought the constable was very likely right. The difference was, he hated the Kaunian raiders, while she hoped they would do more and worse.

People were rushing toward the burst. Some paused to help wounded men and women. Nobody took any special notice of unhurt or slightly hurt folk coming away. Vanai wasn't the only one- far from it. For all she knew, she wasn't the only Kaunian hurrying to get out of the public eye before concealing sorcery concealed no more.

Her street. Her block. The entrance to her block of flats. The stairway up to the dingy lobby. The stairway up to her flat. The hallway. Her front door. Her front door, opening. Her front door, closed behind her.