Читать «Rulers of the Darkness (хвв-4)» онлайн - страница 437

"Aye, I'll get him for you," Ealstan answered. "May I ask why?"

"I seek to purchase pots." The Algarvian raised an eyebrow. "If I wanted flowers, you may be sure I would go elsewhere."

Ears burning, Ealstan descended from his stool and went to fetch Pybba. "Pots?" the pottery magnate said. "I'll give him-" He shook his head and followed Ealstan out again. Eyeing the Algarvian with no great warmth, he asked, "What sort of pots have you got in mind?"

"Small ones." The officer gestured. "Ones to fit the palm of the hand and the fingers, so. Round, or nearly round, with snug-fitting lids."

"Haven't got anything just like that in stock," Pybba answered. "It'd have to be a special order- unless some sugar bowls would do?"

"Let me see them," the Algarvian said.

"Come with me," Pybba told him. "I've got some samples in the next room."

"Good. Very good. Take me to them, if you please."

When Pybba and the redhead came back from the samples room, the pottery magnate wore a sandbagged expression. "Fifty thousand sugar bowls, style seventeen," he said hoarsely, and turned to stare at the colonel. "Why would anybody want fifty thousand sugar bowls?"

"For a very large tea party, of course," the Algarvian said blandly.

That wasn't the truth, of course. Ealstan wondered what the truth was, and who would get hurt finding out.

***

"Rain pouring down on us," Sergeant Istvan complained, squelching along a muddy trench on the little island of Becsehely. "Water all around us." His wave encompassed the Bothnian Ocean not far away. "We might as well grow fins and turn into fish."

Szonyi shook his head, which made water fly off his waxed cloth cap. "I'd sooner turn into a dragon and fly away from this miserable place."

"Probably safer to turn into a fish," Corporal Kun observed. "The Kuusamans have too many dragons between us and the stars." He pointed upward.

"No stars to see now, not with this rain," Szonyi said. "No dragons to see, either, and I don't miss 'em one fornicating bit." Kun had disagreed with him about which impossible choice was better to make, but not even Kun could argue about that.

With a sigh, Istvan said, "If we were only fighting the Kuusamans, we'd do fine. And if we were only fighting the Unkerlanters, we'd do fine, too. But we're fighting both of 'em, and we're not doing so fine."

"We'll send you back to the capital," Kun said. "You can teach the foreign ministry how to run its business."

"It'd mean I didn't have you in my hair anymore." Istvan scratched. Something gave under his fingernail. He grunted in considerable satisfaction. "There's one louse that's not in my hair from now on." The satisfaction evaporated. "Stars only know how many I've still got, though."

"We all have 'em." Szonyi scratched, too. "You'd think the wizards would come up with a charm that could keep the lice off a fellow for more than a day or two at a time." He scowled at Kun, as if to say he blamed the mage's apprentice for the problem.

Kun shrugged. "I can't do anything about it- except scratch, just like everybody else." He did.