Читать «Rulers of the Darkness (хвв-4)» онлайн - страница 82

One day, the door to his cell came open at an hour when it usually stayed closed. Three guards stood outside, all of them with their sticks pointed at him. "Come along with us," one of them said.

"Why?" Talsu asked. Moving at all seemed more trouble than it was worth.

But the guard strode in and backhanded him across the face. "Because I say so, you stinking turd," he said. "You don't ask questions here, curse you. We ask questions." He slapped Talsu again. "Now come along."

Tasting blood from a split lip, Talsu came. He feared he knew where they were going. After they'd taken two turns, he knew he was right. The Jelgavan constabulary captain hadn't grilled him for a while. He wondered what sort of torments he would have to go through this time, and whether he would be able to endure them without starting to name names for the Algarvians' hound.

He was still half a corridor away from the captain's office when his nose twitched. His head came up. It had been a long time since he'd smelled roast mutton rather than the usual prison stinks. Spit flooded into his mouth. He muttered under his breath, being careful not to say anything loud enough to draw the notice- and anger- of the guards. He'd only thought he knew how hungry he was.

"Here he is, sir." The guards shoved him into the office.

"Talsu son of Traku!" the constabulary captain exclaimed, as if greeting an old friend. "How are you today? Sit down, why don't you?"

Astonishingly, a chair waited for Talsu in front of the captain's desk. He hadn't noticed it till the captain invited him to sit. He hadn't noticed it because all his attention focused on the desk itself, and on the lovely leg of mutton sitting there along with olives and white bread and butter and green beans cooked with little bits of bacon and a big carafe of wine red as blood.

"How are you today?" the constabulary captain asked again as Talsu, like a man in a dream, took his seat.

"Hungry," Talsu murmured. He could hardly talk- powers above, he could hardly think- staring at all that wonderful food. "So hungry."

"Isn't that interesting?" the Jelgavan in Algarvian service replied. "And here I was just sitting down to supper." He gestured to the guard who'd slapped Talsu around. "Pour this fellow some wine, will you? And some for me, too, while you're at it."

Sure enough, two glasses stood by that carafe. The guard filled them both. Talsu waited till he saw the constabulary captain drink before raising his own glass to his lips. He realized that might not help. If the wine was drugged, the captain might already have taken an antidote. But Talsu couldn't resist the temptation. He took a long pull at the glass.

"Ahh," he said when he set it down. He might almost have been sighing with longing for Gailisa, his wife. He smacked his lips, savoring the sweetness of the grape cut with the juices of lemon and lime and orange in the usual Jelgavan fashion.