Читать «Rulers of the Darkness (хвв-4)» онлайн - страница 89

"Why, you lying sack of guts!" Oraste exclaimed. "You didn't think anything at all about him till I wondered why his pals and him knocked over that jeweler's shop and what they'd do with the loot."

"Oh." Bembo had the grace to look shamefaced. "Now that I think on it, you may be right."

"May I shit in my hat if I'm not," Oraste said.

"Took us long enough to get any leads to the dead whoreson's pals," Bembo said. "That's suspicious all by itself, you ask me."

"Well, we've got 'em now. Only question is how much good they'll do us." Oraste spat on the sidewalk of Gromheort. "Cursed Kaunian sorcery. If a blond looks like a Forthwegian all the time these days, how do we go about hauling him in?"

"By figuring out which Forthwegian he looks like," Bembo answered. "Or by remembering that the magic doesn't change his voice. That's how I bagged that longwinded foof of a Brivibas, if you'll recall." He strutted a couple of paces. That had been his coup, not Oraste's.

His partner grunted. "Aye, but you'd heard that old cocksucker's voice before. We don't know what these buggers sound like."

Since Bembo didn't feel like answering that, he kept quiet. The address they'd been given wasn't anywhere near Gromheort's Kaunian quarter, even though both men they wanted were- or, before hair dye and sorcery, would have been- blonds. "Powers below eat the Kaunians," Bembo growled. "They make us work too cursed hard."

"Powers below eat the Kaunians," Oraste said. "Period." He needed no special reason to hate them. He just did. After another half a block, he snapped his fingers. "You know what we ought to do?"

"Stop in a tavern and have some wine?" Bembo suggested. "I'm thirsty."

Oraste ignored him. "What we ought to do is, we ought to go into the Kaunian quarter and grab everybody who's got dark hair. Ship all those fornicators west. We wouldn't even have to make up any new rules to let us do it. Owning black hair dye's already against the law."

After some thought, Bembo nodded. "That's not too bad. But the real trouble is all the Kaunians who've already snuck out of the quarter here and the one in Eoforwic. Once they're out, they look like ordinary Forthwegians as long as they can keep the magic up. Then they can go anywhere. And do you know what else I've heard?"

"Tell me." Oraste was a stolid specimen of an Algarvian, but not altogether immune to the lodestone of gossip.

"Some of the blonds are even dyeing their bushes to make it harder for us to tell who's what," Bembo said.

"That's disgusting," Oraste said. "It's also pretty sneaky." A lot of Algarvian constables would have spoken with a certain grudging admiration. They admired clever criminals- and admired them all the more when they didn't have to try to run them down. But Oraste wasted neither admiration nor sympathy on Kaunians.

The two constables rounded the last corner and started toward the block of flats in which the robber Gippias' pals were alleged to be holed up. Bembo whistled. "Well, we've got company. A good thing, too, if you ask me."