uvai: переводы

→Lady Zera’s laughter tinkled like crystal. “You do flatter me, Nicolas. Come, meet some of my guests. Lord Keefe is here this evening, which is a first, and here is Mr. Jolen, whose treatise on the natural flaws of man is making quite a splash these days—is it not so, Mr. Jolen?”

→Stars drift overhead like a slow cascade of sparks. He watches, transfixed. Long has it been since he has seen such beauty. He remembers little of beauty from his life, but he remembers the stars. Like him, they are eternal. They have been with him since the beginning.

→Some of the patrons followed, eager to see the excitement outside. Most continued about their business, as though nothing had happened that they had not seen many times before. Lenoir, for his part, returned to his steak. When he had finished, however, and the barman still had not returned, Lenoir sighed and rose.

→“Exactly,” Lenoir smiled. “They are here because there is little chance of being seen by anyone they know. They are obviously hiding, and from the way they sit so closely together, they are obviously lovers. Yet they are not equals. She looks rich, yes, but that is only because of her gloves and the fur she wears around her neck. Her dress is not up to the same standard. The fur and the gloves are most likely gifts from her lover. A man of his station would never marry so far beneath him, and he is too old to be a bachelor. So . . . an affair.” He popped the forkful of meat into his mouth and waggled his eyebrows at Zach.

→“They look rich,” Zach said thoughtfully. This observation, at least, fell squarely within his area of expertise. A street urchin such as he could spot wealth as easily as a hawk finds a snake in short grass. “Too rich to be in a place like this,” he added.

→Lenoir skewered a piece of meat and dragged it through the juices pooled on his plate. “See where they have chosen to sit? It is the worst table in the room. It is too dark, and far enough from the hearth that it is no doubt cold as well. It is difficult to see them behind the beam, so they will probably have trouble getting the barmaid’s attention. And see also how they are dressed?”

→“You mean I should make up stories about them?”

→Lenoir took a bite of his meat. It was overdone, but still edible. “That is the point, Zach. You do not know them, so you must look closely in order to decide what they are like. You must form an idea of who they are based on their clothes, their expressions, what they are saying and doing.”

→“What about them?” Zach’s gaze was fixed on Lenoir’s steak. “I don’t know anybody here, if that’s what you mean.”

→“Since you have finished your supper,” said Lenoir, eying Zach’s empty bowl in mild disbelief, “and I have scarcely begun mine, we shall have to find something to occupy you while I eat. Suppose you tell me about the people in this room?”

→When the food arrived, Zach plunged into his bowl as though expecting to find treasure at the bottom. He ate with alarming speed, his spoon scarcely escaping his mouth before it was captured again. It seemed impossible that he could chew in the brief intervals between mouthfuls; it was a marvel the boy did not choke himself. Lenoir watched with grim fascination, his own meat barely touched by the time Zach was through.

→“A copper for your thoughts, mister?” said a voice, breaking into Lenoir’s musings. He turned at the sound, but could not immediately locate its source. Then he saw a shadow moving in a doorway, barely discernible in the failing light of evening. He glanced at the sign hanging crookedly above the doorframe and was surprised to see that he had already reached the orphanage. He must have been walking faster than he realized.

→Lenoir thought it unaccountably bizarre that the villagers of Brackensvale, Denouth, North Haven, and Berryvine should exist so near the cosmopolitan capital, yet still retain the insular ways of small communities in the middle of nowhere. So when Lenoir grew weary of Kennian, as anyone must, he had nowhere to fly to for a change of scenery. There was simply no other city in Braeland worthy of the journey. He longed to leave this country behind, with its harsh accents and crude tastes, and return to his homeland. But he dared not.

→Nor was Lenoir greatly more enthusiastic about contemplating the present. Kennian was an amiable sort of city, large enough to contain varied society and ample diversions, yet not so large as to overwhelm. But the surrounding hamlets that made up the remainder of the Five Villages were so backwater, so provincial, as to evoke the darkest days of the Cassiterian Empire.

→Those were the hardest mornings, when Lenoir was confronted rudely by his past. Usually it invaded subtly: the smell of lavender, perhaps, or a sauce that reminded him of caroule. These intrusions he could cope with, for they were fleeting and faded quickly. But when he dreamed, the past barged roughly into his mind and usurped his thoughts, and he would spend weeks in agony, struggling to cast out memories of the city of his birth. It pained him to remember Serles. He shrank from it almost as much as he shrank from remembering the man he had been when he lived there. Her beauty and his youth were lost to him both, and he had no desire to think on either of them.

→For one thing, there was nothing more depressing than the morning, and one was never more conscious of the morning than when one woke to it. At least when he did not sleep, Lenoir could imagine that one day bled seamlessly into another, an endless monotony he could plod through without really marking the passage of time. But when he slept, the day ended and thus began anew. And to wake without purpose, without desire or direction, was almost enough to drive a man mad.

→Nicolas Lenoir strolled the main thoroughfare of Kennian, hands in the pockets of his long coat, moving at the leisurely pace of a man without purpose. This was not the same as not having a destination, for he had one: the Courtier, a rather grandly titled eating house that he frequented at least five times a week. It was not an overly convenient location; Lenoir lived more than two dozen blocks to the east, in a cramped and disordered apartment that he avoided as often as possible.