alex_hohulya: переводы

→I whimpered a bit. I didn’t really care where I was anymore; I just wanted to go back home. I picked a spot in the shady brown instead of the sunny brown, and sat down—this time very carefully—on something wooden and duck-shaped that wobbled beneath me but didn’t burn me. A sensation of coolness soothed my burnt backside, but I couldn’t feel anything energetic in the grass beneath my feet.

→I thought about that for a minute. In the boardroom upstairs, three bloody emblems of death were tearing through human flesh to destroy every trace of evil from this part of the human world. And if I wasn’t very much mistaken, they would soon go Behind to perform the same office there. Bloody beasts, but very necessary ones in the world of Behind.

→“If it needs to be stamped out, there needs to be someone to stamp it out.” I was a lot more certain than the kid; Lord Sero’s unit might be irregular, but it was well within Behind laws. I had no problem with the way they were fixing the problem. “They’re beasts, too; but they’re beasts of another kind.”

→“Yes,” said the kid. “No. I don’t know. But those board members—they’re like animals. No, they’re much worse than that. They think everyone else is an animal, and that they can do what they like with them. Over this side of Between, there’s no other justice but Zero for humans when it comes to Behindkind problems. Human prisons can’t hold them, and there are too many people Behind who turn a blind eye to that sort of thing to even try cases there. So when they start incorporating that sort of attitude and turning it into a business—”

→“Yes,” I said. “Beasts of a good kind.”

→The kid frowned. “The good kind.”

→“Doesn’t bother you?”

→“Zero and them,” it explained. “Athelas explained it to me once; their job is to investigate, judge, and apply the judgement.”

→I wasn’t sure if I was more surprised to know that the kid had seen through my harshness, or because it did actually know what was about to happen.

→“I know they’re going to kill the board members,” the kid said, surprising me.

→“You’re not part of the team,” I said harshly. There was no way this kid should be present for what was going on upstairs. “You’re the pet.”

→The kid stopped complaining once we were downstairs—maybe it had expected to be kicked out at some stage. It boosted itself up on the secretary’s desk and crossed its legs beneath it. “They always kick me out,” it said glumly. “I mean, maybe I didn’t want to be there, but if I’m part of the team I should have some of the responsibility, too.”

→I took the kid out. It protested the whole way down in the elevator, but since I was pretty sure I knew what was about to happen upstairs, I ignored the protests and dragged it out anyway. I knew that red look in Lord Sero’s eyes; I’d seen it often enough in the war. Those board members, protesting and self-righteous and convinced of their own innocence, were staring death in the face.

→“Yes, it!” Lord Sero snapped. “Take it out!”

→The kid said, “Oi!” at him.

→“It,” said Athelas, in a reminding sort of way.

→Her? It was a she?

→“Take her out,” said Lord Sero to me.

→“What? They tried to kill me! I don’t want to go!”

→“You should go downstairs now, Pet,” Athelas said pleasantly.