Eugene_Mel: переводы

→Ullus swallowed. “I see.”

→“I thought you would,” the man said.

→Ullus picked up the list and read it. He winced. “Captain,” he said, his tone cautious, “you’ll get a better price for these farther east.”

→“I do not sail east,” the man said.

→“Come,” Captain Demos said. “Bring your slave and a cart. I sail within the hour.”

→Captain Demos was carrying something to the Canim.

→Three weeks.

→Ehren sighed and dipped his quill, focusing on looking bored, miserable, and surly in order to disguise his sudden excitement and interest. Westmiston was the westernmost human settlement in the Sunset Isles. The only civilization west of here all belonged to the Canim. Their main trade port was ten days sailing from Westmiston, and at this time of year, about eleven days back.

→And yet . . . Ehren frowned and kept his eyes on the ledger. The man didn’t carry himself like a pirate at all. Most of them tended to be as ragged, undisciplined, and unkempt in mannerism as in appearance. This man looked cautious and sober. He moved like the best professional fighters, all relaxed awareness and restraint. Ehren judged that he was no pirate at all, but a cutter—an assassin who would trade death for gold if the price was right.

→“Ehren,” he snapped, the name viciously snarled. “By the bloody crows I didn’t buy you to sit around staring out a window.”

→Ehren sat at the rickety desk in the open-walled bungalow, sweat dripping off his nose and onto the accounting ledger before him and beading into droplets upon a leather slave’s collar that would streak infrequently down his thin shirt. The Sunset Isles could grow hideously warm in the summer, though thank the great furies that it was finally beginning to wind down. Bugs swarmed around Ehren’s head, and tiny swallows darted through the wide-open wall windows, snatching at them. His hand cramped every few moments, forcing him to set aside the quill pen he used. He had just laid it down when a cadaverously thin man strode through the door.

→She heard Kalare turn away and walk back into his study, chuckling under his breath. “More than he bargained for. Far more indeed.”

→Rook turned away, putting her body between Masha and Kalare. She hugged the weeping little girl as a trickle of bitter, furious, terrified tears washed over her face.

→“Don’t worry,” Kalare told Rook in a smooth, gentle voice incongruous to the hard glitter in his eyes. “I’ll make sure my faithful retainer’s daughter is safe. You have my promise on that. I value your loyalty very highly.”

→“B-but you just got here!” Masha wailed. “What if I need you and I can’t find you?”

→She hugged the child close to escape the pain in her eyes. “I miss you, too. I miss you so much.” Rook sensed Kalare’s presence behind her, in the doorway to the solar. She turned and faced him without looking at his eyes. “I’m sorry, little one. I can’t this time. I have to go now.”

→A small girl with glossy black hair sat on the floor with a young maid, playing with dollies. When the door opened, the child’s caretaker glanced up, rose, bowed to Rook, and retreated without another word.

→Kalare gestured at a door on the other side of the study, a solar for reading and entertaining intimate guests. Rook crossed the room and opened the door upon a spacious chamber with thick carpeting, richly furnished.

→Kalare shook his head. “You believe it genuine?”

→“Yes, my lord.”