alexandei: переводы

→<p class="fmtx1">“Oh, crap,” I breathed.</p>

→<p class="fmtx1">“Allow me to clarify,” I said. “Touch him, and you and I are going to throw down.”</p>

→<p class="fmtx1">“Is that the lesson you took from the memory?” Lea asked, her smile spreading. “You were clearly being prepared to be an enforcer.”</p>

→<p class="fmtx1">(I was not responsible.)</p>

→<p class="fmtx1">“Ah, disbelief,” Lea murmured. “Once the mark begins to suspect illusion is at work, there’s little point in continuing.”</p>

→<p class="fmtx1">The Leanansidhe stooped and seized Molly’s chin, jerking my apprentice’s face up to meet her inhuman gaze. “Then he wronged you badly, child,” Lea replied, enunciating each word sharply. “He cheated you of the legacy he lived—and suffered to acquire. I am not teaching you how to tie knots in rope or to bake pastries. I am making you ready to face battle and emerge alive.”</p>

→<p class="fmtx1">“No,” Murphy and I said at the same time, and continued speaking over each other.</p>

→<p class="fmtx1">Murphy gave him a gimlet look. “Richard runs by the book. He won’t help a civilian.”</p>

→<p class="fmtx1">“Dick who?” Butters asked, looking between us.</p>

→<p class="fmtx1">I shrugged. “Said what came next wasn’t for whiners or rubberneckers.”</p>

→<p class="fmtx1">Murphy snorted. “You’ve been drinking bad mead, Skaldi Skjeldson.”</p>

→<p class="fmtx1">The gunman let out a low, rumbling chuckle. “You are wanted, little man.” His voice sounded rotted, clotted, like something that hadn’t been alive in a long time. “It is commanded. You can come with me and it won’t hurt. Or you can stay in there and it will.”</p>

→“Aye,” Sir Stuart said. “ ’Tis a muzzle-loading pistol, boy. You have to reload them like a proper weapon.” Idly, he reached out a hand toward the last remnants of a deceased wraith, and flickers of light and memory flowed across the intervening space and into his fingertips. When he had it all back, Sir Stuart sighed and shook his head, seeming to recover a measure of strength. “Very well, then, lad. Help me up.”

→Sir Stuart cried out in sudden agony, his body tightening helplessly, muscles convulsing just as they would on an electrocuted human being. The bolt of lightning seemed to attach itself to his spine, then burned a line down to his right hip bone, burning and searing and blowing bits of the tattered, flaming substance of his ghostly flesh into the air.

→“You don’t have to be a dick about it,” I muttered. Very quietly.

→The spirits who had come along behind us flowed around and over us and—though I twitched when I saw it—beneath us. Within seconds, they were spread into a defensive line in the shape of a half dome between the house and the gathered wraiths and lemurs. Then those silent forms stood steady, whether their feet were planted on the ground or in thin air or somewhere just <i>below</i> the ground, and faced the small horde with their weapons in hand.

→As the wraiths continued to assault and entangle the house’s defenders, Sir Stuart moved to the top of the little stairs leading up to the porch and planted his feet. Out at the street, the shadowy forms of the lemurs had all gone still, each of them hunched down in a crouch, predators preparing to spring.

→“They did the first night,” he said. “Still don’t know how. I can’t leave the porch or they’ll get through. Now be quiet.” His fingers flexed and settled on the haft of his ax. “Here’s where we come to it.”