Цитаты из книги Among Thieves

"I had said I could not find out who made the item, which is true. What I can do however, is try to find out how they made it. There are only so many ways to gather magic and weave it into something like this." "And how does knowing how it was made help us?" I said. Jelem opened his eyes and regarded me with the same expression he might use for a pheasant that had asked why it was being eaten. "'How' tells us which style of magic the maker used," he explained. "'How' tells us what degree of ability the maker had. 'How' tells us how much, roughly, someone is willing to spend on killing you. And 'how' tells me — maybe — how to make more of these charming little baubles ." He tapped the rope. "The magic is keyed to the runes. They ought to make it easier to unravel."

Whipjacks did "turn around" thefts — stealing from one person, selling to another, then stealing it back again and returning it to the original owner once a reward had been offered. The idea was that, besides making twice the profit off a single piece of swag, the Whipjack couldn`t be caught with the valuables in hand since he moved it between marks so fast. Fedim must have been this Whipjack`s middleman, selling the swag and then leading the thief back when it was time to steal it again. It was a relationship that required trust on both ends; either man could sell the other out for a quick profit. And trust, I`ve found, breeds reliance, which leads to shared confidences. It was those confidences I needed to know about.

Much of the cordon was as I remembered it. The main thoroughfare, Solace Way, was broad for Ten Ways and narrow for any other part of Ildrecca. Nearly half of its cobbles were missing, and the rest were covered over with mud and refuse, making the footing tricky. Side streets were little more than alleys, and the alleys little more than near-accidental spaces between buildings. What little sky we coudl see was smudged over with smoke, hiding the stars. The buildings themselves were a jumble of old and not as old, all running to ruin. Rougly one in five was missign a roof, walls, or some other critical portion of architecture. Here and there, I saw a flower box, a tiny garden, a newly painted lintel — attempts by the Lighters to make their fragment of the cordon more respectable, more homey. While it might have made them feel better, to me it only underscored the desolation of the place.

The first assassin ever to come after me was a tall fellow who smelled of fish and cheap wine. I was eighteen at the time and stabbed him more out of luck than skill as he tried to garrote me in an alley. The second Blade had a name: Gray Lark. She had mixed a measure of ground glass into one of my meals. Ironically, it was during a particularly low point in my life, when I was using the smoke. The drug had been more important than food that night, and I ended up giving my plate to another addict. I watched him scream and cough up blood for hours. The next day, I hunted down Gray Lark and force-fed her the same meal. It was the only good the smoke ever did me, and I haven`t touched it since. The third try was three years ago. His name was Hyrnos, and he tried to put a knife in my back in a dark alley — a traditionalis. The only thing that had saved me was my catching him out of the corner of my eye with my night vision. The running fight we carried out across the ice-slicked roofs of Ildrecca that winter`s eve nearly did us both in. In the end, I stayed on the roofs while he ended up on the street four stories down, but it was a close thing. Three months after Hyrnos tried and failed, Alden came after me. It`s strange, having a knife fight in your bedroom with a woman you`ve known for years. I`d always known she was a professional, though, so I couldn`t really hold it against her, even if she was trying to dust me. Of the four Blades who have come after me, I know one was hired by my sister, and I suspect a second. Both times, I have taken the assassin`s weapons and left them in her bed. Needless to say, this has done nothing to make amends between us.