Shadow Box. James Axler

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ he confirmed, and Kane brought his arms back down and stepped aside.

      Velvet Coat moved across to Brigid, who adopted the same position as Kane with her arms stretched out from her shoulders, tugging her jacket open. She stood almost eight inches taller than the mustached man, and Velvet Coat’s eyes narrowed for a moment as he admired the way the shadow suit clung to her breasts, before running the weapons sensor over her limbs and torso.

      Then he moved onto Grant, who tried to look disinterested as the man ran the baton down to his feet. As the baton reached about to the level of Grant’s knee, the clicking was replaced by a shrill whine. Velvet Coat leaped backward, and the sentries raised their guns and targeted Grant’s head, stern expressions on their faces.

      “Your boot, señor?” Velvet Coat said. “You will remove this for me.”

      Grant lowered his arms very slowly, his eyes never leaving those of the man, very aware that he stood in the sights of two guns. “Whoa, okay,” he said, “everyone just calm down.”

      “Your boot, señor,” the man stated again, his irritation barely suppressed. “Or you can forget the deal and we kill you and your friends right now.”

      “Now, let’s not be hasty,” Kane began, but the man in the velvet coat held up a hand to quieten him.

      “Your colleague has something in the boot there, a weapon,” Velvet Coat explained as he backed toward the curtained doorway, far away from Grant.

      Grant lowered his arms slowly, trying to keep his tone calm. “It’s just a knife,” he said. “Clipped to my boot. For camping.”

      “We came a long way to see you,” Brigid added. “Camped out for three nights in the Outlands.”

      “Man’s gotta cut firewood somehow,” Grant explained reasonably.

      “Vamonos.” Velvet Coat nodded very slowly, the slight trace of a smile on his lips. “You remove and hand over the knife,” he said, “and if I find you hiding anything else…” He left the sentence unfinished, but the implication was clear.

      Grant knelt and pulled his pant leg up to reveal a scuffed leather boot that ended a little way up his calf. There was a six-inch-long, brown leather sheath there from which the handle of a knife protruded at an angle. Grant unclipped the sheath, not bothering to remove the knife. As he did so he smiled inwardly—it had been a ploy to keep up their appearances. The last thing they had wanted to do was advertise themselves as representatives of Cerberus, here to gather intelligence and shut down Carnack’s little DNA trading post, so they had come here posing as traders themselves. And any trading party worth its salt would try to sneak just one weapon into a meeting, no matter what the rules were.

      Grant stood and handed the sheathed knife to the shirtless young guide, who placed it atop the little stack of guns he had amassed.

      Velvet Coat stepped forward once more, watching Grant warily as he raised the baton. “Arms outstretched, please, señor,” he said, and Grant obeyed, waiting as the man ran the baton carefully over his form three full times before he was satisfied.

      As a rule, Kane and Grant would each be carrying a Sin Eater pistol each in its distinctive wrist rig. The Sin Eater was the weapon of the Magistrate, a symbol of office as much as a devastating hand cannon. But its very recognizability would have caused problems in this environment, and any rationalization about acquiring the Sin Eaters from storage or from killing Magistrates was too risky to chance. They had opted instead to arm themselves lightly with fairly common pistols that wouldn’t draw any undue attention to a supposed group of traders.

      Once the trio had been disarmed, Velvet Coat pushed through the curtain into the next room and held it to one side to usher the three Cerberus warriors through.

      Kane turned back and shot a look at their young guide as he knelt to stash their weapons in a chest in the corner of the anteroom. “Careful with those,” he told the boy. “Family heirlooms.”

      The boy smiled and nodded, but there was no recognition in his eyes. Kane suspected that he hadn’t understood the words.

      “Come,” Velvet Coat said, “no tricks.”

      Kane pushed past the dirty curtain and found himself inside a far bigger room. The area was ill-lit, its walls draped with sheets of orange and tan, billowing in the draft and leaving Kane with a confused and uncertain idea of the true size of the room.

      The floor space seemed to cover about eighteen square feet. To the back of the room, facing the curtained entry, a young man sat low upon a smattering of cushions, slumped into their enveloping folds and cramming his mouth with berries dipped in syrup. There were two other men in the room, both well-armed and wearing fierce expressions. An attractive woman dressed in shimmering fabrics was dancing in one corner to a light jazz recording piped into the room at low volume, close enough that the man on the cushions could reach out and touch her.

      “You would be the interested party,” the lounging man announced, still watching the dancing girl.

      “That we would,” Kane said, impatience in his voice, “depending on what deal you’re offering here. All we’ve heard so far are rumors.”

      The man’s head turned and his blue eyes met with Kane’s. He was perhaps twenty-five, lean with sunken eyes but just a little puppy fat around his jowls. He had dark hair, cut short and prematurely balding, and his chin was dark where he hadn’t shaved. With his sharp features and swift, twitching movements he reminded Kane of the rats they had seen in the streets outside.

      “Rumors are tricky things,” the man said cheerfully. “Never really know what the cack you’re being told. I’m Tom.”

      Kane bowed his head slightly and Grant and Brigid did likewise.

      Carnack gestured that they take a seat on the cushions before him. “No need to stand on ceremony. We’re all brothers under the skin and on and on.” He smiled. “You fellas got names, I take it?”

      Taking the lead, Kane kneeled on the cushions before Tom. “John Kane,” he said, “with my partners, Grant and Brigid.” This was a lie. Kane had no first name, and nor, in fact, did Grant. Magistrates were born with one name, bred to take over their father’s position in the Magistrate Division in the illusion of continuous service. The need for first names was a luxury Magistrates never enjoyed.

      “Nice to meet you, John, Grant and Brigid,” Carnack said genially. “So, why don’t you start by telling me these rumors and we’ll see if we have any common ground or if you’re just pissing your time away.”

      As Carnack spoke, the woman draped in shimmering silks continued to gyrate provocatively to the soft music, but Carnack appeared to have dismissed her from his mind, suddenly all business. She was tall with straight brown hair and long, shapely legs, and Kane found himself distracted by her movements for a moment.

      He blinked and turned his attention back to the trader. “They say you have access to a baron,” he stated. “A young baron, ripe for training, for molding. Mentally, I mean.”

      Again, this wasn’t entirely true. The rumor that had reached Cerberus was that Tom Carnack and his brigands had access to hybrid DNA blueprints and the technology to regenerate barons from them—cloning tech or birth pools or whatever. That part of the story changed in the telling from place to place. Since the hybrid barons were sterile, the only way for them to reproduce had been through СКАЧАТЬ