Читать книгу Realm of Dragons - Морган Райс, Morgan Rice - Страница 13

Renard kept coming to the Inn of the Broken Scale for three main reasons, and none of them had to do with the frankly terrible beer. The first was the barmaid Yselle, who seemed to have a thing for burly men with red hair like him, and who seemed to alternate between accusing him of cheating on her and demanding that he come by more often.

The second reason was that, on the days when he was inclined to try to make an honest living, they didn’t mind him taking out his lute and playing a few of the old ballads. Mostly, Renard didn’t feel like doing it, but sometimes his fingers itched for the performance.

The third reason was that his fingers more often itched for other things, and the inn was a good place to hear rumors.

“It sounds too much like a story,” he said to the man opposite him, carefully using the distraction to switch a card for one of those he had hidden in his sleeve.

“Ye can call it a story if you like, but I saw it with my own eyes,” the man insisted. He was dressed in rough sailor’s clothes, and claimed that he worked on the ships that sailed the long route out, away from the crippling rapids of the river and across the sea. That alone made Renard suspicious. Sailors were madmen; had to be, when it was far easier to trade via the bridges between the Northern and Southern Kingdoms than to stray into the dangers of deep water.