Cruel Deceit

Начало книги

“Stop! Thief!”

Two men raced along the busy street, darting around the many people ambling among piles of produce on the ground or looking at offerings displayed in open stalls. The man in the lead carried a squawking goose under his arm; the other brandished a short wooden rod.

“Help! He’ll slay me!” the man with the bird screamed.

“Stop him!” the other yelled. “He cheated me!”

“It’s my goose. I bought it for fair exchange.”

“The wheat you gave me was moldy.”

“You added bad grain when my back was turned.”

The response was lost to the angry cackling of the goose.

The merchants within the stalls and those seated with their mounded produce, the people filling the street, many idly browsing rather than shopping, stopped to gape at the pair. Individuals peered out from the interconnected two story white-plastered buildings behind the market. Sailors on the ships moored along the waterfront ran to look. A stream of men and women had even begun to follow, unwill ing to miss an assault should the pursuer catch his quarry.

Читать дальше →