"Debra Doyle & James MacDonald - Mageworlds 01 - The Price of the Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doyle Debra)

“Owen told us you were on Claw Hard,” Master Ransome said. “Learning your next port of call
wasn’t hard after that.”

“Owen,” said Beka slowly. She’d kept in touch, over the years, with the younger of her two
brothers, certain that the ally and co-conspirator of her childhood would never betray any secret she
confided to him. If he’d come out with her ship’s name of his own accord . . .

“Whatever Mother needs me for has got to be more than just family politics. Now, is somebody
going to tell me about it, or are we going to sit here and make small talk until I have to get back to Claw
Hard for lift-off?”

Her father looked at Master Ransome.

The Adept sighed, and came over to take a seat at the table. He glanced down for a moment at
the tabletop, rubbing his finger lightly over decades-old scratch marks in the grey plastic, and then lifted
his head again. “The Domina of Entibor is dead.”

For a moment, the words meant nothing. Then Beka heard a voice that had to be hers, although
she didn’t recognize it.

“So that’s what the bartender meant. Mother is dead-and I’m the Domina now.”

Errec Ransome’s dark eyes were somber. “Yes, my lady.”

“Don’t call me that,” she said automatically-the reflex of years. Inside her head, the old, old
argument played on: Mother is “my lady,” not me . . . I’m going to be a star-pilot, one of the best,
not just some kind of political figurehead . . . and someday I’m going to run so far away from
Galcen that nobody will care who I am.

Under the cover of the tabletop, her fists clenched so tightly that the nails, even trimmed short for
handling a starship’s controls, bit deep into her palm. She hadn’t cried in public since she was twelve,
and she was damned if she was going to start now. She pressed her lips together until they stopped
trembling, and then turned to her father.

“When-how-did it happen?”

More silence. “Tell her, Errec,” her father said.

After another long pause, the Master of the Adepts’ Guild began to speak. “There was a debate
in the Grand Council,” he said. “Hearings, on the expulsion of Suivi Point. The Domina . . . your mother .
. . was against expulsion.”

Beka nodded. Suivi Point had been a blot on the Republic’s honor for longer than she’d been
alive; this wasn’t the first time the wide-open asteroid spaceport had come near expulsion from the
community of worlds. She remembered a family dinner, long ago on Galcen, and her mother saying to
somebody-had it been Councillor Tarveet of Pleyver?-“Suivi’s a disgrace, I’ll grant you that. But if the
Suivans leave the Republic, there’ll be no way left to control them short of open warfare. And gentlesir,
I’ve seen enough of war.”
 Tarveet. It was Tarveet, and that was the night I put a garden slug into his salad. Mother