"David Drake - The Way to Glory" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

well that his temper and his backbone hadn't come from her side of the family.

There was a crush at the refreshments table. Daniel hadn't really been thirsty, just uncomfortable at the
direction Mawhire had taken the conversation, and Christine Jacopus simply wanted to be seen with the
lion of the evening. Instead of forcing his way through, he paused to look around again.

By the etiquette of upper-class Xenos, the only regular servants on the floor were those behind the
refreshments table. The guests' personal attendants were in the balcony above. They could be summoned
to meet their employer in a hallway if required or even escorted onto the floor by a member of the
Kearnes household in event of an outside emergency.

Many of the guests—perhaps a quarter of the total, Daniel guessed, smiling faintly—were accompanied
by silent men and women in simple dress. If you didn't know who they were, they could pass for poor
relations of the glittering guests they stayed close to.

In fact they were . . . well, calling them guards would be harsh but not inaccurate. They were employed
by various couturiers, jewelers, and pawn brokers. They accompanied not the guests but rather the
clothing and accouterments which the guests wore and hadn't paid for; that they very probablycouldn't
pay for. By convention, nobody "noticed" them.

"What is this one, Daniel?" Christine said, touching the spray of gold feathers dusted with real rubies
waving from the peak of his dress hat. She leaned against him a little more closely than she need to have
done.

"Oh, the aigrette?" said Daniel, squinting sideways. "That's the Kostroma Star, a, ah, foreign decoration.
From an allied foreign power, of course, or I wouldn't be permitted to wear it."

Though in truth the fourragere of gold and silver cords across his left breast was the Order of Strymon in
Diamonds; the stones on the clasp at his epaulette were the size of a child's teeth. In theory it entitled the
wearer to the freedom of Strymon, a planet Daniel didn't expect ever to visit again as an RCN officer.

It was stretching the point a good deal to describe President Delos Vaughn as an ally of Cinnabar, as the
events that put him in power had been not only unauthorized by Cinnabar's Ministry of External Affairs
but actively hindered by those well-meaning diplomats. Still, the award was too striking for Daniel not to
wear it unless he were flatly forbidden.

Foreigners had vulgar taste, far inferior to that of Cinnabar, of course. But Daniel had learned that
girls—the girls he found attractive—didn't object to a bit of vulgarity; and truth to tell, the taste of rural
districts like Bantry wasn't nearly as muted as that here in Xenos, the capital.

Christine touched one medal after another, her lips working silently. A circle of guests was forming about
them like mother-of-pearl coating a sand grain in the mantle of a shellfish; not pressing, but rapt in
anticipation of what they might hear. Powerful nobles andvery beautiful women, wondering what the
heroic Lieutenant Leary might say!

Daniel knew it didn't matter. These same people would howl and kick his naked body down the street
tomorrow if he were disgraced and executed; they'd done that with many of those implicated in the Three
Circles Conspiracy. The folk quickest to spurn the fallen were those who'd cheered the loudest in the
days before their overthrow.