"Kate Elliott - Jaran 1 - Jaran" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elliott Kate)

name like a weapon. How she hated that, having a name that meant something in four
languages. Having a name that, through no work of her own, had become so identified with
humanity's one great rebellion against the Chapaliian Empire that the name was now
synonymous with that rebellion. Charles had come so early to a realization of what he had to
do in his life that surely he could never comprehend her struggle. But she had backed herself
into a corner and had no choice but to go forward.

"You must leave," he said, coming briskly toward them.

"My name is Terese Soerensen," she said, despising herself as she said it. "My
companion is Sojourner King Bakundi."

The second name did not even register. He stopped stock-still. His face changed. "The
Soerensen? You're his sister?" He hesitated. Then, of course, he looked both abashed and
eager. "It is an honor. An honor, to meet you." She extended her hand and he flushed,
pleased, and shook it. "I have a cousin. She fought at Sirin Wild, with the last fleet, on the
Jerusalem. She was lucky enough to escape the decompression.''

"I'm glad," said Tess sincerely. "Where is she now?"

He grinned. "She's a netcaster now. Ferreting information. For the long haul."

"For the long haul," echoed Tess fiercely.

Sojourner murmured, "Amandla."

A hum signaled a new parting of the wall. The guard, startled, spun to look. One of the
ubiquitous Chapalii stewards entered the room. Like all the Chapalii serving class, he wore
long, thick pants and a heavy tunic belted at his narrow waist. A hint of green colored the pale
skin of his face—a sign of disapproval.

"What is this intrusion?" he demanded. He spoke in the clean, clipped Anglais that those
few stewards assigned to direct intercourse with humans used. "I insist these offices be
cleared." His gaze skipped from the guard to Sojourner. "Of these females. "

Tess stood up. The Chapalii steward looked at her. Like an indrawn breath, the pause
that followed was full of anticipated release.
 The green cast to his white skin shaded into blue distress. His thin, alien frame bent in
the stiff bow Chapalii accorded only and always to the members of their highest aristocracy.

"Lady Terese," the steward said in the proper formal Chapalii. "I beg you will forgive my
rash entrance and my rasher words."

Unable to trust her voice for a moment, Tess simply folded her hands together in her
human approximation of that arrangement of hands called Imperial Clemency. The steward's
complexion faded from distress to blessed neutrality again, white and even. Sojourner rose to
stand next to Tess.

"I am here," said Tess in strict formal Chapalii, high rank to low, "to advise the captain of
the Oshaki that I will board his vessel and depart with it so far as my brother's fief of Dao