"Walter Jon Williams - The Crown Jewels" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Walter John)

at a lazy walk. She was elegantly dressed in blue and
silver, and looked younger than her thirty-two years.

"Ah. Nichole. Maijstral was just asking about you."

Her scent was familiar and struck him like a silken
glove. "My lady. I am ravished." Maijstral brushed her
knuckles with his lips before sniffing her ears. She was
taller than Maijstral, and pale. She, like Etienne, bore only
a forename. She smiled at Maijstrai whitely.

"Drake. Such a joy to see you after all this time.
Mourning looks well on you." She spoke Human Standard.

"Thank you. And thanks again for the kind note on the
death of my father.''

"How is he, by the way?"

The media globes were beginning to jostle one another
above Nichole's head. Etienne made his excuses, sniffed
ears, and departed. Nichole took Maijstral's arm. Her
nearness to him conveyed old intimacies, suggested new
hopes. Linked, they strolled the length of the ballroom. At
least fifty men turned red and mentally assassinated Maijstrat
on the spot.

THE CROWN JEWELS I 5

"Etienne seemed disturbed I hadn't heard of his duel."

"His share was going down, you know. This mandated
an affaire de coeur with a protege of Pearl Woman, an
affaire d'honneur with the Pearl herself, and then the new
eye. A silly business. The second duel among the Diadem
in a twelvemonth. Pearl Woman was furious."

"He told me his boot slipped."

"Perhaps it did. One hopes it will cure him of martial
ambition. Dueling is habit-forming, though luckily suicide

is not."

Even the Khosali, who had reintroduced to humanity the
twin fashions of dueling and suicide, had mixed feelings
about this part of High Custom- There is a Khosali saying,
"Any fool can die in a duel." (They have a similar saying
about suicide.) The tone of Nichole's comments (though
spoken in Human Standard, which does not have the con-