"David Drake - Birds Of Prey" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

they were very pleased, they'd been planning an embassage themselves but it had been let slip in the
press of other business."

The Director sighed as he bent over a bed of russet gladiolas. "It's come to that, then?" he said. He
clipped a stalk beneath its spray of blooms, parting the pithy stem with his long thumbnail. "The Autarch
of Palmyra is

disloyal to the Emperor after all?" He lifted the regal blooms to his nose and sniffed.

"Marcus," Perennius pleaded, "Odenath was never loyal. He's a jumped-up princeling who fought the
Persians because they wouldn't accept his surrender. He won because he knew his deserts and because
he's a sharp bastard, a really sharp one, I give him that. But he didn't save the Empire; he saved his ass ...
and now he figures that fits him to rule the whole business in place of his Majesty, the Emperor."

"Well, we can use him, I'm sure," said Navigatus. "Such lovely flowers as these, you'd expect them to
have a marvelous odor also." He laid the spray against the hem of his toga. The russet blossoms were
almost identical to the pair of narrow stripes that marked the Director as a Knight. "But instead there's
nothing, only the color."

"Damn it, Marcus!" the agent cried. He slammed the heel of his hand against the fig. The lizard
catapulted through the air, twisting madly until it hit the ground and scurried off. "Can we use Postumus
too? Is it to the Empire's benefit that Gaul, Britain, Spain all claim they're independent now? Can we
make clever policy out of the fact that every field commander with a thousand men thinks he ought to be
on the throne instead of Gallienus?"

A large carpenter bee with a black abdomen lighted on the gladiola spray in Navigatus' hand. The
Director's attention appeared to be concentrated on the bee as he said, "Aulus, we can't worry about
every little thing that goes wrong. We have to carry out our assigned duties as best we can, and we have
to trust that other people do the same." He sighed again. "Now if all my personnel were like you .. . are
you sure I can't convince you to join me here in Rome? There's so many things ..."

"We're not talking about little things, Marcus," the agent said with dispassionate certainty. "We're talking
about Franks raiding from the Rhine to the Pillars of Hercules, while Goths and Herulians spill through the
Bosphorus into the Aegean."

"Well, I know that, of course, but - "

"Do you know that we were damned near caught by those German pirates when we sailed from Sidon?
That

they were this close - " Perennius snapped his fingers - "before a little storm blew up and separated us?"

"I've said how much I appreciated your haste in returning, haven't I?" the Director said. The spray in his
hands was trembling so much that the bee retreated from its flower cup and hung an inch or two away in
the air, buzzing querulously.

"Marcus, sir," the agent went on, "everywhere I go, I see the big landowners shutting off their estates.
They grow for themselves, they manufacture whatever they need in house, they've got their own armies . .
. and the good gods help the tax gatherer who dares to set a foot on their lands."
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