"David Drake - RCN 02 - Lt. Leary Commanding" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

impact on Adele than her bedroom furniture did.

Still, they'd existed. Even on public transit Adele would never have been faced with anything like this,
because the Mundy retainers escorting her would have cleared the Tanisards out with the same ruthless
unconcern as they'd have ousted dogs who'd somehow gotten into the car.

Tanisards block the path of a Mundy? Not till the sky falls!

The skyhad fallen on the Mundys; fallen within days of when Adele boarded the packet that carried her
to Blythe to continue her education in the Academic Collections there. Blythe was a core world of the
Alliance of Free Stars, but what did that matter to Adele? She was a librarian, a member of that higher
aristocracy of knowledge which cared nothing for mere politics.

As it turned out, politics had mattered a great deal.

The Speaker's Rock was a granite outcrop whose naturally level top had been improved by the first
settlers; it stood at the west end of Pentacrest Vale. Adele edged out of the ruck around the transport
terminus and eyed the Rock critically. Fifteen years ago the heads of her father, her mother, and her
ten-year-old sister, Agatha, had hung from it in mesh bags to be viewed by all those who chose to do so.

There were many other heads as well, most of whom had as little to do with a conspiracy as Agatha did.
Adele herself would have been there, save for the whim of sailing schedules. Political realities don't care
whether their victims feel superior to them.

Because she'd found herself looking at the Rock with new eyes, Adele paused to survey the whole
setting for what was in a way the first time. Even before she reached age ten, she'd spent more of her
waking hours on the Pentacrest than she had in the Mundy townhouse; but she'd never looked at it the
way a stranger would, taking in its magnificence instead of simply accepting it the way fishes do the sea
through which they swim.

The buildings on the five hills framing the Vale shone with marble, polished granite, and bronze. The only
exception was the Old Senate House which had burned three centuries before during the Succession
Riots. The shell of concrete with brick accents remained as a relic of XenosтАФand CinnabarтАФbefore the
Hiatus.

The present Senate House embraced and towered above the original. The business of a planet had been
conducted in the older building; the new one served an empire. As Adele watched, builders were
working on an additional fourth floor in place of the Senate Roof Garden.
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Before the Succession Riots, the palaces of wealthy families had covered the slopes of Dobbins Hill and
a part of the Divan, on the south and southeast margins of the Vale. Most of those structures, that of the
Mundys included, had burned with the Senate House. Rebuilding had taken place at a safer distance
from the Vale, where political protest generally took form.

Now, even the palaces surviving from the time of the Riots had been converted to government use. The
entire Pentacrest was given over to structures which either carried out the work of the Republic or