"David Drake - RCN 04 - Glory" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

from Thora for a moment and caught the cool, amused eyes of Adele Mundy as she marched past them

into the stately paces of the sarabande beside a fifties-ish man corseted into a Fencibles uniform.

"RCN forever," Daniel echoed gaily, raising the blonde's hand high in enthusiastic triumph.

It was good to be young and an RCN officer. It was good to be alive!

RCN forever!

***

If asked, Adele Mundy would've said she found dancing considerably less interesting than

shelf-reading: going through the stacks of a library and placing misfiled volumes in their correct location.

Still, dancing was an accomplishment expected in a noblewoman, so she'd learned it. Though Adele's

parents were the leading lights of the Popular Party, they'd never permitted their children to forget that the

Mundys of Chatsworth were among the first families of the Republic.

'Were' being the operative word there. Every Mundy save Adele herself, studying in the

Academic Collections on Blythe--a member of the Alliance of Free Stars--had died in the Proscriptions

by which Corder Leary had crushed the Three Circles Conspiracy. Adele's sister Agatha had been ten

years old when her head was taken to decorate the Speaker's Rock in the ancient center of Xenos.

The music ended. Adele's partner was in the building construction trade. He turned to her and

wheezed, "Mistress Mundy, it's been a pleasure to dance with you. A great pleasure!"

He bowed as deeply as his corset allowed him, which of course wasn't very deep. Even without

the undergarment, his bright green Fencibles uniform had enough gold piping that it could stand up itself.

"Thank you, Colonel," Adele said, miming a curtsey by spreading her hands with a bare dip of

her head. "The pleasure was mutual."

Which was more or less true: he hadn't trodden on her, always a possibility when Adele danced

with out-of-condition men who were determined to show off. It was a worse problem off-planet, of

course. Here in Xenos she was Mundy of Chatsworth, a person of rank but no particular importance. On
the distant worlds where the Princess Cecile might land, Adele Mundy was a sophisticate from the