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

summoned to meet their employer in a hallway if required or even escorted onto the floor by a member

of the Kearnes household in event of an outside emergency.

Many of the guests--perhaps a quarter of the total, Daniel guessed, smiling faintly--were

accompanied by silent men and women in simple dress. If you didn't know who they were, they could

pass for poor relations of the glittering guests they stayed close to.

In fact they were... well, calling them guards would be harsh but not inaccurate. They were

employed by various couturiers, jewelers, and pawn brokers. They accompanied not the guests but

rather the clothing and accouterments which the guests wore and hadn't paid for; that they very probably

couldn't pay for. By convention, nobody 'noticed' them.

"What is this one, Daniel?" Christine said, touching the spray of gold feathers dusted with real

rubies waving from the peak of his dress hat. She leaned against him a little more closely than she need to

have done.

"Oh, the aigrette?" said Daniel, squinting sideways. "That's the Kostroma Star, a, ah, foreign

decoration. From an allied foreign power, of course, or I wouldn't be permitted to wear it."

Though in truth the fourragere of gold and silver cords across his left breast was the Order of

Strymon in Diamonds; the stones on the clasp at his epaulette were the size of a child's teeth. In theory it

entitled the wearer to the freedom of Strymon, a planet Daniel didn't expect ever to visit again as an

RCN officer.

It was stretching the point a good deal to describe President Delos Vaughn as an ally of

Cinnabar, as the events that put him in power had been not only unauthorized by Cinnabar's Ministry of

External Affairs but actively hindered by those well-meaning diplomats. Still, the award was too striking

for Daniel not to wear it unless he were flatly forbidden.

Foreigners had vulgar taste, far inferior to that of Cinnabar, of course. But Daniel had learned
that girls--the girls he found attractive--didn't object to a bit of vulgarity; and truth to tell, the taste of rural

districts like Bantry wasn't nearly as muted as that here in Xenos, the capital.