"David Drake - The General 7 - The Reformer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

Either I have gone mad, or something very strange has happened, Adrian thought.
He was conscious of his own terror, but it was distant, muted. He looked down at
himself, and he was there againЧnot in the snowy draped robe of ceremony, but in
an everyday tunic, with inkhorn and pen case slung from his belt.
"Adrian Gellert," the oddly-dressed man said; he spoke good Emerald, with a hint
of a soft accent. "What is it that you desire?"
It was the manner of the Academy to teach with questions. He closed his lips on
his own enquiries, on the fleeting ephemeral desires of every day, on the
anxieties of his father's untimely death. That question had asked for truth.
Perhaps there was truth in the old stories of Divine intervention in the lives
of men.
"I want to know," he blurted.
The dark man nodded.
* * *
"An excellent dinner. Many thanks, Samul," Esmond said, from his couch across
the table.
Adrian nodded and murmured something. His brother-in-law Samul Mcson had been a
catch for his sister Alzabeta. A catch of sorts; the Mcson family was important
in the dye trade and had a fish-sauce works whose products were sold by name as
far away as Vanbert, the Confederacy capital. He'd never liked the man, and the
sneer on the heavy fleshy features showed the feeling was returned. Also there
was honey-glaze sauce on the front of his robe, which was rose-colored silk from
the Western Isles. Probably brought back on one of Father's ships, he thought,
smiling and nodding at his surly relative by marriage.
The servantsЧMcson retainers as well, since the Gellert retainers were
dispersedЧcleared away the fruits and pastries and cheeses; the dinner had been
the traditional seven courses, from nuts to apples. Restrained, at least by
Confederacy standards; the simple tastes of the antique Emeralds only survived
in Cadet training and the Academy's dining halls. The broken meats and scraps
would be distributed at the door to the city's poor, who gathered whenever the
garlanded head of a greatbeast was hung over a door to mark a household that had
made sacrifice.
Adrian dipped water into his wine and poured a small libation on the mats set
out on the tile floor. He suppressed a stab of unphilosophic anger at his father
for dying at such an inopportune time; the business had been going well enough,
but the capital was all in goodwill, contacts and ongoing trade, and neither of
the Gellert sons were inclined to take up the shipping business to the Western
Isles. Their father wouldn't have heard of it, anyway; what had all his ignoble
labor been for, if not to buy his sons the leisure to be scholars and athletes,
gentlemen of Solinga, greatest of the Emerald cities? But he'd died too early.
By themselves the physical assets were barely enough to cover the debts, dower
their youngest sister and provide a modest but decent living for their mother.
The younger Gellerts would have to cut short their education and find their own
way in the world.
He looked around the room; two dozen guests reclining on the couches, some of
them rented for the occasion. It was the men's summer dining room, open to the
garden on one side, with old-fashioned murals of game and fish and fruit on the
walls. Scents of rose and jasmine blew in from the darkness of the courtyard,
and the sweet tinkle of water in a fountain. Most of the guests were older men,
friends or business acquaintances of his father. Esmond lay on one elbow across