"Mercedes Lackey & Ellen Guon - Freedom Flight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

Now, for the first time, he saw these walls through other eyesтАж as a
prisoner. An interesting experienceтАФif he lived through it.

Ralgha had stood in the center of this room for over five hours now,
answering every question placed to him, patiently managing to keep his
temper despite the taunts of the interrogators. That was their job, after
all; to make him lose his temper, to prove that he was a traitor by angry
word or action. They dared not lay paw to him; he was too high of rank
for lerkrath, interrogation by drugs, or halkrath, interrogation by torture.
Only the Emperor himself could decree questioning a Thrak'hra lord by
needle or knife. But they could deliberately try to provoke him, to invoke
the killing-rage that lay close to the surface of every Kilrathi's mindтАФand
if he lost control even for an instant, if he neglected to remain in the
military-submissive posture, if he forgot that he was, temporarily, the
lowest-ranked Kilrathi in the room, he would prove that he was a traitor.
Even now, the two burly Imperial guards watched him carefully, in case he
should try to make any kind of movementтАФeither to escape or harm
Jahkai, the Kalrahr of Imperial Security, or to make an attempt on the life
of the other, even more important Kilrathi in this room, the one seated in
the shadows.

Jahkai was watching him with eyes narrowed to slits with his
concentration. As well he might. There was more to this than the
questioning of a possible traitor; more than a conflict between two male
Kilrathi. Ralgha had hated Jahkai since they had first met years ago.

The lowborn brute had pretended to noble airs at a troop review,
bringing shame on the highborn present, that he had dared to imitate his
betters. And there was no hiding the fact that Jahkai was lowborn; one
merely had to look at him, and see the mottled, mingled colors of his
coarse fur marking him as Kilra'hra, a commoner. So very unlike Ralgha's
own sleek pelt, bright with the colors and sharply distinct patterns of one
of the highest-born families in the Empire. Even the blunt shape of
Jahkai's muzzle, the flatness of his head, and the blunted teeth of one who
was not a hunter showed his lowborn breeding.

Ralgha had repaid that shame by shaming Jahkai in his turn, making a
mockery of him, then laughing in his face, not realizing then that Jahkai
was Kalrahr of Imperial Security for the entire planetary system of Ghorah
KharтАж

Now the situation was very different. A word from Jahkai could
condemn Ralgha to death, lowborn or not. If the other Kilrathi in this
room decided that the word was justified. It had all come down to this;
the word of an enemy, the record of his achievements, and the judgment
of a superior.

This was the most dangerous moment of his life. Nothing else had ever
put him into such peril, not even during the battle against the humans for
the Vega Sector.