"Lisle,.Holly.-.Vincalis.The.Agitator1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lisle Holly)

УMight I ask how you would vote if you were voting?Ф
УNo.Ф The Grand MasterТs voice was neutral. His expression betrayed nothing. Rone could not tell if the acknowledged leader of the Dragons thought the idea wonderful or terrible, or if he was not even thinking about it at all, but was instead considering the state of his sterrits game, and how he might improve his opening moves. УAnd that question answered,Ф the Grand Master said gently, УI now put before you for vote the question on the floor, reminding you only that you speak not just for this day, but for the future.Ф
The members of the Council each withdrew from the drawer in the table directly in front of their seat three ballsЧone white, one red, and one purple. White, the absence of color, stood for abstention with prejudiceЧa comment that the proposal put before the Council was in itself flawed, and that while neither a yea vote nor a nay vote suited the voter, a restatement of the question might. RedЧthe color of blood, war, and lossЧsignified a negative. And purpleЧthe color of the CouncilТs flags and pennants, the color of power and wealth, the color of abundanceЧsignified a positive vote.
Each member of the Council took all three balls, so that no one might take a dissenting vote that he had left behind and throw it into the black jar, thus throwing the results of the vote into doubt and requiring a revote.
A councilor could vote four ways: yea; simple abstention, in which the voter dropped all three balls into the discard container; abstention with prejudice; and nay.
Rone palmed the purple ball in his right hand and the other two in his left, and moved into the line behind his fellows. He heard the familiar shuffling of feet, sighing, the clicks as the balls dropped into the voting jar and the discard jar. No one talkedЧdiscussion while the actual vote was in progress was absolutely forbidden. No one looked around much, either. Everyone seemed nervous. Because of the makeup of the Council, Rone expected the vote would be close. He wished the Grand Master had not excused himselfЧRone could think of more than eight Council members who had in the past exhibited the same lack of logic and foresight that had suddenly erupted from Chrissa, though they rarely had the courage or the integrity to make their preferences clear in the way that Chrissa made hers clear. They were cowards, to his way of thinkingЧpeople who voted against progress but would never have the backbone to stand up and say they had voted against progress.
Rone dropped his purple ball in the vote container, discarded the red and white ones, and then returned to his seat.
He waited. A few councilors stood over the vote jar, pondering even in the instants before they dropped their votes, and he could just see it. A handful of whites that would invalidate the current question, but might bring up some alternative to the question, a handful of purples from people like him who understood expedient need, who knew that emergencies and disasters could only be prevented by taking whatever steps were required, but in a timely mannerЧnot when the city was ready to implode around them allЧand a handful of reds from the idiots who had never seen one of those Warren monstrosities, who insisted on thinking of them as people, and who would refuse to acknowledge their debt as councilors to the real humans of the Empire and their needs.
He glanced at each councilor as he or she sat down. Most of them would not meet his eyes. Most of them, in fact, sat with their heads down, guilty expressions on their faces.
Cowards.
All was not lost, though. Chrissa had left before the vote. If she had already couriered the necessary information to him, and if it had been delivered safely to the house, he could do what needed to be done to put the new measure into practice in spite of the vote.
And then the last of the councilors sat, and the Grand Master picked up the black jar that held the votes, and the clear jar into which they would be counted, and took his place at the table. Before all of them, he carefully poured the contents of the black jar into the clear jar, careful not to touch any of the balls that passed between the jarsЧfor even in this stage, he might be accused of tampering with the vote if he was not careful.
And the mass of councilors gasped. The vote was unanimous. Every single ball that fell from the black jar into the clear jar was purple.
Shocked, Rone leaned back in his chair and stared at his fellow councilors, whoЧwide-eyedЧwere staring at each other.
The Grand Master looked at the balls. He rolled them from the clear jar into the voting groove carved into the table. Each ball rolled to a numbered slot. The vote lay clear before everyone. Twenty-five votes in favor of adopting the measure. No abstentions except for that of the Grand Master. No abstentions with prejudice. No nays.
УPlease record the vote,Ф the Grand Master said, looking at the Master of Histories. The Master of Histories nodded and wrote the vote into the meeting log.
УThe vote has been recorded,Ф the Master of Histories said.
УThen record this, also. СFollowing the unanimous vote by the membership of the Council of Dragons in favor of the question of the use of human souls as fuel to run the Empire, the 872nd Grand Master of the Council of Dragons submitted notice of his resignation from the Grand Mastership, from the Council, and from the Dragons, and announced both his retirement and his decision to emigrate from the Empire of the Hars Ticlarim to the outlandsЧeffective immediately.Ф He looked around the table at all of them, his eyes meeting each of theirs in turn, and when he looked into RoneТs eyes, Rone felt the Grand MasterТs disgust with him, his distaste for this heinous thing they had all doneЧand in that one moment, Rone doubted that expediency was the best course to follow.
But the Grand Master picked up his belongings and said, УI am ashamed that this iniquitous thing has happened on my watch,Ф and turned to Rone and said, УYou were third after Chrissa, and I do not doubt that she meant her resignation as deeply and as sincerely as I mean mine. Which makes you acting Grand Master for the rest of my term, and obviously leaves the wolves in charge of the sheep; I hope this nightmare that you and all your fellows have enacted does not soon turn and devour you.Ф And he left.
And with the old Grand Master gone, and Rone placed abruptly and solidly in the Chair, he realized that all of his doubts about the rightness of his vote were erased. His conscience eased. He was among men and women who understood what was best for the Empire of the Hars Ticlarim, and who would do what had to be done to lead it to new heights of greatness.
Chapter 5
In the warm summer currents, festival globes spun the sea into rainbows, and the many-colored streamers brought forth fish by the tens of thousands, so that they became like living stars dancing in the liquid sky.
Music swept out into the currentsЧthe sweet strains of romantic ballads, the cheerful lilt of dance music, the martial strains of the military bands that were the only public remnant of the Hars TiclarimТs warrior past. Mingling in the water, the many strains produced not discord but a magnificent upwelling, a wondrous and stirring symphony that summoned up visions of life and hope and passion, and that seemed to struggle to define the frailty and yet the magic that was humanity.
Through the crystalline arcs of the corridors of the city, thousands thronged, dressed in finery created especially for this day, this moment, this place. Women painted like the fish that swam just beyond their reach and men masked and jeweled like the primitive gods of the sea that they represented moved toward the Polyphony Center for the opening ceremonies of the First Week Festival.
And Jess, wearing on her left wrist the bracelet that attested that she was indeed eligible to attend the festival, a bracelet given to her by the Artis cousin who had attended the year before and who swore she would never go again, moved in the throng with those who truly had the right to pass beneath the golden arch. She wore a simple green sequined mask that covered her eyes, a headpiece that trailed a delicate line of feathers from her forehead over the top of her head and down her back, and a green one-piece suit covered with iridescent scales and meant to mimic body paint. No one spoke to her, but then, she realized no one spoke to anyone else, either. How strange, this crowd that murmured not a syllable, not a whisper, nor cracked a joke, nor spoke in anger at an elbow carelessly jabbed or toes clumsily trampled. In all her years since the Warrens, Jess could not remember any people who moved with such silence.
But she remembered well people who moved so silently within the Warrens, and she tasted a sharp, bitter burst of fear on her tongue as the tide of people moved her ever forward.
She had hoped to find Wraith and, disguised, to watch him. She did not want him to know that she had gone to the festival to spy on him; she was ashamed of her jealousy, ashamed of her need for him, ashamed of the painful hunger that she felt but hid because he never looked at her with anything but friendship and a kind of amused toleranceЧand sometimes with regret. She was ashamedЧbut she feared that at the festival he would meet someone who caught his fancy. That he would dance with some woman who would see in him all the wonderful things Jess had seen in him first, and that Wraith, his head turned by a new face, a clever turn of phrase, a mind that challenged him in a way he found attractive, would leave, never to return. She did not know what she planned to do if she saw him dancing or talking with a strangerЧbut if she did not go she would be helpless to do anything.
She had not anticipated the number of people who would be attending the festival, though. ChildrenТs festivals were small by comparison, though they had always felt quite large and busy to herЧseveral hundred children gathered in one place, mostly free of adult supervision, had seemed to her a veritable throng. But each house held its own separate festival for children. There was only one for adults, and it was for every adult in the city, and from all appearances almost every adult in the city was attending.
How, in this impossible mass of humanity, could she hope to find Wraith?
She became aware of the steady, soft chiming of a bell from somewhere ahead of her. Then she saw a lovely golden arch above a doorway, and she realized that she neared her destination. As she moved toward the sound, the chiming became slightly louder, but remained pleasant. Abruptly, the cluster of people in front of her each lifted one arm, and she saw a tiny flicker of light dance around the bracelets that each wore on the wrists they presented to the arch. She did as she had seen them do, and felt a faint tickling along her skin. And then she was beyond the arch.
The crowd thinned out. The Polyphony Center, layered like a hive and sprawling for half a dozen furlongs in all directions, swallowed the people thronging in from the many corridors and channeled them in a hundred directions, and seemed always to have room for more. She found a place along the railing of a balcony, and stopped and simply stared. Though she had been to Polyphony, she had never entered the immense Hall of Triumphs, which was used only for the festival, and sometimes for the affairs of state.
She felt like she was standing inside the radiant heart of a faceted gemstone. The distant walls of the center, clear and seamless, spread before her the panorama of the illuminated sea, in which swam both the angels and the demons of the aquatic universe. All of them, drawn by the twisting, dancing sheets of colored lights, arced and curvetted, sometimes hidden in darkness only to be revealed again as the light spiraled around and caressed them. Hunter and hunted moved in weightless beautyЧand if that vast domed wall had been the only decoration for the festival, Jess would have thought it enough. But nearer, fountains glittered and danced in the air, lit from within by fires of red or gold or green or silver or blue. The floor, worked in a rich stone mosaic of undersea designs, seemed in scale with the space in which she found herselfЧbut it made the people moving across its lovely surface appear as inconsequential as insects. Perfumes of summer flowers, of meadows and leaves and rushing streams, filled a breeze that brushed against her skin. Between the mosaicked lanes, glades of grass surrounded by flowering trees held benches and tented pavilions, and formal gardens displayed flowers and shrubs and trees, and provided privacy within their mazy twists and turns for couples and groups, and swimming pools let humans dive and float and play as if they were denizens of the sea. She saw floating floors for dancing, and courts for eating, and things she could not identify.
УFirst time?Ф A hand brushed lightly across the little tail of feathers that she wore and settled on the bare skin of her back. She turned and looked up. The masked man who looked down at her had a pleasant smile and very pale, silvery eyes.
УI feelа.а.а. rather lost,Ф she said.
He nodded and smiled again, encouragingly.
УIТmа.а.а. well, not really sure what IТm supposed to be doing here. This doesnТt look anything like theа.а.а.Ф She felt her cheeks heat up. УLike the childrenТs festivals IТve been to.Ф
УOf course not. Adult activities would hardly be appropriateЧor even enjoyableЧfor children. Butа.а.а.Ф He smiled again, broadly this time, and said, УI had friends meeting me, but I remember how confused I was my first festival. Why donТt you let me show you around a bit?Ф
УIs there any way to find someone specific?Ф she asked as they left the balcony and started down the spiraling ramp to the main floor.
УSometimes. If the person youТre looking for has not requested privacy, you can locate him or her by asking your bracelet. Friends can find you in the same manner.Ф
УReally?Ф She was startled.
УCertainly. Your bracelet was spelled with information about you before it was sent to you. It isnТt merely a bracelet, or your ticket to the event. It also tells anyone who cares to look that you are safe and wellЧand, if you donТt mind being found, where to find you.Ф
Which meant that she was parading around as Sharawn Artis, a deception that was going to get her into real trouble if someone came looking for the real Sharawn Artis.
УHow do you keep people from finding you?Ф
The corner of her companionТs mouth twitched just a bit, and through his mask she could see his eyes narrow. УYou simply tell the bracelet, СGive me privacy.Т When you donТt want to be private anymore, you tell it, СMake me public.Т It will do what you want. The instructions did come in the package,Ф he added.
УI donТt remember seeing them there.Ф
УAll first-year attendees get them.Ф
Which explained it. Sharawn wouldnТt have been coming for her first year, but for her second. УI didnТt see them,Ф she murmured.
They reached the main floor, and her guide said, УSo what would you like to do first? Dance? Have something to eat? Try out one of the vision booths? Go to a park?Ф
УI donТt know. ArenТt you going to tell me your name?Ф she asked. To her right, a booth selling sparkling festival necklaces and headdresses glittered at her so temptingly that she looked away from her guide for a moment. And then, to the left of the path theyТd taken, a pair of tadaka dancers returned from their break and they erupted into incredible, heel-pounding, sword-swinging gyrations as a trio of decalyre players bowed out music that sounded to Jess like standing in the middle of war itself.
Her guide hurried her forward, shaking his head. УToo loud to think,Ф he said, and aimed her away from the booths and demonstrations, down a quieter path. УDid you read any of the information that came with your bracelet?Ф