"Shirley Meier & S. M. Stirling - Fifth Millenium 02 - Saber and Shadow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Meier Shirley)

"Who knows?" she had said at last, with a dry rasping chuckle. "He might sit
on this cushion, one day."

As General-Commander Smyna Caaituh's-kin was ushered in, the room flashed from
warm yellow into searing blue-white. Thunder followed, more felt in bone and
gut than heard. A bad storm, she thought. Hopefully not an omen for what she
planned. Then again, when hail fell in high summer, someone was struck; it
might be her enemies, they were thick enough on the ground. The uncanny figure
before her did nothing to ease her discomfort; priests were . . .

She tuned her mind to a meaningless hum of unfocused thought. One never knew
how much they could see in your head; the Sun-on-Earth could, that she did
know, having spent time in the palace. More than one commander of her
acquaintance had gone to the flaying tables for disloyal fantasies. She closed
her eyes for a moment to allow them to adjust to the dim light and heard
Cubilano's voice, dry and whispery.

"General-Commander, enter and be welcome in the House of the Sun." From where
he sat, Cubilano could feel the room's effect on the soldier. It was normal
enough to the eyes of the uninitiated, but subtle art had gone into the
angles, the patterns of roof and floor. They dwarfed anyone who stood before
him and gave the dais a dominating effect that mere size could not yield.
Silently, he commended the spirit of the long-dead Reflection who had built
it; had he been alone, he might have smiled. It was the duty of the Servants
to increase the power of the Sun-on-Earth, generation after generation-which
meant to diminish worldly powers, like mere general-commanders.

Smyna summoned the arrogance of thirty generations of aristocrats to stride
across the floor that reason told her was of no great size. Reason lied,
something in her said. It was vast, and she no more than an insect to be
crushed beneath a sandal.

High Priest? she thought. A tenant's child, she reminded herself. Scarcely
more than a slave, whatever the law might say; bound to the soil, barely fit
to serve in her stables, but for the chance attention of some meddling priest.

"Great Light, I greet you," she said. There was deference in her voice, but
her bow was merely that to an equal, and she failed to speak in the
subordinate mode. The acolytes tensed, less a physical movement than a turning
of attention. "Fellow Hand of the God Among Us," she added. That put her
behavior within the canons, although barely. She had addressed him in private
and in his capacity as chancellor, which was not, in theory, a priestly
office. Usually the Reflection held it, but lay men and women had as well,
within Irving memory.

Cubilano watched her as she stood with stiff-spined alertness, like a fighting
quail ruffling before a rival. Hard metal, he thought. But that is needful,
for a sharp tool. He gestured to one of the cushions before him and returned
the hand to its place in the opposite sleeve. When shoveling, shit, one uses a