"Elizabeth Moon - Serrano 6 - Change of Command" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moon Elizabeth)

In that case, the funeral would probably go off without a hitch. Which, at the moment, was all he
cared about.



Brun eyed her mother as they came out onto the porch, into the cold sunlight. Security, dark-
uniformed and obviously armed, hovered around them. Five cars, all identical polished burgundy
with black and gold trim, awaited them.

"Five?" Brun said.

"Security," her mother said. "Four of them are drags."

"Ah." Four would lay false trails, though since everyone knew where the funeral would be held, she
didn't see how that would help.

She could at least notice who was here, and who had not been able toтАФor wanted toтАФcome. No Lady
Cecelia . . . well, it was the Wherrin Trials, after all, and she might not even have heard yet.
Her sister Berenice, though, and her brother Abelard. No Raffa or RonnieтАФabsurd how she had missed
them. Raffa's Aunt Marta Saenz, such a support to her father while she was missingтАФher mother's
report of that had been just a touch acidicтАФhad gone back to her own world as soon as Brun
returned. No GeorgeтАФbut of course the odious George had his own critically wounded father to watch
over. Of their own sept, her father's younger brother Harlis, and his son Kell, who didn't look to
have improved from her last memory of him. A whole raft of Consellines, most of whom she didn't
know well enough to put names to, and Venezia Morrelline.

In ordinary timesтАФnot that the death of her father would ever have been ordinaryтАФKevil Mahoney
would have given the eulogy. Instead it was her Uncle Harlis, and the eulogy slid into a subtle
critique of her father's policies. A fine man, a man with strong family loyalties . . . to his
children, a man of great abilities who had perhaps not quite lived up to them . . .

"Ballocks!" That low mutter was a great-great-uncle in the Barraclough main line. He took the
floor next, praising Bunny the way Brun had expected him to be praised. That was the father she
remembered: generous, loyal, intelligent, capable.

Others followed. Political friends, describing how Lord Thornbuckle's tactful but firm handling of
the government had held it together when Kemtre abdicated. Political enemies, praising with
delicate cuts at her father's occasional mistakes, and being so tactful in ignoring the obvious
one that Brun found herself the target of one covert glance after another.


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If it hadn't been for herтАФif it hadn't been for her idiot rashnessтАФher father would still be
alive, and in power, and these sly critics would be silent. She glanced down at her mother's
hands, and saw the knuckles whitening the skin, though Miranda's face betrayed nothing. Guilt,
sorrow, shame . . . and a deep, deep anger. It was her faultтАФin partтАФbut it was not all her fault.
Their maneuvering, their use of her misfortune and her father's deathтАФthat was their