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

Bunny. He had all his father's stuffiness and none of his father's brilliance. All the better; the
last thing the Consellines needed was another Bunny Thornbuckle in that Chair.

"You have messages from several of the Families," the secretary said.

"No doubt," Hobart said. Those he had been talking to, in preparation for the Grand Council
meeting this year, would want to know his plans now. For an instant, the internal vision of those
plans blinded him to the room around him. With Bunny and Kevil Mahoney out of the pictureтАФwith
Bunny's supporters in disarray, shocked and grievingтАФa man who knew what he wanted and moved
quickly and decisively might go farther than he had believed possible.

He glanced over the messages as his secretary left the room. As he'd expected: shock, concern,
fear, shock . . . with every passing moment, he felt more certain that he, and he alone, would
have to act in this crisis. How fortunate that he had not left Castle Rock with the others. "Make
a list of all the Chairholders who are still onplanet," he said. His secretary nodded. "And set up
a conference call for the Conselline Sept, all chairholding members."

"Sir, I have the listтАФI keep a current file on all the ChairholdersтАФ"

"Excellent." He looked over it carefully while his secretary was arranging the complicated linkage
of ansible and ordinary communications lines for the conference call, and realized that the
opportunity would never be greater.

The Barraclough Sept, which included the lesser Aranlake and Padualenare septs, had not rallied to
Bunny's side when Brun returned. The Aranlakes, with the exception of Lady Cecelia de Marktos, had
supported an Aranlake candidate, Hubert Roscoe Millander, for Family head, and they'd lost. They
were home sulking. The Padualenares favored Bunny's brother Harlis, who supported their claim to
seniority over the Aranlakes, and their ambitions in the colonial worlds. This left only a few of
the Barracloughs themselves onplanet, those closest to Bunny and therefore more likely devastated
by his death.

Hobart glanced around the room, his gaze roaming from one proof of his eminence to another. Would
his family be devastated if he were assassinated? Delphine would be; she could cry and cry until
her pretty face was all swollen and splotched with ugly color. The girls would cry, but only for


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awhile, he was sure. They would look for another patron, another source of favor and another
dispenser of luxuries. Fickle, that's what women were, unless you trained them well, as he had
trained Delphine. The boys, thoughтАФif he had brought them up well, they would be planning already
how to avenge him, and how to gain more power.

But he would not be assassinated. He would be more careful than Bunny, more alert to covert
threats, lessтАФnot less brave, but less foolhardy. Brun had no doubt got her foolhardy genes from
him, not from prudent Miranda.

His excitement mounted as he went on through the list. If he had had Bunny killedтАФand the thought
had crossed his mind more than once, in the year when it seemed that nothing else would get that