"Kerrion Empire - 03 - Earth Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morris Janet E)

Danae, Chaeron's pilot dispatched a multidrive to fetch
him home.

Then he went after her, and grabbed her by the arm
and spun her around, and there, before the intelligencer
who was assigned to her, and the enchanters who pre-
tended not to watch, they finally quarreled for fair: first
over monies spent; then over love withheld; warming to

16

JANET MORRIS

it, they broached the subject of his mother; and, at last,
of Shebat's beloved pilotry master, David Spry, whom,
the cruisers whispered, his mother Ashera had had mur-
dered. And that was not enough for them: they spat and
snarled like a pair of cats over her sexual inadequacies
and his sexual athleticismЧover their shared, uneasy
past. Regarding the consul general Marada Seleucus Ker-
rion, half brother to Chaeron and foster sibling of
Shebat's, were the most stinging words exchanged, for
Shebat had once, while young and dazzled by them all,
declared to Chaeron that she loved his brother best.

"Then go and join him, faithful wife; you are comfort-
able enough with madness as a bedfellow."

"And leave you and your pilot to flounce and prance
about Acheron like Alexander and Hephaestion? Or is it
Achilles and Patroclus?"

"Let us hope not either, I desire to share no man's
funerary urn," he whispered, white hot with rage. Reach-
ing up, he snatched the black wool band from her brow
and shook it under her nose. "You dare tell me you are
in mourning for David Spry?" He threw the headband
down and ground it with his heel in the dirt. "All the
deaths you left unmoumed in my family, and his you
choose to exalt? He was an-enemy of mine, of all of ours,
in life. It is intolerable arrogance upon your part to throw
his death in my face. If my mother did murder him, then.
it was murder well done!"

"Kerrion!" she spat, and turned as if to walk away.
But even then, she could not let be, but had to spin
about once more: "As for this ..." she tugged at the
mourning-lock, shorn short, flopping over her right eye
". . .if I cannot feel love, as your pilot tells you and you
want to believe, then how is this here? Love. Chaeron, is