"Charles Stross - Merchant princes 03 - The Clan Corporate" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

The Family Trade
The Hidden Family
1: Tied Down
Nail lacquer, the woman called Helge reflected as she paused in the
antechamber, always did two things to her: it reminded her of her mother, and
it made her feel like a rebellious little girl. She examined the fingertips of
her left hand, turning them this way and that in search of minute
imperfections in the early afternoon sunlight slanting through the huge window
behind her. There weren't any. The maidservant who had painted them for her
had poor nails, cracked and brittle from hard work: her own, in contrast, were
pearlescent and glossy, and about a quarter-inch longer than she was
comfortable with. There seemed to be a lot of things that she was
uncomfortable with these days. She sighed quietly and glanced at the door.
The door opened at that moment. Was it coincidence, or was she being watched?
Liveried footmen inclined their heads as another spoke. "Milady, the duchess
bids you enter. She is waiting in the day room."
Helge swept past them with a brief nod-more acknowledgment of their presence
than most of her rank would bother with-and paused to glance back down the
hallway as her servants (a lady-in-waiting, a court butler, and two
hard-faced, impassive bodyguards) followed her. "Wait in the hall," she told
the guards. "You can accompany me, but wait at the far end of the room," she
told her attendant ing├йnue. Lady Kara nodded meekly. She'd been slow to learn
that Helge bore an uncommon dislike for having her conversations eavesdropped
on: there had been an unfortunate incident some weeks ago, and the
lady-in-waiting had not yet recovered her self-esteem.
The hall was perhaps sixty feet long and wide enough for a royal entourage.
The walls, paneled in imported oak, were occupied by window bays interspersed
with oil paintings and a few more-recent daguerreotypes of noble ancestors,
the scoundrels and skeletons cluttering up the family tree. Uniformed servants
waited beside each door. Helge paced across the rough marble tiles, her spine
rigid and her shoulders set defensively. At the end of the hall an equerry
wearing the polished half-armor and crimson breeches of his calling bowed,
then pulled the tasseled bell-pull beside the double doors. "The Countess
Helge voh Thorold d'Hjorth!"
The doors opened, ushering Countess Helge inside, leaving servants and guards
to cool their heels at the threshold.
The day room was built to classical proportions-but built large, in every
dimension. Four windows, each twelve feet high, dominated the south wall,
overlooking the regimented lushness of the gardens that surrounded the palace.
The ornate plasterwork of the ceiling must have occupied a master and his
journeymen for a year. The scale of the architecture dwarfed the merely human
furniture, so that the chaise longue the duchess reclined on, and the spindly
rococo chair beside it, seemed like the discarded toy furniture of a baby
giantess. The duchess herself looked improbably fragile: gray hair growing out
in intricately coiffed coils, face powdered to the complexion of a china doll,
her body lost in a court gown of black lace over burgundy velvet. But her eyes
were bright and alert-and knowing.
Helge paused before the duchess. With a little moue of concentration she
essayed a curtsey. "Your grace, I are-am-happy to see you," she said haltingly
in hochsprache. "I-I-oh damn." The latter words slipped out in her native