"David Weber - Worlds of Honor 4 - Service of the Sword" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weber David)

corruption. These, known as the Pure in Faith, refused to have even their men learn to read or
write. As a result, the Pure lived in isolated enclaves and had little to do with the rest of the
FaithfulтАФother than providing some of the most ferocious and unquestioning soldiers.
Such indoctrination made it highly unlikely that any Masadan woman who took the daring
step of joining the Sisterhood would betray her Sisters later. Indeed, that irrevocable loss of
intellectual virginity drew the women closer to each other, bound by their awareness of the
penalties all would shareтАФeven one who might later regret her learning and report the rest.
Judith rapidly discovered that the Sisterhood did more than teach forbidden arts and
knowledge. The Sisters were also trained in dissembling so that the accidental revelation of their
knowledgeтАФeven by something as casual as being seen to read a printed labelтАФcould not betray
them.
But these were all elements of the first of the Sisterhood's missions. The second of the
Sisterhood's goals was far more daring, perhaps impossible, for the Sisterhood hoped to someday
lead an Exodus that would set the Sisters free from domination by their masters.
No matter how hard the Faithful tried to keep knowledge of the outer universe from their
women, the truth had filtered inтАФoften hinted at in the very restrictions and rulings the men
enforced upon their women. The Sisters knew that somewhere beyond the reach of Masada's sun
were worlds where women were not regarded as property. There were worlds where women were
permitted to read, write, and think; worlds where, so the most daring among them whispered,
women were even permitted to live without male protectors.
From the day Ephraim had dragged the shocked and traumatized Grayson ten-year-old into
the nursery, Dinah had dreamed that Judith might be the promised Moses who would lead the
Sisterhood to freedom. Nor had the girl disappointed the older woman's hopes. From the start
Judith had demonstrated both education and self-controlтАФand the intelligence to hide both. Her
innocent anecdotes about the life she had left, mostly told before she realized how dangerous they
were, had confirmed the Sisterhood's most sacred hopes and dreams.
Thus Judith, while believing herself alone, had been cocooned within the watchful web of the
senior Sisters. They had not dared draw her into their secret, not until they saw if Judith would,
like so many women, perversely fasten onto her tormentor, envisioning him as a hero who had
the right to treat her as a mere thing. Four years of brutal testing, two of those after Judith was
married to a man who had set his seal on ostensibly stronger souls, were allowed to pass before
Dinah confronted Judith and drew her into the Sisterhood.
Now, two years after Judith's initiation, faced with Ephraim's plans to abort her unborn
daughter, confronting a future marked by similar abuse, Judith accepted the mantle the Sisterhood
had set upon her shoulders. She would be their Moses, and, though hearing no divine voice to
guide her actions, she decreed that the time for the Sisterhood's Exodus had come.
***
Although he understood the reasons, Michael still found the wholly male diplomatic corps
bound for Endicott rather odd. Every political meeting he had attended since his father's death
had been dominated by Beth. Even when Beth had been a minor, her regent had been their aunt
Caitrin, the Grand Duchess Winton-Henke. This all male group was positively weird.
Then again, maybe the fact that gender and availability, rather than pure ability, had been key
elements in selecting this group was why it was so peculiar. There was also the fact that much of
the Manticoran diplomatic corps felt that its first task was preserving peace rather than preparing
for war. Many of the best and the brightest among them were employing their energies trying to
figure out how to work with the Peeps. Doubtless the Masadan mission was not an assignment
those would seek.
Perhaps, too, the reality that Masada was not the Queen's first choice for an ally in this region
of space had something to do with those who had volunteered. Those diplomats, like Sir Anthony
Langtry, more of Her Majesty's way of thinking and ready to embrace the possibility that war