"David Weber - Worlds of Honor Anthology series 04 - The Service Of The Sword" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weber David)

Michael didn't answer. He was too busy grabbing various items of clothing, obviously preparatory to storming out of the room.

"Hey, Michael, where're you going?"

"To talk to someone about my posting."

"You can't! It isn't official yet."

"If I wait until it's official," Michael said, his voice tight, "then it's going to be too late. Insubordination at least. Now I might be able to do something."

Todd was too smart to fight a losing engagement.

"Who're you going to talk to? Commander Shrake?"

"No. I'm going to screen Beth. If this is her idea, I need to know why. If it isn't her idea, I need to know so someone can't try to convince me that it is. When I know that, then I'll try Shrake."

"Forewarned is forearmed," Todd agreed.

Michael nodded. One thing his com training had taught him. Find a secure line if you want to discuss a sensitive matter.

He guessed it was pretty sensitive when you were going to place a person to person call to the Queen.
* * *

The ship that had captured theirs had been from Masada. Judith had been too young to understand the difference between pirates and privateers. When she was old enough to know, she was also old enough to know that when it came to Masadans preying on Graysons the distinctions were so much fertilizer.

Her father had been killed helping to defend the ship. Her mother had died trying to defend her child. Judith only wished she could have died with them.

At twelve standards Judith was married to a man over four times her age. Ephraim Templeton had captained the Masadan privateer that had taken the Grayson vessel, and he claimed the girl child as part of his prize. If this was somewhat irregular, there was no one left alive to protest when Judith was not repatriated to her own people.

Even disregarding the difference in their agesЧEphraim had seen five and half decades by standard reckoningЧJudith and Ephraim were not at all alike. Where Ephraim was heavily built, Judith possessed a light, gazelle's build. Her hair was dark brown, sun-kissed with reddish gold highlights. His was fair, silver mixed in increasing proportion to the blond. The eyes Judith learned to carry downcast lest Ephraim beat her for impudence were hazel, brown ringing vibrant green. Ephraim's eyes were pale blue and as cold as ice.

At thirteen Judith had her first miscarriage. When she had her second miscarriage six months later, the doctor suggested that her husband stop trying to impregnate her for a few years lest her reproductive equipment suffer permanent damage. Ephraim did as the doctor suggested, though that didn't mean he stopped exercising his conjugal privileges.

At sixteen Judith was pregnant again. When tests showed that the unborn child was a girl, her husband ordered an abortion, saying he didn't want to waste the useless bitch he'd been feeding all these years to no purpose, and what was more purposeless than breeding a girl child?

If before Judith had hated and feared Ephraim, now that emotion transformed into loathing so deep she thought it a wonder that her gaze did not sear Ephraim to ash where he stood. Her sweat should have been acid on his skin, her breath poison. That was how deeply she hated him.

Some women would have committed suicide. Some might have resorted to murderЧwhich in Masadan society was the same as suicide, though a bit more satisfactory in that the murderer achieved something in return for her death. But Judith did neither.

She had a secret, a secret she held onto even as she bit her lip to keep from crying out when her husband used her again and yet again. She held onto it even when she saw the grudging pity in the eyes of her co-wives. She held onto it as she had from the moment she watched her mother bleed her life out onto the deck plates, remembering that brave woman's final warning.

"Never let them know that you can read."
* * *

It hadn't been Elizabeth's idea to have him posted to a lumbering superdreadnought that would never even leave the Star Kingdom's home binary system. Michael's relief when he learned this was boundless. Even before their father's death, Beth had encouraged Michael to find his own place, to push his limits. Distracted as she had been by the heavy responsibilities she assumed after their father's tragic death, Beth still had made time for Michael, listening to the problems he couldn't seem to discuss with their mother, the dowager Queen Angelique.

To have found that Beth had suddenly changed would have been a new orphaning, worse in many ways, for on some level Michael expected itЧindeed, knew he should strive for it, since it was his place to support his Queen, not hers to support him.

Now that he knew that he would not be undermining his Queen's policy, Michael made an appointment to see the Fourth Form dean. That he could almost certainly have demanded an appointment with the commandant of the Academy and been granted it occurred to him, but the option was as quickly rejected. The Navy could beЧand wasЧofficially unyielding where matters of birth and privilege were concerned. That didn't mean strings weren't quietly pulled in the background, but anyone who too blatantly abused his position could expect to pay a price throughout the entire course of his career. Besides, it would have been self-defeating. The appointment would have been granted to the Crown Prince, not to Midshipman Michael Winton, and being seen as Crown Prince Michael rather than Midshipman Winton was precisely what Michael was trying to avoid.