"Steve White - The Disinherited 03 - Debt of Ages" - читать интересную книгу автора (White Steve)

reached the landing, not even breathing hard after an ascent that would
have reduced Sidonius to a state of gasping exhaustion, and clasped
forearms with his brother-in-law. Ecdicius flashed the smile that
transfigured his engagingly ugly face, and Sidonius reflected as always on
how much he was like his adoptive father the Augustus.

Ecdicius had not yet reached adolescence when the twenty-year-old
Sidonius, scion of another of the aristocratic Gallo-Roman families of
their set, had come to seek the hand of his older sister Papianilla. Sidonius
still thought of him as the wiry, restlessly energetic boy for whom the villa
in the Auvergne had seemed too confining. God, what a brat he was, he
recalled, in the wake of every man who ever courted a girl with a younger
brother. But that boy had survived the whirlwind of events that had soon
followedтАФhis father Avitus' brief reign as Augustus of the West and
subsequent murder, and the "Marcelliana" conspiracy in which Sidonius
had almost been implicated. And later, in his mid-twenties but already
grown into the kind of man that other men instinctively follow, he had
raised a private cavalry unit that had distinguished itself at the Battle of
Bourges. He had subsequently become one of Artorius' leading cavalry
officers, with a reputation for taking hair-raising risks and emerging alive
through sheer dash. When the childless Restorer had found it politic to
adopt an heir, he hadn't found the choice a difficult one.

"I got back as quickly as I could," Ecdicius said, sobering. "I wouldn't
have left for the Danube a fortnight ago, except that he seemed to be
getting better and insisted that I not let it disrupt my schedule. Of course,
when I heard he had taken a turn for the worseтАж" He indicated his dusty,
travel-worn clothes. "How is he?" Without waiting for an answer, he
abruptly started in the direction of the imperial apartments. Sidonius
placed a restraining hand on his arm.

"Sleeping now. You can't get in to see him, so you may as well change
and rest." Ecdicius nodded, but continued to move, pacing as though to
vent his excess vitality.

Sidonius couldn't swear that he had ever seen Ecdicius hold still, and it
was no different now that he was in his late forties.

"Come with me to the Daphne Palace," Sidonius continued, gesturing
at the garden vista outside the window and to the right, toward the
residence that had been placed at the disposal of the Pope and his
entourage. "We can dineтАж and we need to talk. Acacius has been hovering
like a circling vulture. I fear that he and his supporters are planning some
move after Artorius isтАж" He let the sentence die.

Ecdicius' face grew stormcloud-dark, and he unconsciously gripped the
hilt of the cavalry spatha that never left his side. "I can't imagine what he
thinks hell be able to pull off, after I assume the purple. Maybe he hopes to
take advantage of a confused transition."
 "Well, then, we must assure that the transition is a smooth one,"