Thrawn Ascendancy Book 3: Lesser Evil
- Автор: Зан Тимоти
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: Random House
- ISBN: 9781473596580
- Жанр: Боевая фантастика
Электронная книга - «Thrawn Ascendancy Book 3: Lesser Evil». Краткое содержание книги:
Of course, she’d never expected any other family to want her enough to try to rematch her, so she’d never taken the time to really think it through. But now that had happened. Moreover, the Irizi offer had been extremely generous, raising her as it did from merit adoptive of the Xodlak to Trial-born of the Irizi, and the friends she’d consulted with had unanimously recommended she take it.
So here she was in Csaplar, capital city of the Ascendancy, walking through the Convocate Hall toward the central Syndicure offices of the Irizi family. It was the best move for her, she told herself firmly. Whatever guilt she might feel was an artifice of her own mind, to be ignored until it eventually faded away.
Or so she hoped.
The ceremony, as expected, was short and slightly distracted. Speaker Irizi’emo’lacfo took her to his office where the witnesses were waiting, declared her rematched from the Xodlak to the Irizi, ran her through an oath where she and the family declared their mutual loyalty, then congratulated her on her new position. The single pang of guilt she felt during the oath was quickly brushed aside by the flurry of datawork that the Speaker then proceeded to hand her.
Thirty minutes after her arrival, she left. No longer Senior Captain Xodlak’in’daro, but now Senior Captain Irizi’in’daro.
Ziinda. She repeated her new core name over and over in her mind as she strode back down the corridor toward the shuttle landing area. It sounded pleasantly exotic, but it was definitely going to take some getting used to. Ziinda. Ziinda.
“Senior Captain Ziinda?” a voice called from behind her.
Even with all her preparation, it took a good second and a half before her brain caught up with the fact that she was the person being called to. “Yes?” she replied, stopping and turning around.
The woman striding toward her wasn’t anyone she recognized. But the blue-red thinstripe outerwrap robe with its dark-red sleeves and black filigree was a combination she knew all too well. Adding in the distinctive Speaker shoulder band—
“Senior Captain Ziinda?” the woman repeated.
“I am she,” Ziinda said, her heart sinking as her dormant guilt surged back to the surface.
“I am Speaker Xodlak’brov’omtivti,” the woman said stiffly as she strode up to Ziinda, stopping barely half a meter away. “I’d hoped to catch you before you met with Speaker Ziemol. I see I’m too late.”
“Yes,” Ziinda said. “Can I help you?”
For a moment Lakbrovom just stared at her. Ziinda forced herself to meet the other’s gaze, silently ordering herself not to be intimidated. Speaker Lakbrovom might be the Syndicure’s highest-ranking Xodlak, but Ziinda was Irizi now, and the Xodlak hierarchy no longer meant anything to her. “I hoped I could offer incentives for you to stay with our family,” Lakbrovom said at last. “I understand the Patriarch was somewhat offended that you didn’t tell anyone of the Irizi offer before accepting it.”
“I’m sorry if I broke protocol,” Ziinda said, knowing full well that she’d done nothing of the sort. A person who’d been offered rematching could speak to their current family if they chose to do so, but it was certainly not required. “But I felt it was time to move on.”
“Why?” Lakbrovom asked bluntly. “Did the Irizi offer a higher status? We could have matched it. Did they offer money or land or position?”
“None of those was the deciding factor,” Ziinda said. So Lakbrovom wanted to be blunt? Fine. Ziinda could be blunt, too. “I knew my time with the Xodlak was nearing an end when my first officer aboard the family frigate Midsummer relieved me of command. And got away with that act of mutiny because he was blood.”
“Family rank isn’t supposed to be a factor on naval ships,” Lakbrovom said.
“You weren’t listening,” Ziinda said. “This wasn’t an Expansionary Defense Fleet ship. This was a family ship.”
Lakbrovom’s glare slipped a little. Maybe she’d skimmed the Hoxim report a little too quickly. “That’s no excuse,” she said. “No one of Xodlak blood should use his or her position that way. I certainly wouldn’t have.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Ziinda said. “The fact remains that this one did. If you’ll excuse me, I’m expected back on my ship.”
“I apologize on behalf of the family,” Lakbrovom said as Ziinda started to turn away. “I’ll see to it that he is properly reprimanded.”
“As you wish,” Ziinda said, turning back to her. “But only as you yourself wish. The internal workings of the Xodlak family no longer concern me.”
This time, when Ziinda turned away, Lakbrovom remained silent.
Perhaps that last jab had been unnecessary, Ziinda thought as she continued down the corridor. Perhaps it had even been a bit childish. But she had to admit that it had felt good.
But really, wasn’t that what family politics and relationships were all about? Give or take; win or lose; deliver the jab or receive it. That was how it had always been. That was how it always would be. No matter the family, certainly no matter the individual people.
It was the Chiss way. And it would never change.
Of all the duties foisted on low-ranking family members, Aristocra Mitth’ras’safis had often heard, the task of welcoming new merit adoptives to their formal rematching dinner was one of the worst. The newcomers were either highly skilled additions to the Mitth, in which case they tended to have an overblown opinion of themselves and their value; or they were freshly initiated into the Ascendancy military, in which case they were self-conscious and, well, extremely military. Nearly all of the blood, cousins, and ranking distants opted out of reception duty, leaving most of the burden to fall on Trial-borns and other merit adoptives, none of whom had enough pull to avoid it.
Which made Thrass a definite anomaly … because unlike practically everyone else in his circle of friends, he genuinely enjoyed the service.
Of course, he’d only been doing it for the past three years, and in that time he’d only welcomed eleven merit adoptives. Maybe after a couple more years the excitement of meeting and evaluating new people would fade and he would become as cynical and world-weary as everyone else.
But he doubted it. Every one of these people had been approved by the Patriarch’s Office, a fair percentage of them by the Patriarch himself, and Thrass liked to see if he could figure out what made each of them special in the family’s eyes.
This one, for example. The young man freshly renamed Mitth’raw’nuru was standing inside the reception room, looking around the walls at the Avidich landscape paintings and the corner statuettes representing or created by some of the ancient Mitth Patriarchs. To Thrass’s eye he looked just a bit lost, a fairly common reaction from someone who’d been rematched from a nondescript family on a minor world into one of the greatest of the Ascendancy’s Nine Ruling Families. Thrawn was wearing the uniform of a Taharim Academy cadet, which meant he’d been taken from his home directly to Naporar and then been brought here to Avidich for his welcome and orientation.
Thrass frowned. For new warriors it usually went the other way around, first to Avidich and then to Naporor. Apparently, someone in the family had wanted him signed into the Expansionary Defense Fleet as quickly as possible, before even his formal welcoming.
Hopefully, he wouldn’t look as intimidated in the heat of battle as he did in a grand Ruling Family reception room. The one common attribute of Ascendancy military types was their outward confidence.