City of Diamond, стр. 10
It rolled off his tongue as any good speech should, with a practiced flair; but then, why the “father” when he spoke of Saul? The man must have been warned that this last succession had not gone to a member of the Veritie family.
Adrian kept his smile firmly in place. If Amo thought he could outdo him in hypocrisy, he was wrong; three years as Diamond Protector had not gone for nothing. “Your kindness in forgiving the past is too much,” he said modestly. “My guardian, the great Saul Veritie, often wondered if he’d been too stringent in insisting on the full twenty-five years of Separation. But I gather that, at the time, the Civil War—”
“ ‘War’ seems too harsh a term,” said Amo, smiling.
“It does,” Adrian agreed at once. “ ‘Misunderstanding,’ perhaps, would be better.”
Amo nodded.
“At that time, as I say, tempers were strained.” And strained tempers and highly explosive weapons do not go together. Maybe we should call it “The Civil Slight Disagreement In Which Eight Thousand People Were Killed in Twenty Minutes.”
“Tempers always seem worse among those who truly love one another, do they not?”
“You have such wisdom. For one of your age.”
“My thanks. May I present my Chief Adviser, Lord Brandon Fischer—”
Fischer gave a scrupulously correct bow—about one inch deeper than the one Amo returned. The cardinal said to Adrian, “We met before, briefly—in your father’s time.”
Adrian’s teeth showed in his return smile; more bared than showed, Fischer thought, as he glanced over to see how the boy was taking it. Amo was really pushing the father thing. Already he longed to hear what Adrian would have to say about the cardinal later.
“And Special Officer Tal Diamond,” Adrian continued, unscripted, motioning for Tal to step down and join them. Fischer’s eyes widened slightly. Tal was there to observe, not to be officially presented to Opal notice; this was Adrian’s way of annoying where annoyance had been given.
What had Amo heard? Would he make formal recognition of a creature of hell? Fischer was appalled, but not as much as he was fascinated. He leaned forward, noting as he did that a great many of the court were doing so as well.
For a moment the Lord Cardinal seemed actually taken aback. He wet his lips. Then he said, “An honor.” Tal, at least, had been coached in giving the bow of a sixteenth rank, and he gave it, his eyes flicking toward Adrian as he came up. Amo gazed at him. “ ‘Special Officer?’ ” He let the sentence hang.
“My personal bodyguard,” said Adrian blandly.
Tal’s eyes went again to Adrian, but he said nothing.
“A post of honor,” said the cardinal politely. He turned back to Adrian, dropping Tal from his notice. “I hope that in the days to come, as we renew old friendships, you’ll come to know all the gentlemen in my delegation; but meanwhile, will you allow me to bring our First Secretary to your notice? Officer Hartley Quince, Twelfth Rank.”
A young man detached himself from the party of Opallines and stepped forward, bowing deeply. He had light gold-brown hair and even lighter brows, and a fineboned, sensitive face, good-looking enough to border on pretty. He bowed with the gracefulness of childhood training and met Adrian’s gaze just as gracefully when he came up. .
“The Diamond will always be glad to welcome anyone the Lord Cardinal recommends as our friend,” said Adrian, but he said it uneasily. There was something familiar about Quince, and that was impossible. He couldn’t be more than twenty-two or twenty-three; and even if he were a little older, he couldn’t have been more than a baby when the Separation took place. The Cities had not only been parsecs apart, there had been a complete communications blackout since the war. On different drive-times, they couldn’t have communicated if they’d wanted to. Certainly pictures couldn’t have been transmitted. So how could his face strike with such recognition?
Quince was smiling and saying something polite and forgettable; Adrian responded automatically in kind. Then Amo was speaking again.
“—before your time, of course, but we who remember your father will always cherish his wisdom in setting forth the treaty.”
Adrian blinked, then his lips curved. One problem at a time. “I see, my dear friend, that I have need to present myself to your notice properly. You must forgive me for being derelict. I know that my surname hasn’t always been popular in your City, but as you’ve said, all that past unpleasantness can be forgotten. Saul was my guardian, not my father, and my name is Mercati.”
Amo looked as courteously surprised as if he’d never known. “Unusual for a Protector to pass his position to someone outside his own family, is it not? Of course, the City of Opal has no hereditary posts, so perhaps I’m simply showing my ignorance.”
“Oh, it’s been done often enough in the past.” Though not in the last hundred years. “It’s only custom, not law, to pass it through the family; the Protector has every right to give the responsibility to the person of his choice.”
“I do hope everyone saw it that way. No hard feelings, I mean, among the Verities.”
Adrian’s face went blank. “None at all.”
“And I must say, your advisers have misled you if they’ve given you to believe the Mercati name isn’t honored on the Opal.”
“Oh? We have a reputation, you’ll admit, for being progressive.”
“Opal is a very progressive city,” said Amo, in such a flat-out lie that Adrian could only admire it.
He coughed. “I trust the Lady Iolanthe is enjoying good health.”
“Excellent. She looks forward to her new life with you.”
I’ll bet she does. “Please send her my love, and give her this, if you would.” He reached out a hand without looking around and