Heritage and Exile (22 page)

I took Danilo's sword and walked back to the dais. I gripped it between my heavily gauntleted hands and bent it across my knee. It was heavy and harder to bend than I'd realized, and I had time to wonder what I'd do if the damned thing didn't break or if I lost my grip and it went flying across the room. There was a little nervous coughing deep in the room. I strained at the blade, thinking, Break, damn you, break, let's get this filthy business over before we all start screaming!

It broke, shattered with a sound shockingly like breaking glass. If anything, I'd expected a noisy metallic resonance. One half slithered away to the floor; I let it lie.

Straightening my back I saw Regis' eyes full of tears. I looked across at Dyan.

Dyan. . . .

For an instant his barriers were down. He was not looking at me, or at the sword. He was staring at Danilo with a hateful, intense, mocking,
satiated
look. A look of horrid, satisfied lust. There was simply no other word for it.

And all at once I knew—I should have known all along—exactly how and why Danilo had been persecuted, until in a moment of helpless desperation he had been goaded into drawing a knife against his persecutor . . . or possibly against himself.

Either way, the moment the knife was loose from the sheath, Dyan had him exactly where he wanted him. Or the next best thing.

I don't think I'll ever know how I got through the rest of the ceremony. My mind retains only shaken vignettes: Danilo's face as white as his shirt after the full-dress uniform tabard had been cut away. How shabby he looked. And how young! Dyan taking the sword from my hand, smirking. By the time my brain fully cleared again, I was out of the Guard hall and on the stairs to the Alton rooms.

My father was wearily taking off his dress-uniform. He looked drawn and exhausted. He was really ill, I thought, and no wonder. This would make anyone sick. He looked up, saying tiredly, “I have all your safe-conducts arranged. There is an escort ready for you, with pack animals. You can get away before midday, unless you think the snow's likely to be too heavy before nightfall.”

He handed me a packet of folded papers. It looked very official, hung with seals and things. For a minute I could hardly remember what he was talking about. The trip to Aldaran had receded very far. I put the papers into my pocket without looking at them.

“Father,” I said, “you
cannot
do this. You cannot ruin a boy's life through Dyan's spite, not again.”

“I tried to talk him out of it, Lew. He could have condoned it or handled it privately. But since he made it official, I couldn't pass it over. Even if it had been you, or the Hastur boy.”

“And what of Dyan? Is it soldierly to provoke a child?”

“Leave Dyan out of it, son. A cadet must learn to control himself under any and all conditions. He will have the life and death of dozens, of hundreds, of men in his hands some day. If he cannot control his personal feelings . . .” My father reached out, laying his hand on my wrist in a rare caress. “My son, do you think I never knew how hard he tried to provoke you to the same thing? But I trusted you, and I was right. I'm disappointed in Dani.”

But there was a difference. Though he was perhaps harsher than most people thought an officer should be, Dyan had done nothing to me that was not permitted by the regulations of the cadet corps. I said so, adding, “Do the regulations require that the cadets must endure
that
from an officer too? Cruelty, even sadistic discipline, is bad enough. But persecution of this kind, the threat of sexual attack—”

“What proof have you of that?”

It was like a deluge of ice water. Proof. I had none. Only the satisfied, triumphant look on Dyan's face, the sickness of shame in Danilo, a telepathic awareness I had had no right to read. Moral certainty, yes, but no proof. I just
knew
.

“Lew, you're too sensitive. I'm sorry for Dani, too. But if he had reason to complain of Dyan's treatment of him, there is a formal process of appeal—”

“Against the Comyn? He would have heard what happened to the
last
cadet to try that,” I said bitterly. Again, against all reason, Father was standing with the Comyn, with Dyan. I looked at him almost in disbelief. Even now I could not believe he would not right this wrong.

Always.
Always
I had trusted him utterly, implicitly, certain that he would somehow see justice done. Harsh, yes, demanding, but he was always fair. Now Dyan had done—
again!
—what I had always known Dyan would do, and my father was prepared to gloss it over, let this monstrous injustice remain, let Dyan's corrupt and vicious revenge or whatever prevail against all honor and reason.

And I had trusted him! Trusted him literally with my life. I had known that if he failed in testing me for the Alton gift, I would die a very quick, very painful death. I felt I would burst into a flood of tears that would unman me. Once again time slid out of focus and again, eleven years old, terrified but wholly trusting, I stood trembling before him, awaiting the touch that would bring me into full Comyn birthright . . . or kill me! I felt the solemnity of that moment, horribly afraid, yet eager to justify his faith in me, his faith that I was his true-born son who had inherited his gift and his power. . . .

Power!
Something inside me exploded into anguish, an anguish I must have been feeling through all the years since that day, which I had never dared let myself feel.

He had been willing to kill me!
Why had I never seen this before? Cold-blooded, he had been willing to risk my death, against the hope that he would have a tool to power. Power! Like Dyan, he didn't care what torture he inflicted to get it! I could still remember the exploding agony of that first contact. I had been so deathly ill for a long time afterward that, in his attentive love and concern, I had forgotten—more accurately, had buried—the knowledge that he had been willing to risk my death.

Why? Because if I had proved
not
to have the gift, why, then . . . why, then, my life was of small concern to him, my death no worse than the death of a pet puppy!

He was looking up at me, appalled. He whispered, “No. No, my son, no. Oh, my boy, my boy, it wasn't like that!” But I slammed my mind shut, for the first time deaf to the loving words.

Loving words merely to force his will on me again! And his pain now was for seeing his plans all go awry, when his puppet, his blind tool, his creature, turned in his hand!

He was no better than Dyan, then. Honor, justice, reason—all these could be swept aside in the ruthless hunger for power! Did he even
know
that Danilo was a catalyst telepath, that most sensitive and powerful of talents, that talent thought to be almost extinct?

For a moment it seemed that would be the last argument to move him. Danilo was no ordinary cadet, expendable to salve Dyan's bruised pride. He must be saved for the Comyn at all costs!

With the very words on my lips, I stopped. No. If I told Father that, he would find some way to use Danilo too, as a tool in his driving quest for more power! Danilo was well freed of the Comyn and lucky to be beyond our reach!

My father drew back his extended hands. He said coldly, “Well, it's a long road to Aldaran; maybe you'll calm down and see sense before you get there.”

I felt like saying Aldaran, hell! Go do your own dirty work this time, I'm still sick from the last job! I don't give a fart in a high wind for all your power politics! Go to Aldaran yourself and be damned to you!

But I didn't. I recalled that I, too, was Aldaran, and Terran. I'd had it flung in my face often enough. They all took it for granted that I would feel enough shame at the disgrace of my origins to do anything,
anything,
to be accepted as Comyn and my father's heir. He'd kept me subservient, unquestioning, all my life, that way.

But Terran blood, so Linnea had said, was no disgrace in the mountains. It had amazed her that I thought it so. And the Aldarans, too, were kinsmen.

My father had allowed me to think the Terrans and the Aldarans were evil. It had suited his purposes to let me think so.

And maybe that was another lie, a step on his road to power.

I bowed with ironic submissiveness. “I am entirely at your command, Lord Alton,” I said and turned my back, leaving him without a farewell embrace or a word.

And sealed my own doom.

Since Danilo's departure the cadet barracks had been silent, hostile, astir with little eddies of gossip from which Regis was coldly excluded. He was not surprised. Danilo had been a favorite and they identified Regis with the Comyn who had brought about his expulsion.

His own suffering, his loneliness—all the worse because for a time it had been breached—was nothing, he knew, to what his friend must have been feeling. Dani had turned on him that night, he realized, because he was no longer just Regis, he was another persecutor. Another Comyn. But what could have made him so desperate?

He went over it again and again in his mind, without reaching any conclusions at all. He wished he could talk it over with Lew, who had been just as shocked and horrified by it. Regis had felt it in him. But Lew had gone to Aldaran, and Regis had no idea when he would be back.

The day before the cadets were dismissed to their homes, to return next summer in Council season, Regis was scheduled for his regular practice session with Dyan Ardais. He went with the usual blend of excitement and apprehension. He enjoyed his reputation among the cadets as a swordsman too expert for ordinary teaching and the sessions with Dyan challenged him to the utmost, but at the same time he knew these sessions alienated him further from the other cadets. Besides he emerged from them battered, bruised and completely exhausted.

Cadets were readying for practice in the little dressing room off the armory, strapping on the padded surcoats which were worn to protect against the worst blows. The heavy wood and leather practice swords could not kill, but they could inflict substantial injury and pain and even break bones. Regis flung off his cloak and tunic, pulling the padded coat over his head and flinching as he twisted his body to fasten the straps. His ribs were always sore these days.

As he fastened the last buckle, Dyan strode in, threw his jerkin on a bench and got quickly into his own practice outfit. Behind the thick fencing-mask he looked like some giant insect. Impatiently he gestured Regis toward the practice room. In his haste to obey Regis forgot to pick up his gauntlets, and the older man said harshly, “After all these months? Look here—” He thrust out his own clenched fist, pointed to the lump on the tendons on the back of the hand. “I got that when I was about your age. I ought to make you try it one day without gloves; forget again and I will do just that. I promise you'd never forget another time!”

Feeling like a slapped child, Regis went back hastily and snatched up the heavily padded gauntlets. He hurried back. At the far end, one of the arms-master's aides was giving young Gareth Lindir a lesson, patiently positioning and repositioning his arms and legs, shoulders and hands, after every separate stroke. Regis could not see their faces behind the masks, but they both moved as if they were bored with the business. Bruises were better than that, Regis thought as he hurried to join Dyan.

The bout was brief today. Dyan moved more slowly than usual, almost awkwardly. Regis found himself recalling, with a faint embarrassment, a dream he had had some time ago, about fencing with Dyan. He couldn't remember the details, but for some unremembered reason it filled him with anxiety. He touched Dyan at last and waited for the older man to regain his stance. Instead Dyan flung the wooden sword aside.

“You will have to excuse me for today,” he said. “I am somewhat—” He paused. “Somewhat—disinclined to go on.” Regis had the impression that he had intended to plead illness. “If you want to continue, I can find someone to practice with you.”

“As you wish, Captain.”

“Enough, then.” He pulled off his mask and went back into the dressing room. Regis followed slowly. Dyan was breathing hard, his face dripping with sweat. He took up a towel and plunged his head into it. Regis, unbuckling his padding, turned away. Like most young people, he felt embarrassed at witnessing the weakness of an elder. Under the thick surcoat his own shirt was dripping wet; he pulled it off and went to his locker for the spare one he had learned to keep there. Dyan put aside the towel and came up behind him. He stood looking at Regis' naked upper body, darkened with new and healing bruises, and finally said, “You should have told me. I had no idea I'd been so heavy-handed.” But he was smiling. He reached out and ran both his hands, firmly and thoroughly, over Regis' ribs. Regis flinched from the touch and laughed nervously. Dyan shrugged, laughing in return. “No bones broken,” he said, running his fingers along the lowest ribs, “so no harm done.”

Regis hurriedly drew on his clean shirt and tunic, thinking that Dyan knew precisely to the inch every time he hit an old bruise—or made a fresh one!

Dyan sat on the bench, lacing up his boots. He threw his fencing-slippers into his locker. “I want to talk to you,” he said, “and you're not on duty for another hour. Walk down to the tavern with me. You must be thirsty too.”

“Thank you.” Regis picked up his cloak and they went down the hill to the inn near the military stables, not the big one where the common soldiers went to drink, but the small wineshop where the officers and cadets spent their leisure time. At this hour the place was not crowded. Dyan slid into an empty booth. “We can go into the back room if you'd rather.”

“No, this will do very well.”