Tylendel shrugged, but it was not an indifferent shrug. His pain was very real, and only too plain to his mentor; she hurt for him. But this was one of the most important lessons any Herald had to learn - that he had to be impartial, no matter what the cost of impartiality was. And no matter whether the cost was to himself, or to those he cared for.
"All right," he said, tonelessly. "I'll keep out of it. So. Now that you've turned my guts inside out, what else did you want to discuss?''
"Vanyel," Savil said, relaxing enough that her voice became a little dulled with weariness. "He's been here for more than a month. I want you to tell me what you think."
"Gods." He sagged back against the wall, and opened his eyes completely. They had returned to their normal warm brown. "You would bring up His Loveliness."
"What's the matter?" Savil asked sharply, and took a closer look at him; he was wearing a most peculiar half-smile, and she smelled a rat - or at least a mouse. "
'Lendel, don't tell me you've gone and fallen in love with the boy!"
He snorted. "No, but the lad is putting a lot of stress on my self-control, let me tell you that! When I don't want to smack that superior grin off his face, I want to cuddle and reassure him, and I don't know which is worse."
"I don't doubt," Savil replied dryly, walking over to where he leaned, and draped herself against the wall opposite him. "All right, obviously you've had your eye on him; tell me what you've figured out so far. Even speculation will do."
"Half the time I think you ought to drown him," her trainee replied, shaking his golden head in disgust. "That miniature Court he's collected around himself is sickening. The posing, the preening - "
Savil made a little grimace of distaste. "You don't have to tell me. But what about the other half?"
"In my more compassionate moments, I'm more certain than ever that he's hurting, and all that posing is just that - a pose, a defense; that the little Court of his is to convince himself that he's worth something. But I've made overtures, and he just - goes to ice on me. He doesn't hit at me, he just goes unreachable."
"Well - " Savil eyed her protege with speculation.
"That particular scenario hadn't occurred to me. I thought that now he'd been given his head, he was just showing his true colors. I was about ready to wash my hands of him. Foster him with - oh - Oden or somebody - somebody with more patience, spare time, and Court connections than me."
"Don't," Tylendel said shortly, a new and calculating look on his face. "I just thought of something. Didn't you tell me one of the things his father was absolutely livid about was his messing about with music?"
"Yes," she said, slowly, pretending to examine the knuckles of her right hand as if they were of intense interest, but in reality concentrating on Tylendel's every word. The boy was a marginal Empath when he wasn't thinking about it. She didn't want to remind him of that Gift just now; not when she needed the information she could get from it. "Yes," she repeated. "Point of fact, he told me flat I was to keep the boy away from the Bards."
"And you told me Breda let him down gently, or as gently as she could, about his ambitions. How often has he played since then ?''
Now Savil gave him a measuring look of her own. "Not at all," she said slowly,
"Not a note since then. Margret says there's dust collecting on that lute of his."
"Lord and Lady!" Tylendel bit his lip, and looked away, all his attention turned inward. "I didn't know it was that bad. I thought he might at least be playing for those social butterflies he's collected."
"Not a note," Savil repeated positively. "Is that bad?"
"For a lad who's certainly good enough to get a lot of praise from his sycophants? For one whose only ambitions lay with music? It's bad. It's worse than bad; we broke his dream for him. Savil, I take back the first half of what I said." Tylendel rubbed his neck, betraying a growing unease. He looked up at the ceiling, then back down at her, his eyes now frank and worried. ''We have a problem. A serious problem. That boy is bleeding inside. If we can't get him to open up, he may bleed himself to death."
"How do we get at him?" Savil asked, taking him at his word. Her weakness - and what made her a bad Field Herald, although it was occasionally an asset in training proteges - was in dealing with people. She didn't read them well, and she didn't really know how to handle them in a crisis situation. This business with Tylendel and his twin and the feud, for instance -
I would never have thought of this solution - desensitizing him, weaning him into thinking about it logically by bringing him to the edge over and over but never letting him slip past that edge. Bless Jaysen. And damn him. Gods, every time we play this game it wreaks as much damage on me as it does on poor 'Lendel. I'm still vibrating like a harpstring.
Tylendel pondered her question a long time before answering, his handsome face utterly quiet, his eyes again turned inward. "I just don't know, Savil. Not while he's still rebuffing every overture he gets. We need some time for this to build, I think, and then some event that will break his barricades for a minute. Until that happens, we won't get in, and he'll stay an arrogant bastard until he explodes."
She felt herself grow cold inside. "Suicidal?"
To her relief, Tylendel shook his head. "I don't think so; he's not the type. It wouldn't occur to him. Now me - never mind. No, what he'll do is go out of control in one way or another. He'll either do it fast and have some kind of breakdown, or slowly, and debauch himself into a state where he's got about the same amount of mind left as a shrub."
"Wonderful." She placed her right hand over her forehead, rubbing her eyebrows with thumb and forefinger. "Just what I wanted to hear."
Tylendel made one of his expressive shrugs. "You asked."
"I did," she said reluctantly. "Gods, why me?"
"If it's any comfort, it's not going to happen tomorrow. ''
"It better not. I have an emergency Council session tonight." She sighed, and rubbed her hands together. "I'll probably be up half the night, so don't wait up."
"Does that mean the interview is over?" he asked quirking one corner of his mouth.
"It does. You can have the suite all to yourself tonight - just don't leave crumbs on the floor or grease on the cushions. I wouldn't care, but Margret will take your hide off in one piece. And don't look for the lovebirds, either - they're out on a fortnight Field trial with Shallan and her brood. So you'll be all alone for the evening."