Danilo had paid only one or two fleeting visits to the city since that Festival Night when Council Season had ended; he had had to return to Castle Ardais with Dyan and learn the ordering of the Domain which, if Dyan died still childless, would be his own. Then, Regis had heard, Danilo had been called back to Syrtis by the grave illness of his own father.
Why is Danilo on my mind now, so suddenly? And then he knew; he was not a powerful telepath, but the bond sworn between himself and Danilo was a strong one, and he turned abruptly away from the view of city and spaceport which lay before him, thrusting the curtains closed behind him as he went inside.
It is a boy’s idle dream, to stand there and dream of the stars. My world lies here. He went into the outer room of the Hastur apartments just as one of the servants came in search of him.
“ DomDanilo Syrtis, Heir and Warden of Ardais,” he announced, and Danilo came into the room, a slender, handsome young man, darkhaired and dark-eyed. Regis moved to take him into a formal kinsman’s embrace, but over his shoulder he saw the servant leave the room and the formal greeting somehow transformed itself into an enthusiastic mutual hug.
“Dani! I’m so glad to see you! You can’t imagine how dull the city is in winter!”
Danilo chuckled, looking down at Regis affectionately. He was a little taller, now, than his friend. “I’d have chosen it. I swear to you that the climate of Ardais has much in common with that of Zandru’s coldest hell. I don’t think Lord Dyan was any colder than that in Nevarsin monastery!”
“Is Dyan still at Nevarsin?”
“No, he left it early last winter. We were at Ardais together all the winter; he taught me many things he said I should know as Regent of the Domain. Then we traveled south to Thendara together… Strange, I never thought I would take pleasure in his company, yet he has taken great pains to have me properly educated for the place I will have—”
“He would do that for the honor of his own house,” said Regis dryly.
“Yet when my poor father died he was kindness itself.”
“I am not surprised at that either,” Regis said. “You have grown handsome, Dani, and Lord Dyan has always had an eye for beauty in a boy—”
Danilo laughed. They could laugh together about it, now, though three years ago it had been no laughing matter. “Oh, I am too old for Dyan now—he prefers lads who have not yet grown their beards, and you can see—” with a nervous finger he twisted the small, dark moustache on his upper lip.
“Why, I wonder, then, that you have not grown a full beard!”
“No,” said Danilo, with a strange, quiet persistence. “I know Dyan better now. And I give you my word, never once has he offered me a word or a gesture unseemly between father and son. When my own father died, he showed him all honor; he said it was a pleasure to do honor to one who had deserved it; it made amends, perhaps, for the honor he had had to show to those of his kinsmen who deserved it not.” The old Lord of Ardais had died three years ago, mad and senile after a long and disgraceful life of debauchery.
“Dyan said something like that to me once,” Regis agreed.
“But enough of that—I am glad you are here, bredu. I suppose you are to sit in Council this year among the Ardais?”
“So Dyan says,” Danilo agreed. “But Council will not begin till tomorrow, and tonight—well, I have not been in Thendara for years.”
“I seldom go into the streets,” said Regis, so quietly that it did not even sound bitter. “I cannot walk half a mile without a crowd following me…”
Danilo started to make a flippant answer; then withheld it, and the old sympathy began to weave between them again, a touch closer than words; the telepathic touch of laran, of sworn brotherhood and more.
Well, you are Heir to Hastur, Regis; it is part of the burden of being what you are. I would lighten it if I could, but no one alive can do that. And you would not have it otherwise.
You lighten it by understanding; and now that you are here I am not altogether alone…
No spoken words were necessary. After a time Danilo said lightly, “There is the tavern where the Guard officers go; they at least have grown used to Comyn and do not think we are all freaks or monsters, or that we walk without touching the ground like some heroes from old legends. We could have a drink there without anyone staring.”
The Castle Guard of Thendara at least know that we are human, with all the human faults and failings, and sometimes more… Regis was not entirely sure whether the thought was his own, or whether he picked it up from Danilo. They went down through the great labyrinth of the Comyn Castle, and out into the crowded streets of the first night of Festival.
“Sometimes, at Festival, I come here masked,” Regis said.
Danilo grinned. “What—and deprive every girl in the city of the joys of hopeless love?”
Regis made a nervous gesture—the gesture of a fencer who concedes a hit. Danilo knew he had struck too close to the nerve, but did not make it worse with an apology. Regis picked up the thought anyway; The Regent is pressuring him to marry again, damned old tyrant! At least my foster-father understands why I do not. Then Danilo managed to shield his thoughts; they went into the tavern near the gates of the Guard Hall.
The front room was crowded with young cadets. A few of the boys saluted Regis and he had to speak a word or two to them, but they finally got through to the quieter back room, where the older officers were drinking. The room was semi-dark even at this hour, and some of the men nodded in a friendly fashion to Regis and his companion, but immediately turned back to their own affairs; not unfriendliness but a way of giving the Hastur Heir the only privacy and anonymity he ever could have these days. Unlike the boys in the outer room, who enjoyed the knowledge that even the powerful Hastur-lord was required by law and custom to return their salutes and acknowledge their existence, these officers knew a little of Regis’s burden and were willing to let him alone if he wished.
The tavernkeeper, who knew him too, brought his usual wine without asking. “What would you like, Dani?”
Danilo shrugged. “Whatever he’s brought.”
Regis began to protest, then laughed and poured the wine; the drinking was only an excuse, anyway. He raised his rough mug, sipped and said, “Now tell me everything that’s been happening while you were away. I’m sorry about your father, Dani; I liked him and hoped to bring him to court someday. Did you spend all that time in the Hellers?”
Hours slipped away while they talked, the wine half forgotten between them. At last they heard the drum-roll of “Early Quarters” beat out from the Guard Hall, and Regis started, half rising, then laughed, remembering that he was no longer obliged to answer to it. He sat down again.
“What a soldier you’ve become!” Danilo teased.
“I liked it,” Regis said, after a moment. “I always knew exactly what was expected of me, and who expected it, and what to do about it. If there were war, it would have been a different thing. But the worst trouble I ever had was in breaking up street riots, or escorting drunks to the lockup if they were making a nuisance of themselves, or investigating when a house was robbed, or making somebody tie up a troublesome dog. Last year there was a riot in the marketplace—no, this one is funny, Dani; a cattle-drover’s wife had left him because, she said, she had caught him in her ownbed with her owncousin! So she slipped into his stall, and stampeded the animals he’d brought to sell! There were upset stalls and broken crockery all over the place… I happened to be officer of the day, so I caught it! One of the cadets complained that he’d left home so he wouldn’thave to chase dairy animals all day long! Well, we finally got them all rounded up again, and I had to go and testify before the city magistrate. So the cortesfined the woman twelve reisfor all the damage the beasts had caused, and it was the husband who had to pay the fine! He protested that he had been the victim, and it was his wife who let the animals loose, and the magistrate—she was a Renunciate—said that it would teach him to conduct his love affairs in decent privacy, in a way that didn’t insult or humiliate his wife!”