I could go. I owned estates that needed me. Armida was mine now… my home. But it was Council season and I was needed here…
Across a square I heard a soft call and challenge; a patrol of young Guardsmen. I looked up, and Dyan Ardais left the patrol and came striding toward me, his military cloak flying briskly behind him.
This encounter was the last thing I wanted. As a boy I had detested Dyan with a consuming hatred; older, I had wondered whether a part of my dislike might not be that he had been my father’s friend, and I, bastard, lonely, friendless, had envied every attention that my father had paid to anyone else. The unhealthy closeness between my father and myself had not all been his doing, and I knew that now. In any case, Kennard was dead and, one way or another, I must free myself of his influence, the real or imagined voice in my mind.
Dyan was my kinsman, he was Comyn, and he had befriended my brother and my father. So I greeted him civilly enough, and he returned the formal greeting, Comyn to Comyn, the first time in my life that he had greeted me as an equal.
Then he dropped formality and said, “I need to talk to you, cousin.” The word, a degree more intimate than “kinsman,” seemed to come as hard to him as to me. I shrugged, though I wasn’t pleased. The talk with Lawton had made me, even more than before, desperately uneasy about the Sharra matrix; I wanted it put into a safe place before anyone—for anyone read Kadarin, who was the only one I knew who could get it—could know its presence on Darkover through the reawakening of his matrix—and if that had happened to my matrix, it would certainly have happened to his. And once he knew the matrix was back on Darkover, what would he do? I didn’t have to ask; I knew.
“There’s a tavern; will you drink with me? I need to talk with you, cousin.”
I hesitated; I’m not that much of a drinker at any time. “It’s early for me, thank you. And I am rather in a hurry. Can it wait?”
“I’d rather not,” said Dyan. “But I’ll walk with you, if you like.” Too late I realized: it had been meant as a friendly gesture. I shrugged. “As you like. I don’t know this end of the city so well.”
The tavern was clean enough, and not too dark, though my spine prickled a little as I went into the unlighted room, Dyan behind me. He evidently knew the place, because the potboy brought him a drink without asking. He poured some for me; I put out my hand to stop him.
“Only a little, thanks.” It was more a ritual than anything else; we drank together, and at the back of my mind I thought, if my father knew, he would have been pleased to see me drinking in all amiability with his oldest friend. Well, I could do that much homage to his memory. He caught my eye and I knew he shared the thought; we drank silently to my father’s peace.
“We’ll miss him in Council,” Dyan said. “He knew all the Terran ways and wasn’t seduced by them. I wonder—” and his eyes dwelt on me a moment past courtesy, looking at the scar, the folded sleeve. But I was enough used to that. I said, “I’m not exactly enthralled by the Terran—more strictly, by the Empire ways. Terra itself—” I shrugged. “I suppose it’s a beautiful world, if you can stand living under a yellow sun and having the colors all wrong. There’s a certain—status— in being of old Terran stock, or living there, but I didn’t like it. As for the Empire—”
“You lived on Vainwal a long time,” he said, “and you’re not a decadent like Lerrys, bound on pleasure and—exotic entertainment.”
It was half a question. I said, “I can live without Empire luxuries. Father found the climate good for his health. I—” I broke off, wondering just why I had stayed. Inertia, deadly lassitude, one place no worse than another to me, until I met Dio, and then any place as good as another, as long as she was with me. If Dio had asked me, would I have come back to Darkover? Probably, if the subject had been broached before it became impossible for her to travel. Why had we not come before she became pregnant? At least, here, she could have been monitored, we would have had some forewarning of the tragedy—I stopped myself. Done was done; we had done the best we could, unknowing, and I would not carry that burden of guilt along with all the rest.
“I stayed with Father. After he died, he wanted me to come back; it was his dying wish.” I said it gingerly, afraid the clamor in my mind would begin again, once invoked, but it was only a whisper.
“You could hold Kennard’s place in Council,” he said, “and have the same kind of power he held.”
My face must have flinched, because he said half angrily, “Are you a fool? You are needed in Council, provided you don’t take the part of the Ridenow and try to pull us all into the Empire!”
I shook my head. “I’m no politician, Lord Dyan. And— without offense—I’d like a little time to size it up on my own, before being told what to think by each of the interested parties!”
I had expected him to fly into a rage at the rebuke, but he only grinned, that fierce and wolfish grin which was, in its own way, handsome. “Good enough; at least you’re capable of thinking. While you’re sizing up the situation, try and take the measure of our prince. There’s precedent enough—Council knew my own father was mad as a kyorebniin the Ghost wind, and they took care to draw his fangs.”
They had appointed Dyan his father’s regent, and in one of the old man’s lucid intervals, old Dom Kyril had agreed to it. But I said, “Derik has no near kinsman; isn’t he the only adult Elhalyn?”
“His sisters are married,” Dyan said, “though not, perhaps, as near to nobility as they would have been if we had known one of their husbands might have to be regent of the Elhalyns. Old Hastur wants to set Regis up in Derik’s place, but the boy’s kicking about that, and who can blame him? It’s enough to rule over Hastur, without a crown as well. A crown is nonsense in these days, of course; what we need is a strong Council of equals. And there’s the Guard—not that a few dozen men carrying swords can do much against the Terrans, but they can keep our own people on the right side of the wall.”
“Who’s commanding the Guard now?” I asked, and he shrugged.
“Anybody. Nobody. Gabriel, mostly. I took it myself for the first two years—Gabriel seemed a bit young.” I remembered Dyan had been one of the best officers. “After that it went to him.”
“He’s welcome to it,” I said. “I never had much taste for soldiering.”
“It goes with the Domain,” Dyan said fiercely. “I suppose you would be willing to do your duty and command it?”
“I’ll have to get my bearings first,” I said, and then I was angry. “Which is more important? To get someone who’s competent at commanding the Guards, and likes it, or to get someone who has the right blood in his veins?”
“They’re both important,” he said, and he was deadly serious. “Especially in these times. With the Hasturs gobbling up one Domain after another, Gabriel’s exactlythe wrong man to command the Guards; you should force the issue and take them away from him as soon as possible.”
I almost laughed. “Force the issue? Gabriel could tie me up into a bow for his wife’s hair, and do it with one hand tied—” I broke off; that particular figure of speech was, to say the least, unfortunate. “I could hardly fight a duel with him; are you suggesting assassination?”
“I think the Guard would be loyal to you for your father’s sake.”
“Maybe.”
“And if you don’t take over the Guard? What are you intending to do? Go back to Annida and raise horses?” He put all his scorn into the words. Pain flooded through me, remembering how I had wanted to take my son there. “I could probably do worse.”