still was.
Katherine choked, and Domenic gave her a few firm pats between her bare
shoulders. She gasped for air and her eyes bulged. Then she recovered her
breath, emptied her refilled glass in a few gulps, and stared at Mikhail. "You
are serious, aren't you?"
"Very. But I do not expect you to believe me, when my own mother very much
doubts the truth of it. I can only say that I was there, and I know what
happened. You do not have to believe me." He glanced at the heavy di catenas
bracelet that encircled his wrist, made for another man whose name was a variant
of Mikhail, then looked down the long table toward his wife, remembering that
strange, magical time.
"You traveled in time?" She was both amazed and disbelieving, but her curiosity
got the better of her.
"Yes."
"What was it like?"
Mikhail was rather taken aback by her question, for it was not the reaction he
had anticipated. "It was very uncomfortable."
Katherine began to laugh, and tears formed in the corners of her eyes. After a
few moments, they began to trickle down her cheeks, and she dabbed at them with
the corner of her napkin. Finally she regained control of herself and turned to
Domenic. "Is he always this terse?"
"Almost, unless he is lecturing Rory." Domenic gave his father a fond look,
which took most of the sting out of the words. But not all. Mikhail could
remember vividly the day Dani Hastur had told him that his father never seemed
to have time to talk to him. Was this how Nico felt? Mikhail had promised
himself he would be a great parent, that he would not neglect his children that
way. Now he felt that he had failed.
It is all right, Father. You listen more than you talk, that is all. And you
worry too much.
Thank you, Nico. You do know that you can always come to me, don't you?
Yes, but I don't have much to say.
Are you happy, son?
No, but there is nothing you can do about it. And I don't want to discuss it,
either now or any other time.
Very well. Mikhail returned to eating glumly. Then he remembered himself at
fifteen, and how prickly he had been. He forced himself to relax and let the
matter go, for it was likely just the normal problem of being an adolescent, and
would take care of itself in time. Was any teenager happy? Probably not.
Mikhail looked up from his plate and found Marguerida looking at him from the
other end of the table. She gave him one of her wonderful smiles, a look that
never failed to reassure him and comfort him, then turned her attention back to
Herm Aldaran. The deep pain of his uncle's sudden death, and the actuality that
he was now the real ruler of Darkover seemed to lessen a little with her look.
With Marguerida beside him, he knew he could face anything, no matter how
impossible it seemed at the moment. He turned his attention to the food on his
plate, while his son and Katherine talked, and let himself think of nothing in
particular.
At the other end of the table, Marguerida observed her son and husband, and
sighed softly. She wondered what had provoked Katherine's outburst of merriment.
The woman struck her as very serious, but she seemed less angry now, and
Marguerida was glad of that.
"I don't know what Mikhail said, but it is good to hear Kate laugh like that
again. I was beginning to think . . . well, no matter." Herm smiled at
Marguerida as he spoke.
"She must be beside herself."
"Do you know, I have never understood that phrase. How can one be beside
themselves? But, yes, she has been very troubled, for which I cannot blame her.
When I first met her, she was a young widow, and very sad. From all I can
gather, Amaury's father was a very good fellow, and his sudden death was a great
blow. I have often wished I had known him, although if he had still been alive,
I would never have had the opportunity to marry Katherine, and that would have
been intolerable for me!" He chuckled to himself. "I might have had to challenge
him to a duel, or something equally preposterous."
"You do not strike me as a marrying sort of man," Marguerida commented.
"You are right on that, though how you could have discerned it after such a
brief acquaintance I do not know. I was quite happy in my bachelorhood, until I
encountered Katherine, and then the only thing I could think of was to marry her
as quickly as possible, before someone else snatched her away."
"Were there other suitors, then?"
"No, not at all. But I kept imagining hordes of them, lurking in the corners of
the ballrooms and drawing rooms. She is so beautiful that I could not help it.
And why she agreed to marry me remains a mystery. I know I am not a handsome
man." He gestured at his shining pate. "Whatever good looks I had, Robert
damaged in a fist fight when we were lads." He rubbed his nose, which had
clearly been broken at least once.
"Robert in a fist fight? Now, that is a remarkable notion, for he has always
seemed to me to be the best-tempered of men."
"He is, but I was a very provoking boy. Not unlike your Rory, I suspect. But,
tell me, how did you arrive at the conclusion that I was not the marrying type?
My curiosity demands satisfaction."
"Gisela suggested to me, long ago, that you were a confirmed bachelor. Indeed, I
did not even know you had married, let alone were a father, until you arrived.
Somehow you never mentioned it in your messages to my father, or in your
infrequent letters to your sister. Why did you keep it such a secret? Didn't you
want your father to know he had another granddaughter?"
Herm grunted. "My father and I parted on poor terms, Domna Marguerida, and one
reason I took the position in the Chamber of Deputies was to escape him. And
because it was the chance of a lifetime for me. I had wanted to travel to the
stars since I was a boy, all full of the tales told by the spacemen who
frequented our home. But, I never wanted to be a spacer at all-the idea of being
cooped up in a ship for long periods of time made me cringe. Besides having no
talent for the mathematics and other disciplines that are needed. And it seemed
that this was the only way to leave Darkover, until Regis decided to appoint me.
I jumped at the chance, and, frankly, my father was furious with me."
"But, why?"
"I suspect it was because he never liked Regis, but I cannot say for certain.
All I know is that he went into one of his rages, a drunken fury that had the
servants scrambling for cover, and called me a number of things I cannot repeat
in polite company."
Marguerida grinned. "There is nothing you can say that would shock me, and
Mikhail can tell you that occasionally my language would shame a drayman. But I
appreciate your restraint, since I do not particularly want Rory learning any
more choice phrases than he already knows. Do not be fooled by his pleasant
demeanor-he was born to mischief." She glanced at her red-haired son fondly, and
Roderick blushed deeply.
"All boys his age are like that, even Amaury."
Marguerida shook her head. "Not my Domenic. He has always been the best c
hild,
so much so that I worry about him. I know it sounds silly, but I have often
wished he would get into trouble of some sort. He is just too good sometimes."
"Do not borrow trouble, domna. It is a very dangerous thing."
"I know. But sometimes I cannot help myself." She cast a fond look at Lew Alton.
"I am, after all, my father's child."
To her delight, Hermes Aldaran roared with laughter, making everyone at the
table stare at him. "Born to trouble. Yes, I know that one very well," he
chortled.
6
Domenic stood at his post outside the Guard's Barracks and stared at the
stonework of the buildings opposite, across the narrow street. A steady stream
of foot traffic moved past him, the familiar faces of local merchants and
householders, cheerful in the mild autumn weather. Distantly he registered the
pleasant smell of woodsmoke, carried by a brisk but not unpleasant breeze. It
was coming from the direction of the kitchens of Comyn Castle, so the odors of
roasting fowl and baking bread mingled with the smoke. Usually this made his
mouth water, but today he had no appetite.
He shifted and stamped his feet, which were slightly cold from standing in the
shadows at attention for over an hour. He wriggled his toes in the tips of his
boots, trying to restore some circulation. The problem which had troubled his
sleep returned to his mind, and he bit his lower lip, trying to find some answer
to it. He glared at the white bulk of the Castle to his right, swore
unconsciously, making his companion look at him curiously.
"Something the matter, vai dom?"
"No, Kendrick. I didn't sleep well and am feeling rotten, is all."
"At your age, you should be sleeping like a log, no matter what, lad. Fire or
flood."
"If you say so." Nico shrugged and turned away. He had pulled his hair back
tightly and bound it with a small thong, since Cisco Ridenow, the head of the
Guards, did not approve of long hair. The tautness of it was giving him a
headache.
Nico wished he knew every aspect of what was bothering him, but he could not
pull all the threads together, and that made it all the more maddening. Part of
the problem, he knew, was Regis' sudden death, because that had changed
everything for him. He was deeply saddened, but that was not all that was
disturbing his mind. It was, primarily, the feeling that he would never have the
opportunity to do anything that was not laid out for him by custom and heredity.
Funny, that had never made a difference before. And he could not actually think
of anything he wanted to do particularly, except not be Domenic Gabriel-Lewis
Alton-Hastur. Rory was the lucky one, for he could do whatever he pleased.
He shuffled his feet again and stared at the cobbles under them, trying to sort
out the muddle in his mind. He had drunk more wine than he was accustomed to the
previous night, under the pleasant influence of Katherine Aldaran, who was the
most interesting woman he had ever met, except for his mother. And brave, too,
because he could tell she was simply terrified of being around telepaths, but
she managed to keep herself in hand. Her quiet steadfastness the previous
evening had left him feeling a bit cowardly by comparison. Was this what was
disturbing him, and might there be some truth in it? Might he be a coward?
In moments, the thought grew from being a pebble in his mind into a boulder. He
wondered if he were brave enough, good enough to be the heir of the Hastur
Domain and all that entailed, now that Regis was gone. While Regis still lived,
the prospect of ruling had remained distant and remote. And, he admitted to
himself, he had very little ambition for the position in which fate had put him.
He had assumed that Regis would live for another two decades, at the very least,
by which time he would have been a father himself, and his own son could be made
heir to the regency. How odd that he had never before acknowledged this
fantasy-that he had never really believed that the task of governing Darkover
would actually be his.
He knew what Regis would have told him-that if he didn't want the life he had,
he should have arranged to have different parents. He had heard this more than
once, but now it failed to make him smile. All he could say for certain was that
he felt as if the walls were closing around him, as if he were an animal trapped
in some snare, ready to bite his paw off in order to escape. He would be watched
over, even more than he already was, and that seemed intolerable. Hadn't he been
a near prisoner in Comyn Castle all of his life? It had not bothered him
before-so why now did he have this strange desire to run away, just to walk down
the street, into a city he barely knew, despite having lived in it all of his
life, and just to keep going until he reached the Wall Around the World. He
wondered briefly if his father would change this arrangement-he knew that the
Hasturs had not always immured themselves as Regis had-but decided it was very
unlikely.
There were dangers on Darkover-he was well aware of that. There were Terranan
agents around, although they were few and apparently not terribly good at their
jobs, if the mess they had made of causing troubles in the city were anything to
judge by. There were beasts like catamounts and banshees-except that if he
stayed in Comyn Castle he would never know what they looked like. And there were
people on the Comyn Council who would do him harm, if they could. His own
grandmother, Javanne, occasionally let herself wish him dead. But that was only
an unhappy old woman's foolishness, and he was fairly certain she would never
actually try to hurt him.
Domenic shuddered. She would be arriving shortly, for the public ceremony and
then to accompany the funeral train of Regis Hastur on its journey to the rhu
fead. He had never seen that place, and it had an eerie reputation, but it was
where the bodies of Darkover's rulers were laid to rest. And doubtless she would
once again bring up the remarkable circumstances of his conception, and suggest
that his status was nedestro rather than legitimate. If only his parents had
been married in the ordinary manner, instead of being wed by Varzil the Good in
the distant past. Even though several leroni, including his aunt Liriel, had
attested to the truth of the experiences that Mikhail and Marguerida had
reported, there were still people who chose to disbelieve them. And although he
did not like to admit it, even to himself, he sometimes wondered if his
grandmother was right. Not that it mattered, now that his father had named him
heir designate, but the doubt and suspicion about his conception hurt him more
than he cared to confess.
His mother said that once Javanne got an idea in her head, nothing short of a
bolt from Aldones could shake it loose, and that pretty much summed it up. And
she was bound to make trouble in the Council. He had attended his first meeting
of that body at Midsummer, right after he had his fifteenth birthday, and had
been startled by the amount of shouting it included. Somehow he had always
imagined it was stuffy and boring, but instead it had been
a series of arguments
about everything from the state of the Towers to the status of the Guilds in
Thendara.
Afterward he had asked his father, "Is it always like that?"
Mikhail had grinned ruefully and shaken his head. "This was a fairly orderly
meeting, Nico."
"Then I hope never to see a disorderly one. I thought Francisco Ridenow was
going to try to punch Uncle Regis in the nose!"
Part of the argument had been about the lease on the spaceport, which was due to
run out in two years. Regis and Grandfather Lew had been in favor of extending
it, at a greater fee, and Francisco had been against that. Domenic understood
why-the Federation had failed to pay the rent for two years of the past five.
They did not particularly need the money, since Darkover had kept her economy as
free of Federation dependency as possible, but it was the principle of the
matter. For its own part, the Federation had proposed that they be given the
spaceport in perpetuity, and without any rents, since they had "developed" it.
No one had even entertained that notion for a second-it was almost the only
point of complete agreement in the entire meeting.
And who knew what would happen, now that the Federation had dissolved its
legislature. They might pull out, which would please people like his grandmother
and Francisco Ridenow. Domenic didn't really care one way or the other, because
the few Terranan he had known had not impressed him as either pleasant or
particularly clever. He did not include Ida Davidson, who was like an aunt to
him, and had even managed to teach him how to carry a decent tune. He thought
glumly of the "advisor" who had been foisted off on Regis a few years before, a
dry, clerkish man who had asked a great many questions and never given any
answers at all. He still wasn't sure why his uncle and his grandfather had
allowed the man into Comyn Castle. It seemed to be one of those grown-up things,
some plot that he could not really grasp the purpose of. And where he would,
when he had been younger, have asked any number of questions, Domenic now found
himself tongue-tied a good deal of the time.
His thoughts drifted toward Lyle Belfontaine, away from the unpleasant specter
of Javanne, and more, he admitted to himself, from young Gareth Elhalyn,