“Let us hope his curiosity extends only to vocabulary and not experience, ” Rinaldo said severely. “Once he is married, he will have no cause to pollute his thoughts in this way.”
Mikhail’s flush was all the more obvious because of his fair complexion. He looked as if he wanted to sink through the carpeted floor and into the Castle’s forgotten dungeons. Regis felt a surge of sympathy for the boy. When he was Mikhail’s age, he would never have spoken the word brothel before any person of his parents’ generation.
And so, we were left to our own companions and the ravages of adolescent hormones. Not that it would have made much difference in his case.
“Mikhail is a fine young man,” Regis said temperately, “and would never do anything to bring shame to his family. As you say, sister, he is still learning the habits of discretion.” Mikhail shot him a look of gratitude.
“See that he is taught well,” Rinaldo said, not to Javanne but to Regis. “I did not come here to instruct you in the proper discipline of your family. I’m afraid my purpose is far less serious. Self-indulgent, I must confess.”
Regis smiled at his brother’s habitual self-deprecation. A lifetime of self-effacement could not be erased in a few tendays “What is your pleasure?”
“Last night, and from time to time, I have heard much discussion of the Terran Federation. Until I came here I had never set eyes upon an out-worlder. What exotic beings I imaged them to be, these creatures from the stars! Now I find they are men much like ourselves.”
“In some ways,” Regis agreed cautiously. He did not want to give the impression there were no differences between Federation races and Darkovans. Certainly, there were many political differences. Out of the corner of his vision, Regis saw that Mikhail was following the conversation closely.
“But not all ways, is that your meaning, brother?” Rinaldo smiled as Regis nodded. “Yes, yes, that makes sense. If I am to take my place in Comyn society, I must not remain ignorant of the issues that divide us.”
“I cannot tell you how happy I am to hear you say that,” Regis replied. “On the surface, the Federation offer of membership is tempting. When you understand the cost to our culture, our independence, even the ecology of our planet, things look very different.”
“That is a simplistic way of putting it,” Rinaldo said.
“I am sorry to interrupt what must be a long, involved conversation,” Javanne said, “but I really must get to work. There is a great deal to do, cleaning up after the ball in addition to the normal daily housekeeping.”
Regis rose. “Please, do not let us keep you. Your work is deeply appreciated.”
Javanne gathered up her daughter and swept from the room. Mikhail remained behind, very much on his best behavior, perhaps hoping to escape any suggestion that he might assist his mother.
Regis turned back to Rinaldo. “So you would learn more of the Terran Federation situation?”
“I must begin by becoming acquainted with these Terrans themselves. The Holy St. Christopher bears the burdens of all who pray to him, regardless of their worldly allegiances. Do you not try to see these star travelers as fellow creatures, with their gifts and sorrows, rather than as a single nameless adversary?”
Regis nodded. All too many tragedies might have been prevented, had the parties thought as his brother did. He proposed a visit to the Federation Legate and a tour of the Terran Zone. Rinaldo was openly delighted with the prospect, as was Mikhail with being asked to accompany them.
14
Regis strolled beside his brother through the Trade City, which lay between the older part of Thendara and the Terran Zone. Mikhail followed half a pace behind, serious with the weight of his new responsibility. Since Regis had decided against summoning Danilo or a pair of the Castle Guards to accompany them, Mikhail had taken it upon himself to protect his two uncles from any possible harm. Regis suspected that if there were any danger he and Mikhail could not handle together, the addition of two or even twenty swordsmen would make no difference. The Terran authorities did all they could to prevent the illegal sale of blasters and other Compact-banned weapons, but it was still possible to obtain them on permit.
Regis did not want his brother’s experience of Thendara, both the Darkovan and Terran portions, to be one of constant vigilance against real and imagined threats. He himself had spent too much of his life either a prisoner in a gilded cage or looking over his shoulder to see who might be hunting him. His fears were not all paranoid imagination. The World Wreckers assassins had threatened him on at least seven occasions and had succeeded in killing half a dozen Comyn . . . and, Aldones help him, two of his nedestro children.
Now, as Regis remembered the loss of those two babes, slaughtered in their cradles, he felt renewed grief. He had not thought of them in years, had never really known them. Their mothers had been young women of good birth, eager for the honor of bearing a child to a Hastur lord. Nonetheless, he had mourned their passing and still did.
And Kierestelli, would he ever know her, watch her grow to womanhood, share her dreams? The sense of loss shifted, now something far more chilling, something akin to prescience.
Danger . . . a child in danger . . . Stelli? Some other child? The impression slipped away like snowmelt.
“Regis? Is something the matter?” Rinaldo peered at him anxiously.
Regis felt himself once again standing in a street lined with houses and shops in Terran-style architecture. They were only a short distance from the Terran checkpoint.
“A stray worry, nothing more.” Regis followed Rinaldo and Mikhail to a planter filled with summer blooms, surrounded with benches for the ease of travelers enjoying the miniature garden. It was a Terran innovation he found particularly pleasing.
Regis sat down and inhaled the sweet, moist scents. Mikhail bent over him, clearly anxious. A crease formed between his fair brows.
“Let me summon Uncle Danilo,” Mikhail said. “Or get you some jaco or Terran coffee. I saw a shop a couple of blocks back.”
“I’m all right, just a little troubled in spirit. It’s hereditary with us Hasturs. I don’t like coffee, but jaco would be welcome. And some for you, as well, Rinaldo?”
Rinaldo shook his head as Mikhail hurried off. “He’s a good lad.”
“That he is.”
“But he should not refer to your paxman in such an intimate way. It is not respectful.”
Regis made a dismissive gesture. “Mikhail has known Danilo since he was a small child. We do not stand upon ceremony among such close friends.”
“But Dom Syrtis is not, after all, a member of your family.” Rinaldo inflected the words to invite agreement that Danilo was no more to Regis than a bodyguard.
Regis felt his spine stiffen instinctively. He could not allow that comment to go unanswered. “Danilo and I have been pledged to one another, as bredhin and as lord and paxman, since we were cadets.” His voice sounded rusty to his own ears. “Our father and his older brother also swore such a vow. Rafael Syrtis died trying to save our father’s life, and they are buried together in the Field of Kilghairlie. Danilo and I are bound by blood, by honor, and more than that—”
Just then, Mikhail appeared at the end of the street, carrying two cheap mugs, the sort one could buy for a few reis at a cook shop.
Uncle Regis? came the boy’s tentative mental touch. What happened?
Leave it, chiyu. It has nothing to do with you.
They finished their jaco and proceeded to the Terran Headquarters. Mikhail did his best to keep up a lively chatter, pointing out various shops. The Spaceforce guards at the checkpoint recognized Regis and admitted his party without question.
By the time they reached the Headquarters building, a rectangular tower of steel and glass instead of Darkovan stone, Regis had wrestled himself into a better mood. Security had been increased since his last visit, doubtless as a result of the volatile debate regarding Federation membership. The Terran guards looked humorless to the point of bellig
erence. They were armed with nerve guns as well as blasters. Even Regis, as Lord Hastur, was not allowed entry without an escort.
The Legate was not in his office, but after a wait and a number of radio communications back and forth, a Spaceforce officer accompanied Regis and his party to the Lawton family living quarters. Regis had never seen where his friend lived. It must be strange to sleep, eat, and work all within the same walls, bathed in the unrelenting yellow light and breathing the tasteless reconditioned air. The floor, a slick synthetic material, felt as unyielding as granite, unlike the carpet Javanne had installed in the Castle, a touch of living green.
The Headquarters tower was almost as confusing as the Castle, although less labyrinthine. There were no stone cul-de-sacs, no blind corners or hidden doors. They proceeded upward in a series of interconnecting elevators. Such devices, Regis supposed, were necessary for a structure twenty or thirty floors high, but that did not make him enjoy riding in one. Mikhail did his best to disguise his delight, and Rinaldo was openly filled with wonder.
“Such marvels!” he murmured as they emerged into a hallway bounded by an immense glass window that gave a view of half the city. “Such grandeur!”
“I’ll tell Dan Lawton you’re impressed,” Regis said with a humorous lilt. “He’ll be pleased to hear it.”
They reached a doorway, and the officer stood to one side. The door looked like any of the many they’d passed, distinguished only by a small plaque bearing the occupant’s name. A small copper charm had been affixed to the wall. Regis noticed it, since that metal was rare and expensive on Darkover, but thought nothing more of it. Rinaldo, however, bent to examine it with an exclamation of unaffected delight.
The door slid open. “Regis—Lord Hastur! This is an unexpected pleasure! Please come in. I had no idea you intended to make us a visit.” Dan Lawton stepped back to gesture them inside.
Instead of his formal uniform, Dan wore a Darkovan shirt falling in loose folds from a shoulder yoke and trimmed with simple geometric embroidery at collar and cuffs, Terran-style pants, and low house boots. He ushered them through a mirror-lined passage that Regis had no doubt was laden with security devices and into a large chamber, a parlor of sorts. Windows faced west. The carpet was dense and springy but drab in color, mottled tones of mud and ash, a combination of luxury and unimaginative ugliness. There was no fireplace, but the air was uncomfortably warm by Darkovan standards.
The room was not without beauty. Against one interior corner stood a display case of carved red- hued wood. Shaped like a tree, its branches interlaced to create niches for polished crystals, too large and clear to be anything but quartz, little porcelain statues of unfamiliar animals or hooded, cloaked dancers, and on the topmost, a stylized cristoforo symbol of yellowed bone. Rinaldo glanced at it, a peculiar expression lighting his features.
As they entered, Tiphani Lawton rose from the divanlike structure on which she’d been sitting beside Felix. Felix looked pale, but the gaze that greeted Regis was steady.
The divan, it turned out, was mechanized, so that with a touch of a few panels, it rearranged itself into seating for everyone. Mikhail, although still on his best adult behavior, looked as if he would like to see how many different configurations were possible.
“I’d heard about your discovery, Lord Hastur,” Dan said, “and was looking forward to meeting—” turning to Rinaldo, “Please forgive me, is the proper form of address for you, Dom Rinaldo?”
“Just Rinaldo, please.” With a faint smile: “It is difficult enough answering to that name after so many years as Brother Valentine. I doubt I would recognize myself as Dom anything.”
“Since we are here informally, let’s leave Lord Hastur outside, too,” Regis said. Everyone laughed. “Dan, you and I have known each other for too many years to insist upon protocol in your own home. And you know my nephew, Mikhail Lanart-Hastur.”
Tiphani peered at Rinaldo, pointedly ignoring Mikhail as someone of little consequence. “Brother Valentine, you said. I don’t understand.”
“Forgive me,” Regis said, “I felt sure the gossip must have reached you by now. Rinaldo is indeed a brother, but he is mine. He was once called Brother Valentine after the cristoforo saint, because he was a monk. Grandfather kept his existence a secret until shortly before died.”
Since the original introductions, Felix had been sitting quietly, but now he began to fidget. Regis doubted the boy had any interest in Rinaldo’s religious calling. At that age, Regis would have been desperately bored. He interrupted the conversation long enough to ask if he might have a word with the boy about his progress. Mikhail glanced at Regis as if to protest being left with sole responsibility for Rinaldo, and then he solved the problem by inquiring where the sanitary facility was.
The three went into the hallway leading deeper into the apartment toward the bathroom and, presumably, the sleeping areas. Mikhail disappeared through an open doorway, leaving Regis and Felix to themselves.
Regis smiled encouragingly at Felix. “How have you been getting on? Any more trouble with threshold sickness?”
“I’m feeling much better now, thank you, sir. As long as—” Felix’s hand went to the front closure of his shirt, where his starstone made a small bulge in the clinging off-world fabric.
At least the boy was keeping it close to him. “May I see your matrix?” Regis asked.
Felix opened the top of his shirt. Regis noted with approval that neither the cord nor its clasp was made of energy-conducting metal. Layers of gray silk cushioned the stone, acting as a psychic insulator. When Felix removed the stone and held it up, a pattern of blue light flickered in its heart. The facets were clear, not clouded. As far as Regis could tell, the stone was properly keyed, betraying no illness of the mind to which it was linked, nor could he detect any distortions of laran energy in its depths.
From the parlor came the sound of a chime and Dan’s voice, “I’m sorry, I must take this call,” and another door whispering closed.
“I am no Keeper,” Regis told Felix, “but to my eyes, this looks as it should.”
Felix closed his fingers around the matrix stone. “I can’t do much with it. Ferrika is nice, and I appreciate everything she’s done, but she doesn’t know very much about—about what laran is good for. Except healing.”
Behind the boy’s awkward words, Regis heard a hunger. It was not the same one he had known at that age, but it was yearning nonetheless. If only Linnea were here to teach him, if only—
No. He would not think about her.
From the parlor, he caught Tiphani’s voice raised in excitement. “Those are almost the same words from the sacred texts of Megaera!”
Regis and Felix exchanged conspiratorial glances. The brief respite was over. Regis led the way back to the others. Rinaldo, seeing him, called, “Brother, the wonders of the world are many! Here is Domna Tiphani from a distant world, speaking the same eternal truths as taught by our own saints.”
Regis had never seen Tiphani Lawton so animated. Her eyes glowed, and a high color suffused her cheeks. Were she other than she was and were Rinaldo any other man, Regis could have sworn the two had just fallen in love.
“Is it possible,” she said breathlessly, “that your St. Christopher is St. Christopher of Centaurus? From what you just told me, his teachings are not precisely the same, but the moral bedrock upon which they are founded—the law of righteousness, the promise of salvation and the certainty of damnation—all these are mirrors of one another!”
As she spoke, Rinaldo nodded. Mikhail came back and stood quietly listening. From the wetness on his neck and shirt front, he had been experimenting with the washing fixtures.
“It is very possible,” Regis said temperately. “The first humans to settle Darkover came from a lost colony ship millennia ago. I believe the Nevarsin monastery dates from that time and has been relatively isolated from the larger world. Many of the traditions and beliefs of the first cristoforos may have come down to us with very
little change.”
“Look,” Rinaldo exclaimed, “here is a holy reliquary, in form and symbolic ornament very like our own. If I saw it in the chapel at St. Valentine’s, I would not think it out of place. I cannot believe the resemblance is accidental . . . Now I know why I have been brought here to Thendara! I might have lived my entire life at Nevarsin without learning the universal truth of our teachings.”
He turned to Tiphani. “We must pray for guidance and knowledge of the work we are called to accomplish.”
Although Regis was glad his brother had discovered a way to integrate his religious and worldly lives, he was also disturbed that the connection should be a woman who had shown herself to be so volatile of temper.
Rinaldo, as if sensing his brother’s mood, hastened to say, “Our work will become a powerful instrument of understanding between our two planets or rather between Darkover and the Federation. I can think of no better way to serve my people.”
Having no ready answer, Regis said nothing. Mikhail looked politely uninterested. Felix shuffled from one foot to the other.
“Brother Valentine—Rinaldo, that is,” Tiphani rushed on, oblivious, “will you help me to build a chapel where people of faith from both our communities may worship together?”
“Most gladly, lady. That is, if my brother consents.”
Finding no graceful way to refuse, Regis said he thought it a fine project. “But,” he warned, “both Darkovan and Terran authorities must agree on the final plans.”
“Oh, there will be no problem from this side,” Tiphani said. “My husband will ensure the approval of the Federation.”
Just then, Dan returned through a side door. “I won’t trouble you with details, my dear, but I’m afraid my presence is required.”
“We must take our leave as well,” Regis said, with the short bow of a Comyn lord to one of equal rank.
Rinaldo came away cheerfully after making arrangements for a properly chaperoned visit with Tiphani a few days later.