The room was beginning to fill up with uniformed men.
Dyan came to the dais where the officers were collecting, gave me an unfriendly scowl. No doubt hehad expected to be named as Father’s deputy. Even that would have been better than making him cadet-master.
Damn it, I couldn’tgo along with that. Father’s choice or not.
Dyan’s private life was no one’s affair but his own and I wouldn’t care if he chose to love men, women or goats. He could have as many concubines as a Dry-Towner, and most people would gossip no more and no less. But more scandal in the Guards? Damn it, no! This touched the honor of the Guards, and of the Altons who were in charge of it.
Father had put me in command. This was going to be my first command decision, then.
I signaled for Assembly. One or two late-comers dashed into their places. The seasoned men took their ranks. The cadets, as they had been briefed, stayed in a corner.
Regis wasnt among the cadets. I resented bitterly that I was tied here, but there was no help for it.
I looked them all over and felt them returning the favor. I shut down my telepathic sensitivity as much as I could—it wasn’t easy in this crowd—but I was aware of their surprise, curiosity, disgust, annoyance. It all added up, more or less, to Where the hell is the Commander?Or, worse, What’s old Kennard’s bastard doing up there with the staff?
Finally I got their attention and told them of Kennard’s misfortune. It caused a small flurry of whispers, mutters, comments, most of which I knew it would be unwise to hear. I let them get through most of it, then called them to order again and began the traditional first-day ceremony of call-over.
One by one I read out the name of every Guardsman. Each came forward, repeated a brief formula of loyalty to Comyn and informed me—a serious obligation three hundred years ago, a mere customary formality now—of how many men, trained, armed and outfitted according to custom, he was prepared to put into the field in the event of war. It was a long business. There was a disturbance halfway through it and, escorted by half a dozen servants in Hastur livery, Regis made an entrance. One of the servants gave me a message from Hastur himself, with some kind of excuse or explanation for his lateness.
I realized that I was blisteringly angry. I’d seen Regis desperate, suicidal, ill, prostrated, suffering some unforeseen aftereffect of kirian, even dead—and he walked in casually, upsetting call-over ceremony and discipline. I told him brusquely, “Take your place, cadet,” and dismissed the servants.
He could not have resembled less the boy who had sat by my fire last night, eating stew and pouring out his bitterness. He was wearing full Comyn regalia, badges, high boots, a sky-blue tunic of an elaborate cut. He walked to his place among the cadets, his head held stiffly high. I could sense the fear and shyness in him, but I knew the other cadets would regard it as Comyn arrogance, and he would suffer for it. He looked tired, almost ill, behind the facade of arrogant control. What had happened to him last night? Damn him, I recalled myself with a start, why was I worrying about the heir to Hastur? He hadn’t worried about me, or the fact that if he’d come to harm, I’d have been in trouble!
I finished the parade of loyalty oaths. Dyan leaned toward me and said, “I was in the city with the Council last night. Hastur asked me to explain the situation to the Guards; have I your permission to speak, Captain Montray-Lanart?”
Dyan had never given me my proper title, in or out of the Guard hall. I grimly told myself that the last thing I wanted was his approval. I nodded and he walked to the center of the dais. He looks no more like a typical Comyn lord than I do; his hair is dark, not the traditional red of Comyn, and he is tall, lean, with the six-fingered hands which sometimes turn up in the Ardais and Aillard clans. There is said to be nonhuman blood in the Ardais line. Dyan looks it.
“City Guardsmen of Thendara,” he rapped out, “your commander, Lord Alton, has asked me to review the situation.” His contemptuous look said more plainly than words that I might play at being in command, but he was the one who could explain what was going on.
There seemed, as nearly as I could tell from Dyan’s words, to be a high level of tension in the city, mostly between the Terran Spaceforce and the City Guard. He asked every Guardsman to avoid incidents and to honor the curfew, to remember that the Trade City area had been ceded to the Empire by diplomatic treaty. He reminded us that it was our duty to deal with Darkovan offenders, and to turn Terran ones over to the Empire authorities at once. Well, that was fair enough. Two police forces in one city had to reach some agreements and compromises in living together.
I had to admit Dyan was a good speaker. He managed, however, to convey the impression that the Terrans were so much our natural inferiors, honoring neither the Compact nor the codes of personal honor, that we must take responsbility for them, as all superiors do; that, while we would naturally prefer to treat them with a just contempt, we would be doing Lord Hastur a personal favor by keeping the peace, even against our better judgment. I doubted whether that little speech would really lessen the friction between Terrans and Guardsmen.
I wondered if our opposite numbers in the Trade City, the Legate and his deputies, were laying the law down to Spaceforce this morning. Somehow I doubted it.
Dyan returned to his place and I called the cadets to stand forward. I called the roll of the dozen third-year cadets and the eleven second-year men, wondering if Council meant to fill Octavien Vallonde’s empty place. Then I addressed myself to the first-year cadets, calling them into the center of the room. I decided to skip the usual speech about the proud and ancient organization into which it was a pleasure to welcome them. I’m not Dyan’s equal as a speaker, and I wasn’t going to compete. Father could give them that one when he was well again, or the cadet-master, whoever he was. Not Dyan. Over my dead body.
I confined myself to giving basic facts. After today there would be a full assembly and review every morning after breakfast. The cadets would be kept apart in their own barracks and given instructions until intense drill in basics had made them soldierly enough to take their place in formations and duties. Castle Guard would be set day and night and they would take it in turns from oldest to youngest, recalling that Castle Guard was not menial sentry duty but a privilege claimed by nobles from time out of mind, to guard the Sons of Hastur. And so on.
The final formality—I was glad to reach it, for it was hot in the crowded room by now and the youngest cadets were beginning to fidget—was a formal roll call of first-year cadets. Only Regis and Father’s young protégé Danilo were personally known to me, but some were the younger brothers or sons of men I knew in the Guards. The last name I called was Regis-Rafael, cadet Hastur.
There was a confused silence, just too long. Then down the line of cadets there was a small scuffle and an audible whispered “That’s you, blockhead!” as Danilo poked Regis in the ribs. Regis’ confused voice said “Oh—” Another pause. “Here.”
Damn Regis anyhow. I had begun to hope that thisyear we would get through call-over without having to play this particular humiliating charade. Some cadet, not always a first-year man, invariably forgot to answer properly to his name at call-over. There was a procedure for such occasions which probably went back three dozen generations. From the way in which the other Guardsmen, from veterans to older cadets, were waiting, expectant snickers breaking out, they’d all been waiting—yes, damn them all, and hoping—for this ritual hazing.