“I studied swordplay at Nevarsin,” Danilo said. “I’m not worried about the arms-master.”
“Well, you’d better worry about Lord Dyan. You’re just young enough and pretty enough—”
“Shut your mouth,” Danilo said. “You shouldn’t talk that way about a Comyn lord.”
Damon snickered. “I forgot. You’re Lord Alton’s protégé, aren’t you? Strange, I never heard that he had any special liking for pretty boys.”
Danilo flared, his face burning. “You shut your filthy mouth! You’re not fit to wipe Lord Kennard’s boots! If you say anything like that again—”
“Well, it seems we have a whole cloister of monks back here.” Julian joined in the laughter. “Do you recite the Creed of Chastity when you ride into battle, Dani?”
“It wouldn’t hurt any of you dirty-mouths to say something decent,” Danilo said and turned his back on them, burying himself in the arms-manual.
Regis had also been shocked by the accusation they had made and by their language. But he realized he could not expect ordinary young men to behave and talk like novice monks, and he knew they would quickly make his life unbearable if he showed any sign of his distaste. He held his peace. That sort of thing must be common enough here to be a joke.
Yet it had touched off a murder and near-riot in the Terran Zone. Could grown men actually take such things seriously enough to kill? Terrans, perhaps. They must have very strange customs, if they were even stricter than the cristoforos.
He suddenly recalled, as something that might have taken place years ago, that only this morning he had stood beside young Lawton in the Terran Zone, watching the starship break free from the planet and make its way to the stars. He wondered if Dan Lawton knew which end of a sword to take hold by, and if he cared. He had a strange sense of shuttling, rapidly and painfully, between worlds.
Three years. Three years to study swordplay while the Terran ships came and went less than a bowshot away.
Was this the kind of awareness his grandfather carried night and day, a constant reminder of two worlds rubbing shoulders, with violently opposed histories, habits, manners, moralities? How did Hastur live with the contrast?
The day wore on. He was sent for, and an orderly measured him for his uniform. When the sun was high, a junior officer came to show them the way to the mess hall, where the cadets ate at separate tables. The food was coarse and plain, but Regis had eaten worse at Nevarsin and he made a good meal, though some of the cadets grumbled loudly about the fare.
“It’s not so bad,” he said in an undertone to Danilo, and the younger boy’s eyes glinted with mischief. “Maybe they want to make sure we know they’re used to something better! Even if we’re not.”
Regis, aware of Danilo’s patched shut on his back, remembered how desperately poor the boy’s family must be. Yet they had had him well educated at Nevarsin. “I’d thought you were to be a monk, Dani.”
“I couldn’t be,” Dani said. I’m my father’s only son now, and it wouldn’t be lawful. My half-brother was killed fifteen years ago, before I was born.” As they left the mess hall, he added, “Father had me taught to read and write and keep accounts so that someday I’d be fit to manage his estate. He’s growing too old to farm Syrtis alone. He didn’t want me to go into the Guards, but when Lord Alton made such a kind offer, he couldn’t refuse. I hate to hear them gossip about him,” he said vehemently. “He’s not like that! He’s good and kind and decent!”
“I’m sure he doesn’t listen,” Regis said. “I lived in his house too, you know. And one of his favorite sayings used to be, if you listen to dogs barking, you’ll go deaf without learning much. Are the Syrtis people under the Alton Domain, Danilo?”
“No, we have always been under Hastur wardship. My father was hawk-master to yours, and my half-brother his paxman.”
And something Regis had always known, an old story which had been part of his childhood but which he had never associated with living people, fell into place in his mind. He said excitedly, “Dani! Your brother—was his name Rafael-Felix Syrtis of Syrtis?”
“Yes, that was his name. He was killed before I was born, in the same year Stefan Fourth died—”
“So was my father,” said Regis, with a surge of unfamiliar emotion. “All my life I have known the story, known your brother’s name. Dani, your brother was my father’s personal guard, they were killed at the same instant—he died trying to shield my father with his body. Did you know they are buried side by side, in one grave, on the field of Kilghairlie?”
He remembered, but did not say, what an old servant had told him, that they were blown to bits, buried together where they fell, since no living man could tell which bits were his father’s, which Dani’s brother’s.
“I didn’t know,” Danilo whispered, his eyes wide. Regis, caught in the grip of a strange emotion, said, “It must be horrible to die like that, but not so horrible if your last thought is to shield someone else … ”
Danilo’s voice was not entirely steady. “They were both named Rafael and they had sworn to one another, and they fought together and died and were buried in one grave—” As if he hardly knew what he was doing, he reached out to Regis and clasped his hands. He said, “I’d like to die like that. Wouldn’t you?”
Regis nodded wordlessly. For an instant it seemed to him that something had reached deep down inside him, an almost painful awareness and emotion. It was almost a physical touch, although Danilo’s fingers were only resting lightly in his own. Suddenly, abashed by the intensity of his own feelings, he let go of Danilo’s hand, and the surge of emotion receded. One of the cadet officers came up and said, “Dani, the arms-master has sent for you.” Danilo caught up his shabby leather tunic, pulled it quickly over his shirt and went.
Regis, remembering that he had been up all night, stretched out on the bare straw ticking of his cot. He was too restless to sleep, but he fell at last into an uneasy doze, mingled with the unfamiliar sounds of the Guard hall the metallic clinking from the armory where someone was mending a shield, men’s voices, very different from the muted speech of the monastery. Half asleep, he began to see a nightmarish sequence of faces: Lew Alton looking sad and angry when he told Regis he had no laran, Kennard pleading for Marius, his grandfather struggling not to betray exhaustion or grief. As he drifted deeper into the neutral country on the edge of sleep, he remembered Danilo, handling the wooden practice swords at Nevarsin. Someone whose face Regis could not see was standing close behind him; Danilo moved abruptly away, and he heard through the dream a harsh, shrill laugh, raucous as the scream of a hawk. And then he had a sudden mental picture of Danilo, his face turned away, huddled against the wall, sobbing heartbrokenly. And through the dreamlike sobs Regis felt a shocking overtone of fear, disgust and a consuming shame …
Someone laid a careful hand on his shoulder, shook him lightly. The barracks room was filled with the dimness of sunset. Danilo said, “Regis? I’m sorry to wake you, but the cadet-master wants to see you. Do you know the way?”
Regis sat up, still a little dazed by the sharp edges of nightmare. For a moment he thought that Danilo’s face, bent over him in the dim light, was actually red and flushed, as if he had been crying, like in the dream. No, that was ridiculous. Dani looked hot and sweaty, as if he’d been running hard or exercising. Probably they’d tested his swordplay. Regis tried to throw off the remnants of dream. He went into the stone-floored washroom and latrine, sluiced his face with the paralyzingly cold water from the pump. Back in the barracks, tugging his leather tunic over Dani’s patched shirt, he saw Danilo slumped on his cot, his head in his hands. He must have done badly at his arms-test and he’s upset about it, he decided, and left without disturbing his friend.
Inside the armory there was a second-year cadet with long lists in his hands, another officer writing at a table and Dyan Ardais, seated behind an old worm-eaten desk. Because the afternoon had turned warm, his collar was undone, his coarse dark hair clinging damoly around his high forehead. He glanced up. and Regis felt that in one swift feral glance Dyan had learned evervthing he wanted to know about him.