“ … and shall therefore be stripped of honorable rank and returned to his home in disgrace … in token of which … his sword to be broken before his eyes and in the sight of all the Guardsmen together assembled … ”

This was my part of the dirty work. Hating it, I went and unfastened his sword. It was a plain Guardsman’s sword, and I blessed the kind old man for that much mercy. And besides, I thought sourly, those heirloom swords are of such fine temper you’d need the forge-folk and Sharra’s fires to make any impression on one!

I had to touch Danilo’s arm. I tried to give him a kindly thought of reassurance, that this wasn’t the end of the world, but I knew it wasn’t getting through to him. He flinched from my gauntleted hand as if it had been a red-hot branding iron. This would have been a frightful ordeal for any boy who was not a complete clod; for one with laran, possibly a catalyst telepath, I knew it was torture. Could he come through it at all without a complete breakdown? He stood motionless, staring straight forward, eyes half closed, but he kept blinking as if to avoid breaking into anguished tears. His hands were clenched into tight fists at his side.

I took Danilo’s sword and walked back to the dais. I gripped it between my heavily gauntleted hands and bent it across my knee. It was heavy and harder to bend than I’d realized, and I had time to wonder what I’d do if the damned thing didn’t break or if I lost my grip and it went flying across the room. There was a little nervous coughing deep in the room. I strained at the blade, thinking, Break, damn you, break, let’s get this filthy business over before we all start screaming!

It broke, shattered with a sound shockingly like breaking glass. If anything, I’d expected a noisy metallic resonance. One half slithered away to the floor; I let it lie.

Straightening my back I saw Regis’ eyes full of tears. I looked across at Dyan.

Dyan …

For an instant his barriers were down. He was not looking at me, or at the sword. He was staring at Danilo with a hateful, intense, mocking, satiatedlook. A look of horrid, satisfied lust. There was simply no other word for it.

And all at once I knew—I should have known all along—exactly how and why Danilo had been persecuted, until in a moment of helpless desperation he had been goaded into drawing a knife against his persecutor … or possibly against himself.

Either way, the moment the knife was loose from the sheath, Dyan had him exactly where he wanted him. Or the next best thing.

I don’t think I’ll ever know how I got through the rest of the ceremony. My mind retains only shaken vignettes: Danilo’s face as white as his shirt after the full-dress uniform tabard had been cut away. How shabby he looked. And how young! Dyan taking the sword from my hand, smirking. By the time my brain fully cleared again, I was out of the Guard hall and on the stairs to the Alton rooms.

My father was wearily taking off his dress-uniform. He looked drawn and exhausted. He was really ill, I thought, and no wonder. This would make anyone sick. He looked up, saying tiredly, “I have all your safe-conducts arranged. There is an escort ready for you, with pack animals. You can get away before midday, unless you think the snow’s likely to be too heavy before nightfall.”

He handed me a packet of folded papers. It looked very official, hung with seals and things. For a minute I could hardly remember what he was talking about. The trip to Aldaran had receded very far. I put the papers into my pocket without looking at them.

“Father,” I said, “you cannotdo this. You cannot ruin a boy’s life through Dyan’s spite, not again.”

“I tried to talk him out of it, Lew. He could have condoned it or handled it privately. But since he made it official, I couldn’t pass it over. Even if it had been you, or the Hastur boy.”

“And what of Dyan? Is it soldierly to provoke a child?”

“Leave Dyan out of it, son. A cadet must learn to control himself under any and all conditions. He will have the life and death of dozens, of hundreds, of men in his hands some day. If he cannot control his personal feelings … ” My father reached out, laying his hand on my wrist in a rare caress. “My son, do you think I never knew how hard he tried to provoke you to the same thing? But I trusted you, and I was right. I’m disappointed in Dani.”

But there was a difference. Though he was perhaps harsher than most people thought an officer should be, Dyan had done nothing to me that was not permitted by the regulations of the cadet corps. I said so, adding, “Do the regulations require that the cadets must endure thatfrom an officer too? Cruelty, even sadistic discipline, is had enough. But persecution of this kind, the threat of sexual attack—”

“What proof have you of that?”

It was like a deluge of ice water. Proof. I had none. Only the satisfied, triumphant look on Dyan’s face, the sickness of shame in Danilo, a telepathic awareness I had had no right to read. Moral certainty, yes, but no proof. I just knew.

“Lew, you’re too sensitive. I’m sorry for Dani, too. But if he had reason to complain of Dyan’s treatment of him, there is a formal process of appeal—”

“Against the Comyn? He would have heard what happened to the last cadet to try that,” I said bitterly. Again, against all reason, Father was standing with the Comyn, with Dyan. I looked at him almost in disbelief. Even now I could not believe he would not right this wrong.

Always. AlwaysI had trusted him utterly, implicitly, certain that he would somehow see justice done. Harsh, yes, demanding, but he was always fair. Now Dyan had done—again!—what I had always known Dyan would do, and my father was prepared to gloss it over, let this monstrous injustice remain, let Dyan’s corrupt and vicious revenge or whatever prevail against all honor and reason.

And I had trusted him! Trusted him literally with my life. I had known that if he failed in testing me for the Alton gift, I would die a very quick, very painful death. I felt I would burst into a flood of tears that would unman me. Once again time slid out of focus and again, eleven years old, terrified but wholly trusting, I stood trembling before him, awaiting the touch that would bring me into full Comyn birthright … or kill me! I felt the solemnity of that moment, horribly afraid, yet eager to justify his faith in me, his faith that I was his true-born son who had inherited his gift and his power …

Power!Something inside me exploded into anguish, an anguish I must have been feeling through all the years since that day, which I had never dared let myself feel.

He had been willing to kill me!Why had I never seen this before? Cold-blooded, he had been willing to risk my death, against the hope that he would have a tool to power. Power! Like Dyan, he didn’t care what torture he inflicted to get it! I could still remember the exploding agony of that first contact. I had been so deathly ill for a long time afterward that, in his attentive love and concern, I had forgotten—more accurately, had buried—the knowledge that he had been willing to risk my death.

Why? Because if I had proved notto have the gift, why, then … why, then, my life was of small concern to him, my death no worse than the death of a pet puppy!

He was looking up at me, appalled. He whispered, “No. No, my son, no. Oh, my boy, my boy, it wasn’t like that!” But I slammed my mind shut, for the first time deaf to the loving words.

Loving words merely to force his will on me again! And his pain now was for seeing his plans all go awry, when his puppet, his blind tool, his creature, turned in his hand!

He was no better than Dyan then. Honor, justice, reason—all these could be swept aside in the ruthless hunger for power! Did he even knowthat Danilo was a catalyst telepath, that most sensitive and powerful of talents, that talent thought to be almost extinct?