“Dani?” Regis said at last, and the boy, startled, dropped the apple and stumbled over his rake as he turned. Regis wondered what to say.

Danilo took a step toward him. “What do youwant?”

“I was on the road to my sister’s house; I stopped to pay my respects to your father and to see how you did.”

He saw Danilo visibly struggling between the impulse to fling the polite gesture back into his face—what more had he to lose?—and the lifelong habit of hospitality. At last he said, “My house and I are at your service, Lord Regis.” His politeness was exaggerated almost to a caricature. “What is my lord’s will?”

Regis said, “I want to talk to you.”

“As you see, my lord, I am very much occupied. But I am entirely at your bidding.”

Regis ignored the irony and took him at his word.

“Come here, then, and sit down,” he said, taking his seat on a fallen log, felled so long ago that it was covered with gray lichen. Silently Danilo obeyed, keeping as far away as the dimensions of the log allowed.

Regis said after a moment, “I want you to know one thing: I have no idea why you were thrown out of the Guards, or rather, I only know what I heard that day. But from the way everyone acted, you’d think I left you to take the blame for something I myself did. Why? What did I do?”

“You know—” Danilo broke off, kicking a windfall apple with the point of his clog. It broke with a rotten, slushy clunk. “It’s over. Whatever I did to offend you, I’ve paid.”

Then for a moment the rapport, the awareness Danilo had wakened in him, flared again between them. He could feel Danilo’s despair and grief as if it were his own. He said, harsh with the pain of it, “Danilo Syrtis, speak your grudge and let me avow or deny it! I tried not to think ill of you even in disgrace! But you called me foul names when I meant you nothing but kindness, and if you have spread lies about me or my kinsmen, then you deserve everything they have done to you, and you still have a score to settle with me!” Without realizing it, he had sprung to his feet, his hand going to the hilt of his sword.

Danilo stood defiant. His gray eyes, gleaming like molten metal beneath dark brows, blazed with anger and sorrow. “ DomRegis, I beg you, leave me in peace! Isn’t it enough that I am here, my hopes gone, my father shamed forever—I might as well be dead!” he cried out desperately, his words tumbling over themselves. “Grudge, Regis? No, no, none against you, you showed me nothing but kindness, but you were one of them, one of those, those—” He stopped again, his voice tight with the effort not to cry. At last he cried out passionately, “Regis Hastur, as the Gods live, my conscience is clear and your Lord of Light and the God of the cristoforosmay judge between the Sons of Hastur and me!”

Almost without volition, Regis drew his sword. Danilo, startled, took a step backward in fear; then he straightened and stiffened his mouth. “Do you punish blasphemy so quickly, lord? I am unarmed, but if my offense merits death, then kill me now where I stand! My life is no good to me!”

Shocked, Regis lowered the point of the sword. “Kill you, Dani?” he said in horror. “God forbid! It never crossed my mind! I wished … Dani, lay your hand on the hilt of my sword.”

Confused, startled into obedience, Danilo put a tentative hand on the hilt Regis gripped hand and hilt together in his own fingers.

“Son of Hastur who is the Son of Aldones who is the Lord of Light! May this hand and this sword pierce my heart and my honor, Danilo, if I had part or knowledge in your disgrace, or if anything you say now shall be used to work you harm!” Again, from the hand-touch, he felt that odd little shock running up his arm, blurring his own thoughts, felt Danilo’s sobs tight in his own throat.

Danilo said on a drawn breath, “No Hastur would forswear that oath!”

“No Hastur would forswear his naked word,” Regis retorted proudly, “but if it took an oath to convince you, an oath you have.” He sheathed the sword.

“Now tell me what happened, Dani. Was the charge a lie, then?”

Danilo was still visibly dazed. “The night I came in—it had been raining. You woke, you knew—”

“I knew only that you were in pain, Dani. No more. I asked if I could help, but you drove me away.” The pain and shock he had felt that night returned to him in full force and he felt his heart pounding again with the agony of it, as he had done when Danilo thrust him away.

Danilo said, “You are a telepath. I thought—”

“A very rudimentary one, Danilo,” said Regis, trying to steady his voice. “I sensed only that you were unhappy, in pain. I didn’t know why and you would not tell me.”

“Why should you care?”

Regis put out his hand, slowly closed it around Danilo’s wrist. “I am Hastur and Comyn. It touches the honor of my clan and my caste that anyone should have cause to speak ill of us. With false slanders we can deal, but with truth, we can only try to right the wrong. We Comyn can be mistaken.” Dimly, at the back of his mind, he realized he had said “We Comyn” for the first time. “More,” he said, and smiled fleetingly, “I like your father, Dani. He was willing to anger a Hastur in order to have you left in peace.”

Danilo stood nervously locking and unlocking his hands. He said, “The charge is true. I drew my dagger on Lord Dyan. I only wish I had cut his throat while I was about it; whatever they did to me, the world would be a cleaner place.”

Regis stared, disbelieving. “ Zandru!Dani—”

“I know, in days past, the men who touched Comyn lord in irreverence would have been torn on hooks. In those days, perhaps, Comyn were worth reverence—”

“Leave that,” Regis said sharply. “Dani, I am heir to Hastur, but even I could not draw steel on an officer without disgrace. Even if the officer I struck were no Comyn lord but young Hjalmar, whose mother is a harlot of the streets.”

Danilo stood fighting for control. “If I struck young Hjalmar, Regis, then I would have deserved my punishment; he is an honorable man. It was not as my officer I drew on Lord Dyan. He had forfeited all claim to obedience or respect.”

“Is that for you to judge?”

“In those circumstances … ” Danilo swallowed. “Could I respect and obey a man who had so far forgotten himself as to try to make me his—” He used a cahuengaword Regis did not know, only that it was unspeakably obscene. But he was still in rapport with Danilo, so there was no scrap of doubt about his meaning. Regis went white. He literally could not speak under the shock of it.

“At first I thought he was joking,” Danilo said, almost stammering. “I do not like such jests—I am a cristoforo—but I gave him some similar joke for an answer and thought that was the end of it, for if he meant the jest in seriousness, then I had given him his answer without offense. Then he made himself clearer and grew angry when I answered him no, and swore he could force me to it. I don’t know what he did to me, Regis, he did something with his mind, so that wherever I was, alone or with others, I felthim touching me, heard his … his foul whispers, that awful, mocking laugh of his. He pursued me, he seemed to be inside my mind all the time. All the time. I thought he meant to drive me out of my mind! I had thought … a telepath could not inflict pain … I can’t stand it even to be aroundanyone who’s really unhappy, but he took some awful, hateful kind of pleasure in it.” Danilo sobbed suddenly. “I went to him, then, I begged him to let me be! Regis, I am no gutter-brat, my family has served the Hasturs honorably for years, but if I were a whore’s foundling and he the king on his throne, he would have had no right to use me so shamefully!” Danilo broke down again and sobbed. “And then … and then he said I knew perfectly well how I could be free of him. He laughedat me, that awful, hideous laugh. And then I had my dagger out, I hardly know how I came to draw it, or what I meant to do with it, kill myself maybe … ” Danilo put his hands over his face. “You know the rest,” he said through them.