The long steps to the Hastur apartments seemed to loom over him, shrinking and expanding. His grandfather’s aged valet rushed at him, blurred and out of focus, clucking and shaking his head with the privilege of long service, “Lord Regis, you’re soaked through, you’ll be ill, let me fetch you some wine, dry clothes—”
“Nothing, thank you.” Regis blinked away the drops of ice melting on his eyelashes. “Ask the Lord Regent if he”—he tensed to keep his teeth from chattering—“if he can receive me.”
“He’s at supper, Lord Regis. Go in and join him.”
A small table had been laid before the fire in his grandfather’s private sitting room, and Danvan Hastur looked up, dismayed, almost comically echoing the elderly servant’s dismay.
“My boy! At this hour, so wet and dripping? Marton, take his cloak, dry it at the fire! Child, you were to be with Javanne some days, what has happened?”
“Necessary—” Regis discovered his teeth were chattering so hard he could not speak; he clenched them to get control. “To return at once—”
The Regent shook his head skeptically. “Through a blizzard? Sit down there by the fire.” He picked up the jug on his table, tilted a thick stream of steaming soup into a stoneware mug and held it out to Regis. “Here. Drink this and warm yourself before you say anything.”
Regis started to say he did not want it, but he had to take it to keep it from falling from the old man’s hand. The hot fragrant steam was so enticing that he began to sip it, slowly. He felt enraged at his own weakness and angrier at his grandfather for seeing it. His barriers were down and he had a flash of Hastur as a young man, a commander in the field, knowing his men, judging each one’s strengths and weaknesses, knowing what each one needed and precisely how and when to get it to him. As the hot soup began to spread warmth through his shivering body he relaxed and began to breathe freely. The heat of the stoneware mug comforted his fingers, which were blue with cold, and even when he had finished the soup he held it between his hands, enjoying the warmth.
“Grandfather, I must talk to you.”
“Well, I’m listening, child. Not even Council would call me out in such weather.”
Regis glanced at the servants moving around the room. “Alone, sir. This concerns the honor of the Hasturs.”
A startled look crossed the old man’s face and he waved them from the room. “You’re not going to tell me Javanne has managed to disgrace herself!”
Even the thought of his staid and fastidious sister playing the wanton would have made Regis laugh, if he could have laughed. “Indeed not, sir, all at Edelweiss is well and the babies thriving.” He was not cold now, but felt an inner trembling he did not even recognize as fear. He put down the empty mug which had grown chill in his hands, shook his head at the offer of a refill. “Grandfather. Do you remember Danilo Syrtis?”
“Syrtis. The Syrtis people are old Hastur folk, your father’s paxman and bodyguard bore that name, old DomFelix was my hawk-master. Wait, was there not some shameful thing in the Guards this year, a disgraced cadet, a sword-breaking? What has this to do with the honor of Hastur, Regis?”
Regis knew he must be very calm now, must keep his voice steady. He said, “The Syrtis men are our wards and paxmen, sir. From their years of duty to us, is it not our duty to safeguard them from being attacked and abused, even by Comyn? I have learned … Danilo Syrtis was wrongfully attacked and disgraced, sir, and it’s worse than that. Danilo is a … a catalyst telepath, and Lord Dyan ill-used him, contrived his disgrace for revenge—”
Regis’ voice broke. That searing moment of contact with Danilo flooded him again. Hastur looked at him in deep distress.
“Regis, this cannot possibly be true!”
He doesn’t believe me! Regis heard his voice crack and break again. “Grandfather, I swear—”
“Child, child, I know you are not lying, I know you better than that!”
“You don’t know me at all!” Regis flung at him, almost hysterical.
Hastur rose and came to him, laying a concerned hand on his forehead. “You are ill, Regis, feverish, perhaps delirious.”
Regis shook the hand off. “I know perfectly well what I am saying. I had an attack of threshold sickness at Edelweiss, it’s better now.”
The old man looked at him with startled skepticism. “Regis, threshold sickness is nothing to take lightly. One of the symptoms is delusion, hallucination. I cannot accuse Lord Dyan of the wild ravings of a sick child. Let me send for Kennard Alton; he is tower-trained and can deal with this kind of illness.”
“Send to Kennard indeed,” Regis demanded, his voice wavering, “he is the one man in Thendara who will know for a fact that I am neither lying nor raving! This was by his contrivance, too; he stood by and watched Danilo disgraced and the cadet corps shamed!”
Hastur looked deeply troubled. He said, “Can it not wait—” He looked at Regis sharply and said, “No. If you rode through a blizzard at this hour to bring me such news, it certainly cannot wait. But Kennard is very ill, too. Can you possibly manage to go to him, child?”
Regis cut off another angry outburst and only said, with tight control, “I am not ill. I can go to him.”
His grandfather looked at him steadily. “If you are not ill you will soon be so, if you stand there shivering and dripping. Go to your room and change your clothes while I send word to Kennard.”
He was angry at being sent like a child to change his clothes but he obeyed. It seemed the best way to convince his grandfather of his rationality. When he returned, dry-clad and feeling better, his grandfather said shortly, “Kennard is willing to talk to you. Come with me.”
As they went through the long corridors, Regis was aware of his grandfather’s bristling disapproval. In the Alton rooms, Kennard was seated in the main hall, before the fire. He rose and took one step toward them and Regis saw with deep compunction that the older man looked terribly ill, his gaunt face flushed, his hands looking hugely swollen and shapeless. But he smiled at Regis with heartfelt welcome and held out the misshapen hand. “My lad, I’m glad to see you.”
Regis touched the swollen fingers with awkward carefulness, unable to blur out Kennard’s pain and exhaustion. He felt raw-edged, hypersensitive. Kennard could hardly stand!
“Lord Hastur, you honor me. How may I serve you?”
“My grandson has come to me with a strange and disturbing story. It’s his tale, I’ll leave him to tell it.”
Regis felt consuming relief. He had feared to be treated like a sick child dragged unwilling to a doctor. For once he was being treated like a man. He felt grateful, a little disarmed.
Kennard said, “I cannot stand like this long. You there—” He gestured to a servant. “An armchair for the Regent. Sit beside me, Regis, tell me what’s troubling you.”
“My lord Alton—”
Kennard said kindly, “Am I no longer Uncle, my boy?”
Regis knew if he did not resist that fatherly warmth with all his strength, he would sob out his story like a beaten child. He said stiffly, “My lord, this is a serious matter concerning the honor of the Guardsmen. I have visited Danilo Syrtis at his home—”
“That was a kindly thought, nephew. Between ourselves, that was a had business. I tried to talk Dyan out of it, but he chose to make an example of Dani and the law is the law. I couldn’t have done anything if Dani had been my own son.”
“Commander,” Regis said, using the most formal of Kennard’s military titles, “on my most solemn word as a cadet and a Hastur, there has been a terrible injustice done. Danilo was, I swear, wrongly accused, and Lord Dyan guilty of something so shameful I hardly dare name it. Is a cadet forced to submit—”
“Now you wait a minute,” Kennard said, turning blazing eyes on him. “I had this already from Lew. I don’t know what those three years among the cristoforosdid to you, but if you’re going to come whining to me about the fact that Dyan likes young lads for lovers, and accuse—”