Yes, Regis thought. I suppose Dyan is my friend. I would rather have him friend than enemy, at least. He said something like this to Danilo when they were alone, adding “I hope you will not mind—being paxman to a prince, Dani?”

Ten days ago Danilo would have passed this off with a flippant joke. Now he only looked at Regis seriously and said, “You know that I will do all I can for you. Only I wish this hadn’t happened. I know you don’t want it.”

“I asked grandfather to take charge of the state funeral for Derik and—and Linnell,” Regis said somberly. “It’s my business to see to the living. I don’t suppose Gabriel and his men have been able to find Kadarin—or Spaceforce, either?”

“No; but there’s rioting in the city, Regis, because Spaceforce has come over on the Darkovan side, searching,” said Danilo. “If you don’t order them out, there’s going to be a civil war.”

“The important thing is to find Kadarin,” Regis protested, but Danilo shook his head. “The important thing, just now, is peace in Thendara, Regis, and you know it as well as I do. Tell Lawton to call off his dogs, or Gabriel isn’t going to be able to hold the Guards back. If they’ve made Thendara too hot to hold Kadarin for a few tendays, so much the better— if he can’t poke his nose out into the marketplace without a guardsman or Spaceforce man grabbing him, then we don’t have to worry about him. But we have to get those Terrans out of the Old Town, or, I tell you, there’s going to be war!”

Regis said with a sigh, “It seems to me that we ought to be able to work together, Terran and Darkovan, against a common enemy, as we did over the Trailmen’s fever, last time there was an epidemic. A few Spaceforce men looking for a hunted criminal aren’t hurting anyone in Thendara—”

“But they’re there,” Danilo argued, “and the people of Thendara don’t want them there!”

It still seemed to Regis that the highest priority just now was to catch Kadarin and eliminate the threat that he would try and raise Sharra again. Just the same, he knew that what Danilo said was true.

“I suppose I ought to make it a personal request to the Legate,” he said wearily, “but I have to stay here and settle things among the Comyn. Grandfather—” he broke off, but he knew Danilo followed the words he could not bring himself to say.

Grandfather has aged overnight; I have always known he was very old, but until that Festival Night he had never shown his age.

“Perhaps,” Dani said quietly, “he has borne this burden all these years because he knew Derik could not rule in his place if he gave up the Regency—but now he trusts you to guard the Comyn in his place.”

Regis bowed his head as if this new burden had been piled physically on him, like a heavy weight. I have known all along that this day would come; I have wished that my grandfather did not treat me like a child; and now when he does not, I am afraid to be a grown man in command of myself and others. It was now his decision to make. He said, “Send a message to the Legate, asking him as a personal favor to me—emphasize that, Dani, as a personal favor to me—to withdraw uniformed Spaceforce men from the Old Town, and restrict them to the Trade City. Or better; write it and I’ll sign it, and have it sent by the most prestigious escort you can find.”

Danilo said, with a wavering grin, “We never thought it would come to this when we were together in Nevarsin and I learned to write a better hand than you. Now you can keep me on hand as your private secretary.”

Regis knew what Danilo was trying to say without putting it into words. As Heir to Hastur he had been visible enough, always in the public eye. But he had done his duty to ensure heirs to the Hastur Domain, and for the rest he had told himself, fiercely, I am not the only lover of men in the Domains! But now, as Prince of the Comyn, he would be even more the public representative of the Comyn. Centuries ago, the Hastur-kin had separated the Hastur Domains of Hastur and Elhalyn, allotting to the Elhalyn all the ceremonial and public duties with the crown.

“A crown on a stick, that’s what they want,” he said grimly. “Something they can hang up in the marketplace and bow down to!” He thought, but did not say, that the Domains had effectively been without a King all during the two-and-twenty years of the Regency, ever since the infant Prince Derik was left fatherless, and the Domains had been none the worse for that lack.

“We had better make sure that there are any Domains to rule over,” he said, when the message had been written, “Derik may not have been the only one to die. And whom shall we send with this message?”

“Lerrys?” Danilo suggested. “He knows the Legate personally—”

Regis shook his head. “Lerrys is too much a Terran sympathizer—I’m not sure he’d deliver the message at all,” he said. “Lerrys’s view is that the Terrans have every right to be here since we are a Terran colony. Merryl?”

“Couldn’t trust him to keep his temper,” Danilo replied promptly.

Regis said hesitantly, “I would send Lew Alton; but he was wounded Festival Night—”

And he is personally concerned in this business of Sharra— “I wonder, Danilo; if I asked Lord Ardais to go—”

“I think he would be pleased to carry such a message to the Legate,” Danilo said, “for he knows what it will do to the city, having uniformed Spaceforce about, and he is always eager to keep the people calm.”

“I won’t order him to do it,” said Regis. “I know he does not like to go among Terrans, but he may be willing to go if I ask it personally as Lord Elhalyn—”

And again the tragedy struck him; Derik was older than he was himself, yet Derik had died without so much as a nedestroson to carry on his name. He had loved Linnell and had waited for their marriage, so that Linnell might bear his Heir; and now they were both dead.

And I have never cared so much for any woman. So I have two sons and a daughter, since I had no hesitation in using a woman for that purpose. Gods! What irony!

Yet I shall not share my throne with any woman, at least not for a time, nor until I find one with whom I am content also to share my life.

“I will go and ask Dyan myself,” he said, glancing at the climbing sun, and suddenly aware that he had had no sleep and that he was weary. “He should still be sleeping, but for this he will not mind being wakened.”

But in the Ardais quarters there were only servants, and one of them told Danilo that Lord Ardais had gone out early.

“Do you know where he is?”

“Zandru’s hells, sir, no! Do you think the Lord Ardais tells his comings and goings to the likes of me?”

“Damn! Now I’ll have to hunt all through the Castle for him,” Regis said, wondering whether Dyan had gone to the Guard hall to see if he, an experienced officer, could be of some help to Gabriel, or whether he had left the ballroom earlier on some private errand and was still abed somewhere with a new favorite. If so, he might not know anything of the destruction that had raged in the Comyn!

Had it been only the day before that he had discussed this very possibility—sending Spaceforce into the Old Town of Thendara to find Kadarin? He had advised against it then; but Lawton had that authority, and now Kadarin had appeared actually within the Comyn Castle, to try and lure Lew Alton back to them… had he any right to keep Lawton from finding this man who was wanted for murder, and other crimes, by both Terran and Darkovan?

“Gabriel may know,” he said, “and there are guardsmen at the doors of the Aldaran suite; they may be able to tell us where Gabriel is—in the Guard Hall, or out hunting for our wanted man!”

The suite of rooms allotted in Comyn Castle to the Aldarans had stood empty ever since Regis could remember; it was in a wing of the Castle which Regis had never knowingly entered before. Two big Guardsmen stood outside the door which was bolted shut on the outside. They saluted Regis, and he greeted them politely.