Andrew waited in the greenhouse which stretched behind the main building at Armida. Alone, he looked through the thick and wavy glass toward the outline of the faraway hills. It was hot here, with a thick scent of leaves and soil and plants. The light from the solar collectors made him narrow his eyes till he got used to it. He walked through the rows of plants, damp from watering, feeling isolated and unfathomably alone.

It struck him like this, now and again. Most of the time he had come to feel at home here, more at home than he had ever felt anywhere else in the Empire; more at home than he had felt since, at eighteen, the Arizona horse ranch where he had spent his childhood had been sold for debts, and he had gone into space as an Empire civil servant, moving from planet to planet at the will of the administrators and computers. And they had welcomed him here, after the first few days of strangeness. When they heard that he knew something of horse-breaking and horse-training, a rare and highly paid field of expertise on Darkover, they had treated him with respect, as a highly trained and skilled professional. The horses from Armida were said to be the finest in the Domains, but they usually brought their trainers up from Dalereuth, far to the South.

And so, in general, he had been happy here, in the weeks since he had come, as Callista’s pledged husband. His Terran birth was known only to Damon and Dom Esteban, to Callista and Ellemir; the others simply thought him a stranger from the lowlands beyond Thendara. Beyond belief, he had found here a second home. The sun was huge and blood-tinged, the four moons that swung at night in the curiously violet sky were strangely colored and bore names he did not yet know, but beyond all this, it had become his home…

Home. And yet there were moments like this, moments when he felt his own cruel isolation; knew it was only Callista’s presence that made it home to him. Under the noonday glare of the greenhouse, he had one of those moments. Lonely for what? There was nothing in the world he had been taught to call his own, the dry and barren world of the Terran HQ, nothing he wanted. But would there be a life for him here after all, or would Leonie snatch Callista back to the alien world of the Towers?

After a long time, he realized that Damon was standing behind him, not touching him — Andrew was used to that now, among telepaths — but close enough that he could sense the older man as a comforting presence.

“Don’t worry this way, Andrew. Leonie’s not an ogre. She loves Callista. The bonds of a Tower circle are the closest bonds we know. She’ll know what Callista really wants.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Andrew said through a dry throat. “Maybe Callista doesn’t know what she wants. Maybe she turned to me only because she was alone and afraid. I’m afraid of that old woman’s hold on her. The grip of the Tower — I’m afraid it’s too strong.”

Damon sighed. “Yet it can be broken. I broke it. It was hard — I can’t begin to tell you how hard — yet I have built another life at last. And if you should lose Callista that way, better now than when it’s too late to return.”

“It’s already too late for me,” Andrew said, and Damon nodded, with a troubled smile.

“I don’t want to lose you either, my friend,” Damon said, but to himself he thought: You are part of this new life I have built with so much pain. You, and Ellemir, and Callista. I cannot endure another amputation. But Damon did not speak the words; he only sighed, standing beside Andrew. The silence in the greenhouse stretched so long that the red sun, angling from the zenith, lost strength in the greenhouse and Damon, sighing, went to adjust the solar collectors. Andrew flung at him, “How can you wait so calmly? What is that old woman saying to her?”

Yet Andrew had already learned that telepathic eavesdropping was considered one of the most shameful crimes possible in a caste of telepaths. He dared not even try to reach Callista that way. All his frustrations went into pacing the greenhouse floor.

“Easy, easy,” Damon remonstrated. “Callista loves you. She won’t let Leonie persuade her out of that.”

“I’m not even sure of that anymore,” Andrew said in desperation. “She won’t let me touch her, kiss her—”

Damon said gently, “I thought I had explained that to you; she cannot. These are… reflexes. They go deeper than you could imagine. The habit of years cannot be undone in a few days, yet I can tell that she is trying hard to overcome this… this deep conditioning. You know, do you not, that in a Tower, it would be unthinkable for her to take your hand, as I saw her do, to let you kiss even her fingertips. Have you any idea what a struggle that must have been, against years of training, of conditioning?”

Against his will Damon was remembering a time in his life he had taught himself, painfully, not to remember: a lonely struggle, all the worse because it was not physical at all, to quench his own awareness of Leonie, to control even his thoughts, so that she should never guess what he was concealing. He would never have dared to imagine a finger-tip-touch such as Callista bestowed on Andrew in the hall, just before she went up to Leonie.

With relief, he saw that Ellemir had come into the greenhouse. She walked between the rows of green plants, knelt before a heavily laden vine. She rose with satisfaction, saying, “If there is sunlight for another day, these will be ripened for the wedding.” Then her smile slid off as she saw Damon’s strained face, Andrew’s desperate quiet. She came and stood on tiptoe, putting her arms around Damon, sensing he needed the comfort of her presence, her touch. She wished she could comfort Andrew too, as he said in distress, “Even if Leonie gives her consent, what of her father? Will he consent? I do not think he likes me much…”

“He likes you well,” Ellemir said, “but you must understand that he is a proud man. He thought me too good for Damon, but I am old enough to do my own will. If he had offered me to Aran Elhalyn, who warms the throne at Then-dara, Father would still have thought him not good enough. For Callista, no man ever born of woman would be good enough, not if he was rich as the Lord of Carthon, and born bastard to a god! And of course, even in these days, it is a great thing to have a child at Arilinn. Callista was to be Keeper at Arilinn, and it will go hard with him, to renounce that.” Andrew felt his heart sink. She said, “Don’t worry! I think it will be all right. Look, there is Callista now.”

The door at the top of the steps opened, and Callista came down into the greenhouse. She held out her hands toward them, blindly.

“I am not to return to Arilinn,” she said, “and Father has given his consent to our marriage—”

She broke down then, sobbing. Andrew held out his arms, but she turned away from him and leaned against the heavy glass wall, hiding her face, her slender shoulders heaving with the violence of her weeping.

Forgetting everything except her misery, Andrew reached for her; Damon touched him on the arm, shook his head firmly. Distressed, Andrew stood looking at the sobbing woman, unable to tolerate her misery, unable to do anything about it, in helpless despair.

Ellemir went to her and turned her gently around. “Don’t lean on that old wall, love, when there are three of us here with shoulders to cry on.” She dried her sister’s tears with her long apron. “Tell us all about it. Was Leonie very horrible to you?”

Callista shook her head, blinking her reddened eyes hard. “Oh, no, she couldn’t have been kinder…”

Ellemir said, with a skeptical headshake, “Then why are you howling like a banshee? Here we wait, in agony lest we be told you’ll be whisked away from us and back to the Tower, and then when you come to us, saying all is well, and we are ready to rejoice with you, you start blubbering like a pregnant serving wench!”