When Pias and Yvette were engaged, Pias took his fiancée to Newforest to meet his family. There he learned that his father had contracted an incurable disease and that his younger brother was plotting against him. Because of the secret nature of his job, Pias couldn’t tell his family the real reason why he couldn’t stay on Newforest, and his brother used that as a weapon against him. Accusing Pias of abandoning his family and the traditional Gypsy lifestyle, the brother had a council of elders – with Pias’s father, the Duke of Newforest, sitting in judgment – declare Pias a nonperson. He was cast out of the family and no one on the planet would have anything to do with him. Pias Bavol, who should have had the title of marquis and should have become Duke of Newforest at his father’s death, had been wiped from his people’s minds as though he’d never existed.
More than once during the last few years, when the planet Newforest was mentioned, Vonnie had seen Pias go cold and quiet. She’d tried to imagine what it would be like to have her entire family and every childhood acquaintance suddenly ignore her very existence, to have shopkeepers turn away from her when she tried to order something, to suddenly become a phantom in the world of the living. The pain would be more than she could bear, and she’d always marveled at Pias’s strength to shoulder such a weighty burden in order to stay with the woman he loved.
Somehow, with the love and support of his new family and his job as a secret agent of the Service, he’d built a new life for himself that hardly ever touched on the old one he’d lost. And now, without warning, into that new life came a painful reminder of all he’d left behind: a sister, obviously in some kind of trouble, needing his help after scorning him all these years. That had to be a nasty shock – yet, knowing Pias as she did, Yvonne was sure he wouldn’t turn his back on such a plea.
Vonnie tried hard to recall what Yvette had told her about Pias’s family, and particularly about his sister Beti. There wasn’t much, just that Beti had been a teenager when Yvette met her and seemed pleasant enough at their one encounter, before Pias was ostracized. It was not enough material on which to form an opinion; Vonnie would have to wait until they arrived at her father’s house and the situation was more fully explained.
The Roumenier baronial estate was in the middle of a small park in the northeast quarter of Nouveau Calais. Pias landed their copter on the heliport roof and Vonnie led him and the children down the familiar stairs into the home where she’d grown up. A servant told them the baron and his guest were awaiting them in the. drawing room.
Beti Bavol looked up the instant they walked into the room, and an electric current passed through the air between brother and sister. Vonnie noticed that Beti was a very pretty girl, and the resemblance to Pias was unmistakable.
The silence seemed to drag on forever, until Pias finally broke it. “Hello, Beti,” he said.. His voice was quiet, subdued, as though he were speaking from a great distance.
“Pias, I …” Beti hesitated, then rethought what she’d been about to say. “You’re looking well,.” she said formally.
“You look so different I’d hardly recognize you,” Pias told her. “So grown up. Of course, it’s been years. …” He realized he was touching on a delicate subject and his voice trailed off indecisively. Trying to fill the conversational gap, he added, “This is my sister-in-law, Yvonne, and her son Maurice. And … and look, Yvette and I have produced a niece for you, little Kari.”
Beti’s eyes went wide, and for the first time the tension in her face began to ease. “Oh Pias, she’s darling. Come, let me hold her.”
As Pias brought the child over to his sister, Beti continued, “Where is Yvette? Is she well? Are you and she still together?”
“She’s away on business right now,” Pias said care fully. “I’m sure she’d be glad to see you again if she were here.”
Baron Ebert Roumenier cleared his throat. He was shrewd enough to know when his presence was not required. “Yvonne, why don’t you and I take Maurice for a walk through the garden? Really, you don’t bring him over for a visit nearly often enough.” Father, daughter, and grandson departed tactfully, leaving the room to the Bavols.
Silence descended on the room again. Beti Bavol held her little niece on her lap and refused to meet her brother’s gaze. It was left to Pias to break the silence once more.
“They tell me you’re in some kind of trouble,” he said as he sat down next to her on the couch, “that there are some people trying to kill you. What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”
Beti looked suddenly into his face, and there were tears in the corners of her eyes. “Oh Pias, I’ve done you such a terrible wrong. We all have. There’s no way I can ever say I’m sorry for all the hurt. I didn’t want to do it; I always liked you. But I was only a girl, I couldn’t fight them, I didn’t know how to try. It was safer just to go along with the rest, to pretend you weren’t there. I’ve thought about you a lot in the past years, wondering where you were and what you were doing. But I could never say anything out loud. …” Her sobbing became too great for her to continue. Throwing her arms around her brother’s shoulders, she wept, unashamed.
Pias held her gently and didn’t try to speak. He had his own eyes closed, trying to purge himself of the bitterness and pain he felt. Beti wasn’t to blame for what had happened to him; as she’d said; she was only a teenager when the kriss voted to oust him from Newforest society. A young girl could do nothing against such overwhelming social pressure. His true complaint, he knew, was against other people, older and more in control of worldly affairs. A large part of him wanted to tell Beti to go away and not reopen an old wound that had almost healed by now – but a larger part of his heart and conscience told him he could not turn her away when she was in so much trouble.
When her sobbing finally subsided, Pias asked her, “Has the kriss revoked its decree?”
Beti shook her head sadly. “Not with Tas running it. They wouldn’t dare.”
“Poppa’s still duke, isn’t he?” Despite his avowed disinterest, Pias kept watching the newsrolls for items about Newforest. He’d seen no mention of his father’s death – but he was often away on assignment, and Newforest was a rather unimportant planet. A change in administrations would not be major news elsewhere in the Galaxy.
“He’s hanging on,” Beti said, sniffing back the last traces of tears. Though mottle fever was incurable, it was a lingering disease that could drag on for many years before killing its victim. “You. know how tough he is.”
“But Tas is running the kriss,” Pias reiterated.
“Tas is running everything,” Beti said. “According to the edict, he’s now the oldest child, due to become duke when Poppa … goes. Poppa gets weaker and weaker, and it’s all he can do to stay alive. He doesn’t have the strength to fight Tas, too. Tas acts like he’s already duke – almost like he’s emperor. If you think I’m hard to recognize, you ought to see him. He’s a dictator, telling everyone what to do and think. Anyone who stands up to him gets beaten, sometimes even killed.”
“Has a report been filed with the Service of the Empire? I know the Empress takes a dim view of subordinates who get too far out of line. She wouldn’t tolerate such behavior if she knew about it.”
Beti shook her head. “Nobody dares file a report. Tas seems to know everything that’s going on everywhere on the planet. I don’t know how he does it, he can’t have that many spies, but he just knows – and he makes things very rough for people who oppose him.”
Pulling her head back slightly she gazed straight into Pias’s eyes. “What went wrong with him? I don’t understand. You and he were always my big brothers, people I could run to when I was hurt. Tas was always full of life, always wanting to play new games with me. He was never like this, never cruel. It’s as though some thing in him, whatever it was that made him human, just turned off suddenly.”
“I know he was always jealous of me because I was the oldest son and Poppa favored me,” Pias mused. “Jealousy can twist even the most decent people into monsters. Perhaps he felt so insecure that he had to get me out of the way, and when that didn’t make him feel any better he got nastier and more cruel, hoping that more and more power would fill the vacuum in his soul. But no amount of power can do that; a soul has to be healed from the inside, not from the outside.”