“Lew, you’re too sensitive. I’m sorry for Dani, too. But if he had reason to complain of Dyan’s treatment of him, there is a formal process of appeal—”
“Against the Comyn? He would have heard what happened to the last cadet to try that,” I said bitterly. Again, against all reason, Father was standing with the Comyn, with Dyan. I looked at him almost in disbelief. Even now I could not believe he would not right this wrong.
Always. Always I had trusted him utterly, implicitly, certain that he would somehow see justice done. Harsh, yes, demanding, but he was always fair. Now Dyan had done— again!—what I had always known Dyan would do, and my father was prepared to gloss it over, let this monstrous injustice remain, let Dyan’s corrupt and vicious revenge or whatever prevail against all honor and reason.
And I had trusted him! Trusted him literally with my life. I had known that if he failed in testing me for the Alton gift, I would die a very quick, very painful death. I felt I would burst into a flood of tears that would unman me. Once again time slid out of focus and again, eleven years old, terrified but wholly trusting, I stood trembling before him, awaiting the touch that would bring me into full Comyn birthright … or kill me! I felt the solemnity of that moment, horribly afraid, yet eager to justify his faith in me, his faith that I was his true-born son who had inherited his gift and his power. . . .
Power! Something inside me exploded into anguish, an anguish I must have been feeling through all the years since that day, which I had never dared let myself feel.
He had been willing to kill me! Why had I never seen this before? Cold-blooded, he had been willing to risk my death, against the hope that he would have a tool to power. Power! Like Dyan, he didn’t care what torture he inflicted to get it! I could still remember the exploding agony of that first contact. I had been so deathly ill for a long time afterward that, in his attentive love and concern, I had forgotten—more accurately, had buried—the knowledge that he had been willing to risk my death.
Why? Because if I had proved not to have the gift, why, then . . . why, then, my life was of small concern to him, my death no worse than the death of a pet puppy!
He was looking up at me, appalled. He whispered, “No. No, my son, no. Oh, my boy, my boy, it wasn’t like that!” But I slammed my mind shut, for the first time deaf to the loving words.
Loving words merely to force his will on me again! And his pain now was for seeing his plans all go awry, when his puppet, his blind tool, his creature, turned in his hand!
He was no better than Dyan then. Honor, justice, reason—all these could be swept aside in the ruthless hunger for power! Did he even know that Danilo was a catalyst telepath, that most sensitive and powerful of talents, that talent thought to be almost extinct?
For a moment it seemed that would be the last argument to move him. Danilo was no ordinary cadet, expendable to salve Dyan’s bruised pride. He must be saved for the Comyn at all costs!
With the very words on my lips, I stopped. No. If I told Father that, he would find some way to use Danilo too, as a tool in his driving quest for more power! Danilo was well freed of the Comyn and lucky to be beyond our reach!
My father drew back his extended hands. He said coldly, “Well, it’s a long road to Aldaran; maybe you’ll calm down and see sense before you get there.”
I felt like saying Aldaran, hell! Go do your own dirty work this time, Fm still sick from the last job! I don’t give a fart in a high wind for all your power politics! Go to Aldaran yourself and be damned to you!
But I didn’t. I recalled that I, too, was Aldaran, and Ter-ran. I’d had it flung in my face often enough. They all took it for granted that I would feel enough shame at the disgrace of my origins to do anything, anything, to be accepted as Comyn and my father’s heir. He’d kept me subservient, unquestioning, all my life, that way.