Regis had no particular desire to join another party of Comyn lords, but it would have been an unthinkable breach of manners to say so. At Council season all the Domains met together at Thendara; Regis was bound by the custom of generations to treat them all as kinsmen and brothers. And the Altons were his kinsmen.
They slackened pace and waited for the other riders.
They were still high on the slopes, and he could see past Thendara to the spread-out spaceport itself. A great distant sound, like a faraway waterfall, made the ground vibrate like thunder, even where he stood. A tiny toylike form began to rise far out on the spaceport, slowly at first, then faster and faster. The sound peaked to a faint scream; the shape was a faraway streak, a dot, was gone.
Regis let his breath go. A starship of the Empire, outward bound for distant worlds, distant suns…. Regis realized his fists had clenched so tightly on the reins that his horse tossed its head, protesting. He slackened them and gave the horse an absentminded, apologetic pat on the neck. His eyes were still riveted on the spot in the sky where the starship had vanished.
Outward bound, free for the immeasurable immensities of space, the ship was headed to worlds whose wonders he, chained down here, could never guess. His throat felt tight He wished he were not too old to cry, but the heir to Hastur could not make any display of unmanly emotion in public. He wondered why he was getting so worked up about this, but he knew the answer: that ship was going where he could never go.
The riders from the pass were nearer now; Regis could identify some of them. Next to his bannerman rode Kennard, Lord Alton, a stooped, heavy-set man with red hair going gray. Except for Danvan Hastur, Regent of the Comyn, Kennard was probably the most powerful man in the Seven Domains. Regis had known Kennard all his life; as a child, he had called him uncle. Behind him, among a whole assembly of kinsmen, servants, bodyguards and poor relations, he saw the banner of the Ardais Domain, so Lord Dyan must be with them.
One of Regis’ guards said in an undertone, “I see the old buzzard has both his bastards with him. Wonder how he has the face?”
“Old Kennard can face anything, and make Hastur like it,” returned the other man in a prison-yard mutter. “Anyway, young Lew’s not a bastard; Kennard got him legitimated so he could work in the Arilinn Tower. The younger one— The guard saw Regis glance his way and he stiffened; the expression slid off his face as if a sponge had wiped it blank.
Damn it, Regis thought irritably, I can’t read your mind, man, I’ve just got good, normal ears. But in any case, he realized, he had overheard an insolent remark about a Comyn lord, and the guard would have been embarrassed about that. There was an old proverb: The mouse in the walls may look at a cat, but he is wise not to squeak about it.
Regis, of course, knew the old story, Kennard had done a shocking, even a shameful thing: he had taken, in honorable marriage, a half-Terran woman, kin to the renegade Domain of Aldaran. Comyn Council had never accepted the marriage or the sons. Not even for Kennard’s sake.
Kennard rode toward Regis. “Greetings, Lord Regis. Are you riding to Council?”
Regis felt exasperated at the obviousness of the question—where else would he be going, on this road, at this season?—until he realized that the formal words implied recognition as an adult. He replied, with equally formal courtesy, “Yes, kinsman, my grandsire has requested that I attend Council this year.”
“Have you been all these years in the monastery at Nevarsin, kinsman?”
Kennard knew perfectly well where he had been, Regis reflected; when his grandfather couldn’t think of any other way to get Regis off his hands, he packed him away to Saint-Valentine-of-the-Snows. But it would have been a fearful breach of manners to mention this before the assembly so he merely said, “Yes, he entrusted my education to the cristoforos; I have been there three years.”