I realized that I was blisteringly angry. I’d seen Regis desperate, suicidal, ill, prostrated, suffering some unforeseen aftereffect of kirian, even dead—and he walked in casually, upsetting call-over ceremony and discipline. I told him brusquely, “Take your place, cadet,” and dismissed the servants.
He could not have resembled less the boy who had sat by my fire last night, eating stew and pouring out his bitterness. He was wearing full Comyn regalia, badges, high boots, a sky-blue tunic of an elaborate cut. He walked to his place among the cadets, his head held stiffly high. I could sense the fear and shyness in him, but I knew the other cadets would regard it as Comyn arrogance, and he would suffer for it. He looked tired, almost ill, behind the facade of arrogant control. What had happened to him last night? Damn him, I recalled myself with a start, why was I worrying about the heir to Hastur? He hadn’t worried about me, or the fact that if he’d come to harm, I’d have been in trouble!
I finished tbe parade of loyalty oaths. Dyan leaned toward me and said, “I was in the city with the Council last night. Hastur asked me to explain the situation to the Guards; have I your permission to speak, Captain Montray-Lanart?”
Dyan had never given me my proper title, in or out of the Guard hall. I grimly told myself that the last thing I wanted was his approval. I nodded and he walked to the center of the dais. He looks no more like a typical Comyn lord than I do; his hair is dark, not the traditional red of Comyn, and he is tall, lean, with the six-fingered hands which sometimes turn up in the Ardais and Aillard clans. There is said to be nonhuman blood in the Ardais line. Dyan looks it.
“City Guardsmen of Thendara,” he rapped out, “your commander, Lord Alton, has asked me to review the situation.” His contemptuous look said more plainly than words that I might play at being in command, but he was the one who could explain what was going on.
There seemed, as nearly as I could tell from Dyan’s words, to be a high level of tension in the city, mostly between the Terran Spaceforce and the City Guard. He asked every Guardsman to avoid incidents and to honor the curfew, to remember that the Trade City area had been ceded to the Empire by diplomatic treaty. He reminded us that it was our duty to deal with Darkovan offenders, and to turn Terran ones over to the Empire authorities at once. Well, that was fair enough. Two police forces in one city had to reach some agreements and compromises in living together.
I had to admit Dyan was a good speaker. He managed, however, to convey the impression that the Terrans were so much our natural inferiors, honoring neither the Compact nor the codes of personal honor, that we must take responsbility for them, as all superiors do; that, while we would naturally prefer to treat them with a just contempt, we would be doing Lord Hastur a personal favor by keeping the peace, even against our better judgment. I doubted whether that little speech would really lessen the friction between Terrans and Guardsmen.
I wondered if our opposite numbers in the Trade City, the Legate and his deputies, were laying the law down to Space-force this morning. Somehow I doubted it.
Dyan returned to his place and I called the cadets to stand forward. I called the roll of the dozen third-year cadets and the eleven second-year men, wondering if Council meant to fill Octavien Vallonde’s empty place. Then I addressed myself to the first-year cadets, calling them into the center of the room. I decided to skip the usual speech about the proud and ancient organization into which it was a pleasure to welcome them. I’m not Dyan’s equal as a speaker, and I wasn’t going to compete. Father could give them that one when he was well again, or the cadet-master, whoever he was. Not Dyan. Over my dead body.
I confined myself to giving basic facts. After today there would be a full assembly and review every morning after breakfast. The cadets would be kept apart in their own barracks and given instructions until intense drill in basics had made them soldierly enough to take their place in formations and duties. Castle Guard would be set day and night and they would take it in turns from oldest to youngest, recalling that Castle Guard was not menial sentry duty but a privilege claimed by nobles from time out of mind, to guard the Sons of Hastur. And so on.