“I couldn’t be,” Dani said. I’m my father’s only son now, and it wouldn’t be lawful. My half-brother was killed fifteen years ago, before I was born.” As they left the mess hall, he added, “Father had me taught to read and write and keep accounts so that someday I’d be fit to manage his estate. He’s growing too old to farm Syrtis alone. He didn’t want me to go into the Guards, but when Lord Alton made such a kind offer, he couldn’t refuse. I hate to hear them gossip about him,” he said vehemently. “He’s not like that! He’s good and kind and decent!”
“I’m sure he doesn’t listen,” Regis said. “I lived in his house too, you know. And one of his favorite sayings used to be, if you listen to dogs barking, you’ll go deaf without learning much. Are the Syrtis people under the Alton Domain, Danilo?”
“No, we have always been under Hastur wardship. My father was hawk-master to yours, and my half-brother his paxman.”
And something Regis had always known, an old story which had been part of his childhood but which he had never associated with living people, fell into place in his mind. He said excitedly, “Dani! Your brother—was his name Rafael-Felix Syrtis of Syrtis?”
“Yes, that was his name. He was killed before I was born, in the same year Stefan Fourth died—”
“So was my father,” said Regis, with a surge of unfamiliar emotion. “All my life I have known, the story, known your brother’s name. Dani, your brother was my father’s personal guard, they were killed at the same instant—he died trying to shield my father with his body. Did you know they are buried side by side, in one grave, on the field of Kilghairlie?”
He remembered, but did not say, what an old servant had told him, that they were blown to bits, buried together where they fell, since no living man could tell which bits were his father’s, which Dani’s brother’s.
“I didn’t know,” Danilo whispered, his eyes wide. Regis, caught in the grip of a strange emotion, said, “It must be horrible to die like that, but not so horrible if your last thought is to shield someone else….”
Danilo’s voice was not entirely steady. “They were both named Rafael and they had sworn to one another, and they fought together and died and were buried in one grave—” As if he hardly knew what he was doing, he reached out to Regis and clasped his hands. He said, “I’d like to die like that. Wouldn’t you?”
Regis nodded wordlessly. For an instant it seemed to him that something had reached deep down inside him, an almost painful awareness and emotion. It was almost a physical touch, although Danilo’s fingers were only resting lightly in his own. Suddenly, abashed by the intensity of his own feelings, he let go of Danilo’s hand, and the surge of emotion receded. One of the cadet officers came up and said, “Dani, the arms-master has sent for you.” Danilo caught up his shabby leather tunic, pulled it quickly over his shirt and went.
Regis, remembering that he had been up all night, stretched out on the bare straw ticking of his cot He was too restless to sleep, but he fell at last into an uneasy doze, mingled with the unfamiliar sounds of the Guard hall the metallic clinking from the armory where someone was mending a shield, men’s voices, very different from the muted speech of the monastery. Half asleep, he began to see a nightmarish sequence of faces: Lew Alton looking sad and angry when he told Regis he had no laran, Kennard pleading for Marius, his grandfather struggling not to betray exhaustion or grief. As he drifted deeper into the neutral country on the edge of sleep, he remembered Danilo, handling the wooden practice swords at Nevarsin. Someone whose face Regis could not see was standing close behind him; Danilo moved abruptly away, and he heard through the dream a harsh, shrill laugh, raucous as the scream of a hawk. And then he had a sudden mental picture of Danilo, his face turned away, huddled against the wall, sobbing heartbrokenly. And through the dreamlike sobs Regis felt a shocking overtone of fear, disgust and a consuming shame….