Dyan looked up suddenly from his glass. “Where do you intend to spend the winter, kinsman? Will you return to Castle Hastur?”
“I think not. Grandfather is needed here, and I think he would rather have me close at hand. The estate is in good hands, so I’m not needed there.”
“True. He lost so much of Rafael’s life, I suspect it’s a mistake he doesn’t want to repeat. I imagine I’ll be here too, with crisis on crisis in the city and Kennard ill much of the time. Well, Thendara is an interesting place to spend the winter. There are concerts enough to satisfy any music-lover. And there are fashionable restaurants, balls and dances, all manner of amusements. And, for a young man your age, one should not omit the houses of pleasure. Are you familiar with the House of Lanterns, cousin?”
In contrast to the other flashes of intensity, this was almost too casual. The House of Lanterns was a discreet brothel, one of the very few which were not specifically forbidden to the cadets and officers. Regis knew that some of the older cadets visited the place occasionally but although he shared the curiosity of the other first-year cadets, curiosity had not yet overcome his distaste for the idea. He shook his head. “Only by reputation.”
“I find the place tiresome,” Dyan said offhandedly. “The Golden Cage is rather more to my liking. It’s at the edge of the Terran Zone, and one can find various exotic entertainments there, even aliens and nonhumans, as well as all kinds of women. Or,” he added, again in that carefully casual tone, “all kinds of men or boys.”
Regis blushed hard and tried to hide it by coughing as if he’d choked on his cider.
Dyan had seen the blush, and grinned. “I had forgotten how conventional young people can be. Perhaps a taste for . . . exotic entertainments . . . needs to be cultivated, like a taste for fine wine instead of cider. And three years in a monastery hardly cultivates the taste for any of the finer amusements and luxuries which help a young man to make the most of his life.” As Regis only blushed more furiously, he reached out and laid a hand on his arm. “Cousin, the monastery is behind you; have you truly realized that you are no longer bound by all its rules?”
Dyan was watching him carefully. When Regis said nothing, he continued, “Kinsman, one can waste years, precious years of youth, trying to cultivate tastes which turn out to be mistaken. You can miss too much that way. Learn what you want and what you are while you’re young enough to enjoy it. I wish someone had given me such advice at your age. My own son never lived to need it. And your father is not here to give it… and your grandfather, I have no doubt, is more concerned with teaching you your duty to family and Comyn than with helping you enjoy your youth!”
Dyan’s intensity did not embarrass him now. Regis realized that for a long time he had felt starved for just such an opportunity to talk about these things with a man of his own caste, one who understood the world he must live in. He set down his mug and said, “Kinsman, I wonder if that isn’t why Grandfather insisted I should serve in the cadets.”
Dyan nodded, “Probably so,” he said. “It was I who advised him to send you into the cadets, instead of letting you spend your time in idleness and amusements. There’s a time for that, of course. But it’s true I felt that time spent in the cadets would teach you, more quickly, the things you’d failed to learn before.”
Regis looked at him eagerly. “I didn’t want to go in the cadets. I hated it at first.”
Dyan laid a light hand on his shoulder again and said affectionately, “Everyone does. If you hadn’t, I’d be disturbed; it would mean you’d hardened too young.”
“But now I think I know why Comyn heirs have to serve in the cadets,” Regis said. “Not just the discipline. I got plenty of that in Nevarsin. But learning how to be one of the people, doing the same work they do, sharing their lives and their problems, so we—” He bit his lip, searching carefully for words. “So we’ll know what our people are.”