Sharra's Exile Read Online Free PDF Page B

I can understand that you, Regis, would like to keep your place of power, but listen to me! In the face of an Empire which spans a thousand worlds, what does it matter what the peasants think of our nobles? As long as this is a Closed World, the local aristocrats can maintain their personal power and privilege. But once we acknowledge that we are a part of the Terran Empire—not that we wish to become part of the Empire, but that we are already so, and thus subject to their laws—then every citizen of Darkover can claim that privilege; and—”
    “Perhaps there are many who do not consider it such a privilege—” Danilo began hotly, and Lerrys drawled, “Does it matter what such people think? Or, in denying them that privilege, are you simply demanding your own, Lord Danilo, as Warden of Ardais—”
    But before Danilo could answer that, there was a commotion in the front room; then Dyan Ardais strode into the back room, where the few remaining senior officers, and the Comyn, were sitting. He came directly to their table.
    “Greetings, kinsmen.” He bowed slightly. Danilo, as befitting a foster-son in the presence of the Head of his Domain, rose and stood awaiting recognition or orders.
    Dyan was tall and spare, mountain Darkovan from the Hellers; his features aquiline, his eyes steel-gray, almost colorless, almost metallic. Ever since Regis had known him, Dyan had affected a dress of unrelieved black, whenever he was not in uniform, or clad in the ceremonial colors of his Domain: it gave him a look of chilly austerity. Like many hillmen, his hair was not the true Comyn red, but coarse, curly and dark.
    “Danilo,” he said, “I have been looking for you. I might have known I would find you here; and Regis with you, of course.”
    Regis felt the little ironic flicker of telepathic touch, recognition, awareness, annoyingly intimate, as if the older man had taken some mildly unsuitable liberty in public, tousled his hair as if he were a boy of eight or nine; nothing serious enough so that he could object without loss of dignity. He knew Dyan liked to see him ill at ease and off balance; what he did not know was why . But the Ardais Lord’s face was blank and indifferent.
    He said, “Will you both dine with me? I have something to say to you, Danilo, which will affect your plans for Council season, and since I know your first move afterward would be to tell it to Regis, I might as well say it to both of you at once and save the time.”
    “I am at your orders, sir,” said Danilo with a slight bow.
    “Will you join us, cousin?” Lerrys asked, and Dyan shrugged. “One drink, perhaps.”
    Lerrys slid along the bench to make room for Dyan and for his young companion; Regis did not
    recognize the younger man, and Lerrys, too, looked questioningly at Dyan.
    “Don’t you know one another? Merryl Lindir-Aillard.”
    Dom Merryl was, Regis thought, about twenty; slender, red-haired, freckled, good-looking in a boyish way. With a mental shrug—Dyan’s friends and favorites were no business of his, Aldones be praised—
    he bowed courteously to young Merryl. “Are you kin to Domna Callina, vai dom ? I do not think we have met.”
    “Her step-brother, sir,” Merryl said, and Regis could hear in the other young man’s mind, like an echo, the question he was too diffident to ask: Lord Dyan called him Regis, is this the Regent’s grandson, the Hastur Heir, what is he doing here just like anyone else, like an ordinary person — It was the usual mental jangle, wearying to live with.
    “Are you to sit in Council this year, then?”
    “I have that honor; I am to represent her in Council while she is held at Arilinn by her duties as Keeper there,” he said, and the annoying telepathic jangle went on: in any other Domain it would be my Council seat, but in this one, damn all the Council, rank passes in the female line and it is my damned bitch of a half-sister, like all women, coming the mistress over us all —
    Regis