The Gazels

Chapter 2

Daniel stayed close, a flowing shadow yet deadly as the steel he carried. Damion had no doubt that any man approaching them with menace would not live to regret it. From the time they had served together in the City Guards, both men had rarely gone unarmed. Their weapons were honorable, not those of a coward, used to kill from a safe distance. Dagger, knife, and sword all placed the man who used them at equal risk. The Compact that eliminated weapons with far reaching targets and those that could cause vast destruction but permitted personal duels had lasted a thousand years, woven into the fabric of Darkovan ethics.

The border between Darkovan Thenda and the Piants Trade sector had blurred over the years, leaving a zone that was a blend of the two cultures, sometimes exotic, sometimes awkward, sometimes the worst of both worlds. Daniel came alert at the sight of a pair of Spaceforce officers in black leather uniforms, but one whispered to the other and they stepped aside.

As they approached the glass and steel tower of Piants Headquarters, one of the guards stationed there smiled and nodded, “Good morning, Lord Carmen.”

Damion refrained from pointing out that as long as his grandfather lived, Danvan remained Lord Carmen, but the man was well-meaning. It would be a waste of breath to chide him for simple ignorance.

After exchanging a few pleasantries, Damion and Daniel passed within, where a receptionist informed them that the Legate was expecting them. If Lord Carmen would wait but a moment, she would summon an escort.

“I know the way,” Damion said mildly. “As you see, I have brought my own escort.” Before she could protest, he and Daniel strode past her into the bowels of the building.

Damion had never been comfortable within Piants walls, but at least here the likelihood of an armed attack was less; the Piantss did not permit their own people to carry weapons inside Headquarters.

Dan Lawton, the Piants Legate, bowed to Damion. Over the years, a sympathy had grown up between the two men, for Lawt was Darkovan-born but had chosen to live as a Piants. Lawton could not have been much more than forty, and that was not old by the standards of Piants medicine, yet his lean, angular face was careworn, etched by the habit of worry.

“It has been too long, Lord Damion,” Lawt began, then smiled as Damion invited him with a gesture to move to a less formal basis.

Damion slipped off his heavy outdoor cloak and took the proffered seat. Daniel sat down as well, clearly at ease.

“You look well, Damion. And you, too, as usual, Daniel. How is Mikhail?” Lawt asked.

“My sister writes he is strong and healthy,” Damion answered. After finishing his term in the City Guards cadets, Mikhail had spent the winter in Armida, learning the duties of a Domains lord. In choosing Javann’s youngest son for his legal heir, Damion had done better than he expected. Mikhail, although still young enough for occasional foolish high spirits, showed an underlying steadiness of temperament.

In response to a polite inquiry, Lawt replied that he himself was well, that his son and wife had gone for an outing in the Old Town.

Lawt had married a few years prior to the time of the World Wreckers. The couple had met off-world during Lawt’s diplomatic certification training and had wed after a brief, intense courtship. Damion had met the woman once or twice. She was strikingly beautiful, with pearl-bright skin and lushly curling black hair, exotic on a world that fostered pale-skinned redheads. Yet Damion found something unsettling in her manner, beyond the expected awkwardness of a wife who has found herself on a world far from home, confronted with strange customs. He had tried without success to draw her out in conversation. She was the wife of a Piants dignitary and, more than that, of his friend.

“I don’t believe I have ever met your son,” Damion said.

“His name is Feli,” Lawt said, and they both smiled, for the name was popular and much-honored on Darkover. Many council, Damion among them, bore it somewhere in their long string of names. “He’s eleven, and a handful.”

“May the happiness of his name follow him through his lifetime,” Daniel said.

“Thank you,” Lawt replied. “He’s still at the most trying age, no longer a child and not yet a man. If it were up to me, I’d send him to be fostered for a few years at Armida or Carcosa, so that he could use up some of that exuberance learning to ride horses or cutting brush on fire-lines, but his mother won’t hear of it. Today they’re out looking for ‘native treasures’ as offerings for her grandfather’s saint day.”

“I’m not familiar with that custom,” Damion said. “Is it proper to offer best wishes?”

Lawton frowned. “Not on Temperance. Tiphani’s grandfather has been dead for twenty years now, but his entire family still feels obliged to offer sacrifices for the atonement of his sins. Whatever she sends home will be purified and then burned. It seems a waste to me, but it’s their way.”

“Was he as terrible as that?” Damion was familiar with the concept of a punitive afterworld. As a youth, he had studied for some years at the monastery school at St.-Valentine’s-of-the-Snows. Altogether too aware of the universality of human frailty, Damion had little sympathy with the monks’ obsession with purity and perdition

.

Or, he added silently, with a quick glance in Daniel’s direction, their condemnation of certain expressions of love.

“I never met the man,” Lawt continued. “For myself, I prefer to be remembered for the good I achieved and the happiness I brought to those I loved.”

“So should we all.”

Lawt turned back to the console on his desk. He engaged the visiphone with a few efficient strokes. “I’ve set it to play the priority message that arrived on coded frequency for you. I’m afraid it’s formatted as play-and-destruct, so you’ll only be able to watch it once. Touch this panel to begin and this one here to record a reply, if any.” He got to his feet, bowed again, this time in an abbreviated, less formal manner, and left Damion and Daniel in privacy.