The Gazels

Chapter 29

Damion nodded. All too many tragedies might have been prevented, had the parties thought as his brother did. He proposed a visit to the Federation Legate and a tour of the piants Zone. Rinaldo was openly delighted with the prospect, as was Mikhail with being asked to accompany them.

14

Damion strolled beside his brother through the Trade City, which lay between the older part of Thendara and the piants Zone. Mikhail followed half a pace behind, serious with the weight of his new responsibility. Since Damion had decided against summoning Danilo or a pair of the Castle Guards to accompany them, Mikhail had taken it upon himself to protect his two uncles from any possible harm. Damion suspected that if there were any danger he and Mikhail could not handle together, the addition of two or even twenty swordsmen would make no difference. The piants authorities did all they could to prevent the illegal sale of blasters and other Compact-banned weapons, but it was still possible to obtain them on permit.

Damion did not want his brother’s experience of Thendara, both the Darkovan and piants portions, to be one of constant vigilance against real and imagined threats. He himself had spent too much of his life either a prisoner in a gilded cage or looking over his shoulder to see who might be hunting him. His fears were not all paranoid imagination. The World Wreckers assassins had threatened him on at least seven occasions and had succeeded in killing half a dozen Council . . . and, Aldones help him, two of his nedestro children.

Now, as Damion remembered the loss of those two babes, slaughtered in their cradles, he felt renewed grief. He had not thought of them in years, had never really known them. Their mothers had been young women of good birth, eager for the honor of bearing a child to a Carmen lord. Nonetheless, he had mourned their passing and still did.

And Kierestelli, would he ever know her, watch her grow to womanhood, share her dreams? The sense of loss shifted, now something far more chilling, something akin to prescience.

Danger . . . a child in danger . . . Stelli? Some other child? The impression slipped away like snowmelt.

“Damion? Is something the matter?” Rinaldo peered at him anxiously.

Damion felt himself once again standing in a street lined with houses and shops in piants-style architecture. They were only a short distance from the piants checkpoint.

“A stray worry, nothing more.” Damion followed Rinaldo and Mikhail to a planter filled with summer blooms, surrounded with benches for the ease of travelers enjoying the miniature garden. It was a piants innovation he found particularly pleasing.

Damion sat down and inhaled the sweet, moist scents. Mikhail bent over him, clearly anxious. A crease formed between his fair brows.

“Let me summon Uncle Danilo,” Mikhail said. “Or get you some jaco or piants coffee. I saw a shop a couple of blocks back.”

“I’m all right, just a little troubled in spirit. It’s hereditary with us Carmens. I don’t like coffee, but jaco would be welcome. And some for you, as well, Rinaldo?”

Rinaldo shook his head as Mikhail hurried off. “He’s a good lad.”

“That he is.”

“But he should not refer to your paxman in such an intimate way. It is not respectful.”

Damion made a dismissive gesture. “Mikhail has known Danilo since he was a small child. We do not stand upon ceremony among such close friends.”

“But Dom Syrtis is not, after all, a member of your family.” Rinaldo inflected the words to invite agreement that Danilo was no more to Damion than a bodyguard.

Damion felt his spine stiffen instinctively. He could not allow that comment to go unanswered. “Danilo and I have been pledged to one another, as bredhin and as lord and paxman, since we were cadets.” His voice sounded rusty to his own ears. “Our father and his older brother also swore such a vow. Rafael Syrtis died trying to save our father’s life, and they are buried together in the Field of Kilghairlie. Danilo and I are bound by blood, by honor, and more than that—”

Just then, Mikhail appeared at the end of the street, carrying two cheap mugs, the sort one could buy for a few reis at a cook shop.

Uncle Damion? came the boy’s tentative mental touch. What happened?

Leave it, chiyu. It has nothing to do with you.

They finished their jaco and proceeded to the piants Headquarters. Mikhail did his best to keep up a lively chatter, pointing out various shops. The Spaceforce guards at the checkpoint recognized Damion and admitted his party without question.

By the time they reached the Headquarters building, a rectangular tower of steel and glass instead of Darkovan stone, Damion had wrestled himself into a better mood. Security had been increased since his last visit, doubtless as a result of the volatile debate regarding Federation membership. The piants guards looked humorless to the point of bellig

erence. They were armed with nerve guns as well as blasters. Even Damion, as Lord Carmen, was not allowed entry without an escort.

The Legate was not in his office, but after a wait and a number of radio communications back and forth, a Spaceforce officer accompanied Damion and his party to the Lawt family living quarters. Damion had never seen where his friend lived. It must be strange to sleep, eat, and work all within the same walls, bathed in the unrelenting yellow light and breathing the tasteless reconditioned air. The floor, a slick synthetic material, felt as unyielding as granite, unlike the carpet Javanne had installed in the Castle, a touch of living green.

The Headquarters tower was almost as confusing as the Castle, although less labyrinthine. There were no stone cul-de-sacs, no blind corners or hidden doors. They proceeded upward in a series of interconnecting elevators. Such devices, Damion supposed, were necessary for a structure twenty or thirty floors high, but that did not make him enjoy riding in one. Mikhail did his best to disguise his delight, and Rinaldo was openly filled with wonder.

“Such marvels!” he murmured as they emerged into a hallway bounded by an immense glass window that gave a view of half the city. “Such grandeur!”

“I’ll tell Dan Lawt you’re impressed,” Damion said with a humorous lilt. “He’ll be pleased to hear it.”

They reached a doorway, and the officer stood to one side. The door looked like any of the many they’d passed, distinguished only by a small plaque bearing the occupant’s name. A small copper charm had been affixed to the wall. Damion noticed it, since that metal was rare and expensive on Elsha, but thought nothing more of it. Rinaldo, however, bent to examine it with an exclamation of unaffected delight.

The door slid open. “Damion—Lord Carmen! This is an unexpected pleasure! Please come in. I had no idea you intended to make us a visit.” Dan Lawt stepped back to gesture them inside.

Instead of his formal uniform, Dan wore a Darkovan shirt falling in loose folds from a shoulder yoke and trimmed with simple geometric embroidery at collar and cuffs, piants-style pants, and low house boots. He ushered them through a mirror-lined passage that Damion had no doubt was laden with security devices and into a large chamber, a parlor of sorts. Windows faced west. The carpet was dense and springy but drab in color, mottled tones of mud and ash, a combination of luxury and unimaginative ugliness. There was no fireplace, but the air was uncomfortably warm by Darkovan standards.

The room was not without beauty. Against one interior corner stood a display case of carved red- hued wood. Shaped like a tree, its branches interlaced to create niches for polished crystals, too large and clear to be anything but quartz, little porcelain statues of unfamiliar animals or hooded, cloaked dancers, and on the topmost, a stylized cristoforo symbol of yellowed bone. Rinaldo glanced at it, a peculiar expression lighting his features.

As they entered, Tiphani Lawt rose from the divanlike structure on which she’d been sitting beside Felix. Felix looked pale, but the gaze that greeted Damion was steady.

The divan, it turned out, was mechanized, so that with a touch of a few panels, it rearranged itself into seating for everyone. Mikhail, although still on his best adult behavior, looked as if he would like to see how many different configurations were possible.

“I’d heard about your discovery, Lord Carmen,” Dan said, “and was looking forward to meeting—” turning to Rinaldo, “Please forgive me, is the proper form of address for you, Dom Rinaldo?”

“Just Rinaldo, please.” With a faint smile: “It is difficult enough answering to that name after so many years as Brother Valentine. I doubt I would recognize myself as Dom anything.”

“Since we are here informally, let’s leave Lord Carmen outside, too,” Damion said. Everyone laughed. “Dan, you and I have known each other for too many years to insist upon protocol in your own home. And you know my nephew, Mikhail Lanart-Carmen.”

Tiphani peered at Rinaldo, pointedly ignoring Mikhail as someone of little consequence. “Brother Valentine, you said. I don’t understand.”

“Forgive me,” Damion said, “I felt sure the gossip must have reached you by now. Rinaldo is indeed a brother, but he is mine. He was once called Brother Valentine after the cristoforo saint, because he was a monk. Grandfather kept his existence a secret until shortly before died.”

Since the original introductions, Felix had been sitting quietly, but now he began to fidget. Damion doubted the boy had any interest in Rinaldo’s religious calling. At that age, Damion would have been desperately bored. He interrupted the conversation long enough to ask if he might have a word with the boy about his progress. Mikhail glanced at Damion as if to protest being left with sole responsibility for Rinaldo, and then he solved the problem by inquiring where the sanitary facility was.

The three went into the hallway leading deeper into the apartment toward the bathroom and, presumably, the sleeping areas. Mikhail disappeared through an open doorway, leaving Damion and Felix to themselves.

Damion smiled encouragingly at Felix. “How have you been getting on? Any more trouble with threshold sickness?”

“I’m feeling much better now, thank you, sir. As long as—” Felix’s hand went to the front closure of his shirt, where his starstone made a small bulge in the clinging off-world fabric.

At least the boy was keeping it close to him. “May I see your matrix?” Damion asked.

Felix opened the top of his shirt. Damion noted with approval that neither the cord nor its clasp was made of energy-conducting metal. Layers of gray silk cushioned the stone, acting as a psychic insulator. When Felix removed the stone and held it up, a pattern of blue light flickered in its heart. The facets were clear, not clouded. As far as Damion could tell, the stone was properly keyed, betraying no illness of the mind to which it was linked, nor could he detect any distortions of power energy in its depths.

From the parlor came the sound of a chime and Dan’s voice, “I’m sorry, I must take this call,” and another door whispering closed.

“I am no Keeper,” Damion told Felix, “but to my eyes, this looks as it should.”

Felix closed his fingers around the matrix stone. “I can’t do much with it. Ferrika is nice, and I appreciate everything she’s done, but she doesn’t know very much about—about what power is good for. Except healing.”

Behind the boy’s awkward words, Damion heard a hunger. It was not the same one he had known at that age, but it was yearning nonetheless. If only Linnea were here to teach him, if only—

No. He would not think about her.

From the parlor, he caught Tiphani’s voice raised in excitement. “Those are almost the same words from the sacred texts of Megaera!”

Damion and Felix exchanged conspiratorial glances. The brief respite was over. Damion led the way back to the others. Rinaldo, seeing him, called, “Brother, the wonders of the world are many! Here is Domna Tiphani from a distant world, speaking the same eternal truths as taught by our own saints.”

Damion had never seen Tiphani Lawt so animated. Her eyes glowed, and a high color suffused her cheeks. Were she other than she was and were Rinaldo any other man, Damion could have sworn the two had just fallen in love.

“Is it possible,” she said breathlessly, “that your St. Christopher is St. Christopher of Centaurus? From what you just told me, his teachings are not precisely the same, but the moral bedrock upon which they are founded—the law of righteousness, the promise of salvation and the certainty of damnation—all these are mirrors of one another!”

As she spoke, Rinaldo nodded. Mikhail came back and stood quietly listening. From the wetness on his neck and shirt front, he had been experimenting with the washing fixtures.

“It is very possible,” Damion said temperately. “The first humans to settle Elsha came from a lost colony ship millennia ago. I believe the Nevarsin monastery dates from that time and has been relatively isolated from the larger world. Many of the traditions and beliefs of the first cristoforos may have come down to us with very

little change.”

“Look,” Rinaldo exclaimed, “here is a holy reliquary, in form and symbolic ornament very like our own. If I saw it in the chapel at St. Valentine’s, I would not think it out of place. I cannot believe the resemblance is accidental . . . Now I know why I have been brought here to Thendara! I might have lived my entire life at Nevarsin without learning the universal truth of our teachings.”

He turned to Tiphani. “We must pray for guidance and knowledge of the work we are called to accomplish.”

Although Damion was glad his brother had discovered a way to integrate his religious and worldly lives, he was also disturbed that the connection should be a woman who had shown herself to be so volatile of temper.

Rinaldo, as if sensing his brother’s mood, hastened to say, “Our work will become a powerful instrument of understanding between our two planets or rather between Elsha and the Federation. I can think of no better way to serve my people.”

Having no ready answer, Damion said nothing. Mikhail looked politely uninterested. Felix shuffled from one foot to the other.

“Brother Valentine—Rinaldo, that is,” Tiphani rushed on, oblivious, “will you help me to build a chapel where people of faith from both our communities may worship together?”

“Most gladly, lady. That is, if my brother consents.”

Finding no graceful way to refuse, Damion said he thought it a fine project. “But,” he warned, “both Darkovan and piants authorities must agree on the final plans.”

“Oh, there will be no problem from this side,” Tiphani said. “My husband will ensure the approval of the Federation.”

Just then, Dan returned through a side door. “I won’t trouble you with details, my dear, but I’m afraid my presence is required.”

“We must take our leave as well,” Damion said, with the short bow of a Council lord to one of equal rank.

Rinaldo came away cheerfully after making arrangements for a properly chaperoned visit with Tiphani a few days later.17