Exile's Honor

THE sunset outside the sitting-room window made a fine backdrop for the meal that another servant had brought them. There were not too many different ways that one could roast a pig, nor stew apples in honey, and beans were beans no matter what you did to them, so at least this dinner had not left Alberich with that particularly odd feeling of dislocation when flavors he expected weren't there.

'A remarkable first day,' Dethor said, with more than a hint of satisfaction. 'Hand me those plates, would you?'

Alberich handed over the stack of soiled plates, and Dethor packed them neatly in a straw container like the one that their dinner had come in. The servant that had appeared just after darkness fell waited patiently to take it away; the clean plates it contained, evidently meant for tomorrow, (so that was where they came from!) were already stowed in Dethor's sitting-room cupboard.

Alberich could only shrug. 'And I would know this, how?' he asked logically.

Dethor laughed, a sight which would, no doubt, have astonished his pupils. Weaponsmasters, of course, never laughed. They also, according to popular repute, never ate, never slept, and were possessed of the ability to know instantly whenever one of their pupils had done something he shouldn't, because he was always punished for it with an extra-hard lesson the next day. It obviously never occurred to boys that their guilty expressions always gave them away....

'Don't get coy with me, my lad,' Dethor replied. 'You know very well how remarkable it was.'

Alberich gave the servant a sidelong glance; the man took the hint, picked up the carrier, and took himself off. Dethor sat down beside the fireplace and motioned to Alberich to take his own seat.

'I—I feel—unsettled,' Alberich said at last. 'I am treated as if I belong—yet I do not. I should not. So how comes it, that it is as if I do? And how comes it, that it feels to me as if I should?'

'I wish I could tell you, lad,' Dethor sighed, and stared out the window at the darkening trees. 'If I could, well, I suspect we'd not be at odds with your land. You're not the first Karsite to come over the Border, as you know—though I suspect you didn't until you found it out here. You're not even the first Karsite to be Chosen, though all of the rest were tiny children when they escaped, and were basically Valdemaran when they became Trainees. But you are the first adult Karsite ever Chosen, and I have to think that it's something in you that makes you different from your fellows.'

Well, that answered one question—why Vkandis, if indeed His Hand was behind all of this, hadn't arranged for one or another of the former Karsite children to be Chosen. Clearly, he had. And clearly, whatever He wanted from such an arrangement hadn't happened. Alberich stared at the fire in the fireplace. 'But it is to Karse—to the Sunlord—that I belong,' he said softly. He knew that; it was at the core of him. Nothing about that part of him had changed. If that part had changed, he would no longer be himself.

'Your god is no issue to us; we respect a man who keeps to his own gods, and it makes no difference to the Heralds who another Herald gives his soul to. But are you vowed to Karse?' Dethor asked shrewdly. 'Or to your people? That's two very different things, my lad. A country—well—that can be a lot of things to different people; some would say it's the land itself. But land can change hands. Some say it's the leaders, but leaders die. Or the religion—but I'll tell you something you'll never have heard in Karse—and that's this: religions change. I've seen it happen, and I'll bet my boots that if you ask your priestly friends down in the city, they'll tell you that yours has changed from what it was.'

That was such an astonishing statement that Alberich could only stare at him. Change? How could a religion change? Didn't truth come directly from God?

Dethor poked at a log sticking out on the hearth with his toe. 'Don't look at me that way, ask your priests, and see if I'm not right,' he said, calmly. 'Ah, this is daft. I'm only giving you too much to think about. Look, Alberich, I know this isn't easy for you, and there isn't much I can do about that. You'll have to reckon out what's important to you, and stick to that. Do that, and you'll have one thing you can hang onto, no matter how unsettled you feel. That'll give you a bit of firm ground to hold to, as it were, and once you've got that, you can take the time to figure out more.' He raised an eyebrow. 'Have you one thing, right this minute, that's worth everything to you?'

'Honor,' Alberich said promptly, without thinking. Without having to think. Which meant, he realized, even as the word left his lips, that the choice was right.

'Then you stick to that, and you'll be all right, and eventually you'll find your feet under you again,' Dethor told him, and yawned. 'Me, I'm off for bed. I may not have chased lads around the salle today, but it's been a long one for me anyway.' He laughed again. 'Good thing I don't get fighting Karsites turn up to become my Seconds every day!'

Alberich immediately got up, but Dethor waved at him to seat himself again. 'Now, that doesn't mean you need to! Maybe you wear Grays, but you're no Trainee; you set your own hours.'

'Only so, I alert and awake will be, when first arrives the class,' Alberich replied dryly. Dethor chuckled under his breath, got stiffly out of his chair, and shuffled off into the shadows. Alberich sagged back into his own chair, but in the next moment, he was on his feet, staring broodingly into the fire. He wasn't tired, not even physically—that single workout with the young Guardsman had been good, but he was used to that sort of exercise all day long. When he wasn't drilling or actually fighting, he was riding, in all weathers, without the luxury of hot meals and showering baths. He was used to going perpetually short of sleep; riding before dawn and not finding his bedroll until after he'd stood first watch. When he got a bath, it was usually out of a stream or a rain barrel. When he got a meal, it was field rations augmented by whatever someone had managed to shoot or buy from a farmer.