Free Heritage and Exile by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Where had he gone? In the state he’d been in when he left me, he could have done something desperate! Conflicting loyalties and obligations held me paralyzed. Andres came out of my father’s room and said, “Lew, if you’re going to take call-over you’d better get moving,” and I realized I’d been standing as if my feet had been frozen to the floor.
    My father had laid a task on me. Yet if Regis had run away, in a mood of suicidal despair, shouldn’t I go after him, too? In any case I would have been on duty this morning. Now it seemed I was to handle it my own way. There were sure to be those who’d question it. Well, it was Father’s right to choose his own deputy, but I was the one who’d have to face the hostility.
    I turned to Andres. “Have someone get me something to eat,” I said, “and see if you can find where Father put the staff lists and the roll call, but don’t disturb him. I should bathe and change. Have I time?”
    Andres regarded me calmly. “Don’t lose your head. You have what time you need. If you’re in command, they can’t start till you get there. Take the time to make yourself presentable. You ought to look ready to command, even if you don’t feel it.”
    He was right, of course; I knew it even while I resented his tone. Andres has a habit of being right. He had been the coridom, chief steward, at Armida since I could remember. He was a Terran and had once been in Spaceforce. I’ve never known where he met my father, or why he left the Empire. My father’s servants had told me the story, that one day he came to Armida and said he was sick of space and Spaceforce, and my father had said, “Throw your blaster away and pledge me to keep the Compact, and I’ve work for you at Armida as long as you like.” At first he had been Father’s private secretary, then his personal assistant, finally in charge of his whole household, from my father’s horses and dogs to his sons and foster-daughter. There were times when I felt Andres was the only person alive who completely accepted me for what I was. Bastard, half-caste, it made no difference to Andres.
    He added now, “Better for discipline to turn up late than to turn up in a mess and not knowing what you’re doing. Get yourself in order, Lew, and I don’t just mean your uniform. Nothing’s to be gained by rushing off in several directions at once.”
    I went off to bathe, eat a hasty breakfast and dress myself suitably to be stared at by a hundred or more officers and Guardsmen, each one of whom would be ready to find fault. Well, let them.
    Andres found the staff lists and Guard roster among my father’s belongings; I took them and went down to the Guard hall.
    The main Guard hall in Comyn Castle is on one of the lowest levels; behind it lie barracks, stables, armory and parade ground, and before it a barricaded gateway leads down into Thendara. The rest of Comyn Castle leaves me unmoved, but I never looked up at the great fan-lighted windows without a curious swelling in my throat.
    I had been fourteen years old, and already aware that because of what I was my life was fragmented and insecure, when my father had first brought me here. Before sending me to my peers, or what he hoped would be my peers—they’d had other ideas—he’d told me of a few of the Altons who had come before us here. For the first and almost the last time, I’d felt a sense of belonging to those old Altons whose names were a roll call of Darkovan history: My grandfather Valdir, who had organized the first fire-beacon system in the Kilghard Hills. Dom Esteban Lanart, who a hundred years ago had driven the catmen from the caves of Corresanti. Rafael Lanart-Alton, who had ruled as Regent when Stefan Hastur the Ninth was crowned in his cradle, in the days before the Elhalyn were kings in Thendara.
    The Guard hall was an enormous