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“Ask
 
Dom
 
Esteban’s hall-steward, or the estate midwife Ferrika, if they feel ill-used or exploited,” Damon said. “You’re telepath enough to know if they’re telling the truth. And then, perhaps, you’ll decide you can honorably let some man earn his wages as your body-servant and your groom.”

Andrew shrugged. “No doubt I will. We have a saying, When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Rome, Ithink, was a city on Terra; it was destroyed in a war or an earthquake, centuries ago, only the proverbremains. —”

Damon said, “We have a similar saying; it runs, Don’t try to buy fish in the Dry Towns.” He walkedaround the room be had chosen for his bedroom and Ellemir’s. “These draperies have not been airedsince the days of Regis the Fourth! I’ll get the stewards to change them.” He pulled a bell-rope, andwhen the steward appeared, gave orders.

“We’ll have it done by tonight, my lord, so you and your ladies can move in when you like. And, Lord Damon, I was asked to let you know that your brother, Lord Serrais, has come to witness your wedding.”

“Very good, thank you. If you can find Lady Ellemir, ask her to come and approve what arrangements

we have made,” Damon said. When the servant went away, he grimaced.

“My brother Lorenz! Such good will as he has for my wedding, I suspect, could be dropped into my eyes without pain! I had hoped for my brother Kieran, at least, or my sister Marisela, but I suppose I should be honored, and go to say a word of thanks to Lorenz.”

“Have you many brothers?”

“Five,” Damon said, “and three sisters. I was the youngest son, and my father and mother had already too many children when I was born. Lorenz—” He shrugged. “I suppose he is relieved that I have taken a bride of family so good that he need not haggle about patrimony and a younger son’s portion. I am not wealthy, but I have never wished for much wealth, and Ellemir and I will have enough for our needs. My brother Lorenz and I have never been overly friendly. Kieran—he is only three years older than I—Kieran and I are
 
bredin;
 
Marisela and I are only a year apart in age, and we had the same foster-mother. As for my other brothers and sisters, we are civil enough when we meet in Council season, but I suspect none of us would grieve over much if we never met again. My home has always been here. My mother was an Alton, and I was fostered near here, and
Dom
 
Esteban’s oldest son went with me into the Cadets. We swore the oath of
bredin
 
.” It was the second time he had used this word, which was the intimate or family form of brother. Damon sighed, looking into space for a moment.

“You were a cadet?”

“A very poor one,” Damon said, “but no Comyn son can escape it if he has two sound legs and his eyesight. Coryn was like all Altons, a born soldier, a born officer. I was something else.” He laughed. “There’s a joke in the cadet corps about the cadet with two right feet and ten thumbs. That was me.”

“Awkward squad all the way, huh?”

Damon nodded, savoring the phrase. “Punishment detail eleven times in a tenday. I’m right-handed, yousee. My foster-mother—she was midwife to my mother—used to say I was born upside-down and

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ass-backward, and I’ve been doing everything that way ever since.”

Andrew, who had been born left-handed into a right-handed society and only on Darkover had foundthings arranged in a way that made sense to him, everything from silverware to garden tools, said, “I cancertainly understand that.”

“I’m a bit short-sighted, too, which didn’t help, though it was a help in learning to read. None of my brothers have any clerical skills, and they can’t do much more than spell out a placard or scrawl their names to a deed. But I took to it like a rabbithorn to the snow, so when I finished in the cadets I went to Nevarsin, and spent a year or two learning to read and write and do some map-making and the like. That was when Lorenz decided I’d never make a man. When they accepted me at Arilinn, it only confirmed him in his decision: half monk, half eunuch, he used to say.” Damon was silent, his face set in lines of distaste. Finally he said, “But for all that he was no better pleased when they sent me from the Tower, a few years ago. For Coryn’s sake—Coryn was dead then, poor lad, killed in a fall from the cliffs—but for his sake,
 
Dom
 
Esteban took me into the Guards. I was never much of a soldier, though, hospital officer, cadet-master for a year or two.” He shrugged. “And that’s my life, and enough of that. Listen, the women are coming, we can show our wives around before I have to go down and try to be polite to Lorenz!”

Andrew saw, with relief, that the lonely, introspective sadness slid off his face as Ellemir and Callistacame in.

“Come, Ellemir, see the rooms I have chosen for us.”

He took her through a door at the far end, and Andrew sensed, rather than heard, that he was kissingher. Callista followed them with her eyes and smiled. “I am glad to see them so happy.”

“Are you happy too, my love?”

She said, “I love you, Andrew. I do not find it so easy to rejoice. Perhaps I am naturally a little less lightof heart. Come, show me the rooms we are to have.”

She approved of nearly everything, though she pointed out half a dozen pieces of furniture which, shesaid, were so old they were not safe to sit on, and called a steward, directing that they be taken away. She called the maids and gave directions about what things were to be brought from the householdstorerooms for bedroom and bath linens, and sent another to have her clothing brought and stored in theenormous clothes-press in her dressing room. Andrew listened in silence, finally saying, “You are quite ahomemaker, Callista!”

Her laugh was delightful. “It is all pretense. I have been listening to Ellemir, that is all, because I do notwant to sound ignorant in front of her servants. I know very little about such things. I have been taught tosew, because I was never allowed to let my hands sit idle, but when I watch Ellemir about the kitchens, Irealize that I know less of housekeeping than any girl of ten.”

“I feel the same way,” Andrew confessed. “Everything I learned in the Terran Zone is useless to me

now.”

“But you know something of horse-breaking—”

Andrew laughed. “Yes, and in the Terran Zone that was considered an anachronism, a useless skill. Iused to take Dad’s saddle horses and break them, but I thought when I left Arizona that I’d never ride

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again.”

“Does everyone on Terra walk, then?”

He shook his head. “Motor transit. Slidewalks. Horses were an exotic luxury for rich eccentrics.” Hewent to the window and looked out on the sunlit landscape. “Strange, that of all the known worlds of the Terran Empire, I should have come
 
here
 
.” A faint shudder went through him at the thought of hownarrowly he could have missed what now seemed his fate, his life, the true purpose for which he hadbeen born.

He wanted desperately to reach out and draw Callista into his arms, but as if his thought had somehowreached her, she went tense and white. He sighed and stepped a pace away from her. o

She said, as if completing a thought that no longer interested her much, “Our horse-handler is already anold man, and without Father at hand, it may be up to you to teach the younger ones.” Then she stoppedand looked up at him, twisting the end of one long braid.

“I want to talk to you,” she said abruptly.

He had never decided whether her eyes were blue or gray; they seemed to vary with the light, and in thislight they were almost colorless. “Andrew, will this be too hard on you? To share a room when wecannot—as yet—share a bed?”

He had been warned of this when they first discussed marriage, that she had been conditioned so deeplythat it might be a long time before they could consummate their marriage. He had promised her then,unasked, that he would never hurry her or try to put any pressure on her, that he would wait as long asnecessary. He said now, touching her fingertips lightly, “Don’t worry about it, Callista. I promised youthat already.”

Faint color crept slowly across her pale cheeks. She said, “I have been taught that it is… shameful toarouse a desire I will not satisfy. Yet if I stay apart from you, and do
 
not
 
rouse it, so that in turn yourthoughts may act on me, then things may never be different at all. If we are together, then, slowlyperhaps, things may be different. But it will be so hard on you, Andrew.” Her face twisted. She said, “Idon’t want you to be unhappy.”

Once, once only, and with great constraint, and briefly, he had spoken of this with Leonie. Now, as hestood looking down at Callista, that brief meeting, difficult on both sides, came back to his mind as ifagain he stood before the Comyn
 
leronis
 
. She had come to him in the courtyard, saying quietly, “Lookat me, Terran.” He had raised his eyes, unable to resist. Leonie was so tall that their eyes were on a level. She had said, in a low voice, “I want to see to what manner of man I am giving the child I love.” Theireyes had met, and for a long moment Andrew Carr felt as if every thought of his entire life had beenturned over and rummaged through by the woman, as if in that one glance, and not a long one, she haddrawn the very inmost part from him and left it to dangle there, cold and withering. Finally—it had notbeen more than a second or two, but it had seemed an age—Leonie had sighed and said, “So be it. Youare honest and kind and you mean well, but have you the faintest idea of what a Keeper’s training means,or how hard it will be for Callista to lay it down?”

He had wanted to protest, but instead he had only shaken his head and said humbly, “How can I know?

But I will try to make it easy for her.”

Leonie’s sigh had seemed ripped up from the very depths of her being. She had said, “Nothing you

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could do, in this world or the next, could make it easy for her. If you are patient and careful—and lucky—you may make it
possible
 
. I do not want Callista to suffer. And yet in the choice she has made, there will be much suffering. She is young, but not so young that she can put aside her training without pain. The training that makes a Keeper is long; it cannot be undone in a little while.”

Andrew had protested. “I know—” and Leonie had sighed again. “Do you? I wonder. It is not only amatter of delaying the consummation of your marriage for days, or perhaps for seasons; that will be onlythe beginning. She loves you, and is eager for your love—”

“I can be patient until she is ready,” Andrew had sworn, but Leonie had said, shaking her head, “Patience may not be enough. What Callista has learned cannot be unlearned. You do not want to know about that. Perhaps it is better for you not to know too much.”

He had said again, protesting, “I’ll try to make it easy for her,” and again Leonie had shaken her headand sighed, repeating, “Nothing you could do could make it easy. Chickens cannot go back into eggs. Callista will suffer, and I fear you will suffer with her, but if you are—if you
 
both
 
are lucky, you maymake it possible for her to retrace her steps. Not easy. But possible.”

Indignation had burst out of him then. “How can you people do this to young girls? How can youdestroy their lives this way?” But Leonie had not answered, lowering her head; and moving noiselesslyaway from him. When he blinked she was gone, as swiftly as if she had been a shadow, so that he beganto doubt his sanity, began to wonder if she had ever been there at all, or if his own doubts and fears hadconstructed an hallucination.

Callista, standing before him in the room that—tomorrow—would be theirs to share, raised her eyesagain, slowly, to his. She said in a whisper, “I did not know Leonie had come to you that way,” and hesaw her hands clench tightly, so tightly that the small knuckles were white as bone. Then she said, lookingaway from him, “Andrew, promise me something.”

“Anything, my love.”

“Promise me. If you ever… desire some woman, promise me you will take her and not suffer

needlessly…”

He exploded. “What kind of man do you think I am? I love you! Why would I want anyone else?”

“I cannot expect—It is not right or natural…”

“Look here, Callista,” and his voice was gentle, “I’ve lived a long time without women. I never found it did me all that much harm. A few, here and there, while I was knocking around the Empire on my own. Nothing serious.”

She looked down at the tips of her small dyed-leather sandals. “That’s different, men alone, living awayfrom women. But here, living with me, sleeping in the same room, being near me all the time andknowing…” She ran out of words. He wanted to take her into his arms and kiss her till she lost that rigid,lost look. He actually laid his hands on her shoulders, felt her tense under the touch, and let his handsdrop to his sides. Damn anyone who could built pathological reflexes into a young girl this way! But evenwithout the touch, he felt the grief in her, grief and guilt. She said softly, “You have no bargain in a wife, Andrew.”

He replied gently, “I have the wife I want.”

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Damon and Ellemir came into the room. Ellemir’s hair was tousled, her eyes shining; she had thatglassy-eyed look which he associated with women aroused, excited. For the first time since he had seenthe twins, he saw Ellemir as a woman, not merely as Callista’s sister, and found her sensually attractive tohim. Or was it that for a moment he saw in her the way Callista might, one day, look at him? He felt aflicker of guilt. She was his promised wife’s sister, in a few hours she would be his best friend’s wife, andof all women, she was the one at whom he should not look with desire. He looked away as she collectedherself, slowly coming back to ordinary awareness.