A Call to Darkness - Michael Jan Friedman [59]
“I suppose,” he said, “because I thought it was something I had lost-we had lost-when you chose to marry my mother. It was something I felt I had a right to.”
Trien’nor nodded. “Fair enough,” he said. He gave no indication that he had taken offense-to Dan’nor’s relief. “And if I had not left the Military? If I had married a woman of my own Caste, become powerful enough to grant you a high-ranking position as soon as you came of age?”
Dan’nor had never thought about it.
“Would your drive to achieve have been as great?” pressed his father.
The younger man pondered the question. “I don’t know,” he said. “Perhaps not.”
“Perhaps not,” repeated Trien’nor. “But it was withheld from you-so you desired it. And once you had your first small taste of success… you desired it all the more.”
The words sounded awfully familiar. “Rule One,” said Dan’nor.
“Yes. Rule One. And now, another question: what did you pay for your success?”
Dan’nor didn’t understand. It must have showed in his face.
“Payment may come in any number of forms,” explained his father. “Money is but one. Anything one gives up to achieve something else may be considered payment. So the question becomes: what did you give up? What did you lose that you had before?”
Now Dan’nor saw the direction in which Trien’nor was headed. Or thought he did.
“My family,” he answered. “You.”
It was no less than the truth. An implicit condition of Dan’nor’s acceptance into the Military had been his estrangement from his past-from his Lower Caste mother and-even more importantly-from his father. He had had to deny his heritage to show that he wouldn’t do what his father had done.
Dan’nor had expected the older man to acknowledge his answer-and go on with his speech. He was unprepared for the sudden pain he saw in his father’s face-the look of utter vulnerability.
It was an expression Dan’nor might have expected from that supremely contained man who’d spent so much time stating out the window. But not from the man he had just been talking to. The transformation was shocking and somehow comforting at the same time.
It took Trien’nor a moment to recover. And when he did, the lost look was gone. “Gods,” he said. “I hadn’t even thought of that.” A beat. “I meant what was lost of you. The ability to look at things with your own eyes-and not those of the Military. To see beyond the prescribed goals and behaviors-to the truth.”
Something stiffened inside Dan’nor. “What do you mean?” he asked. “That I don’t look out for myself? Because I do.”
Trien’nor shook his head. “No. You think you do. But while you pursue what you believe are your own purposes, your own ambitions-you’re really pursuing theirs. You have innocently become just another cog in the Military machine.” He sighed. “Just as I was.”
Silence for a moment. The raucous cries of hungry birds wheeling over the river.
“You’re bitter,” said Dan’nor, “about Mother’s death. That’s why you’re talking this way. That’s why you’ve joined those men who sit whispering in the dark.”
The wharf was just ahead. Past it, they could see the silhouettes of empty fishing vessels rocking gently in their slips.
“No,” said Trien’nor. There was a tinge of anger in his voice, though his face did not betray it. “It is not bitterness. I felt this way before your mother’s death-long before.” He licked his patrician lips. “Your mother told you, no doubt, that I was aware of the penalty if I married her.”
“Yes,” said Dan’nor. “She told me.”
“At the time,” said Trien’nor, “I thought my sacrifice was based entirely on my love for her. And certainly, I loved her very much. But there was more to it than that. I had seen things I could not abide-in the Conflicts, in the world. And most of all, in myself. I could no longer be a part of those things. Yet I also could not fight them-or so I believed at the time. So I took the coward’s way out. I married your mother, and forced the Military to separate me from the things I couldn’t tolerate.”
Dan’nor heard the words, and began to understand