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."
"I knew that."
Moran licked his lips, which were suddenly dry. "Of
course you have the right to use your father's name. I think"
- he paused and braced himself - "I think he'd be proud."
"Are you?" Tarli asked quietly.
Moran was stunned by the simple directness of the
question. Tarli had to repeat it.
Finally Moran stammered, "I ... uh ... She never told
me ..."
"Well, my mother told me. And she always told the
truth." Tarli looked tolerant of someone else's failing. "She
said you probably wouldn't like it if I took your name. She
said you might feel awkward about it, training boys like
you do. It didn't make sense to her, but she thought you'd
want it that way."
Moran nodded. "She was good to me when I needed
her most. Except for leaving, she was always good to me."
He asked a question he'd wondered about for eighteen
years. "Did she know that I would have married her?"
Now Tarli looked startled. "She never told you? She
knew, but she didn't think it would work. You're very
different from her." He added calmly, "But I think she
loved you."
"I think so, too" Moran thought, briefly and with regret,
of the demands of knighthood, of bastardly scandals in the
knighthood, and of the fact that conflicts of duty can be
every bit as painful as conflicts of honor
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