Several of you by now have mentioned seeing the hand of the Emperor in the goings-on in Qenain; indeed, you have recognized the subtleties of His intent in a way I did not at the time. It was only much later that I realized how many strands He was holding in his hand as He wove, and the delicacy and care with which He was doing so. O God of Civilization! How deft your hand! And yet we are not as simple as strands of silk thread, nor always as predictable.

The next morning, the physician arrived with a breakfast tray. As I received him, surprised, he said, "The Decoration is on a pedestal."

My ears flicked back. Behind me, Ajan looked up from his vigil, eyes narrowed. I accepted the tray, saying, "The display pedestal or..."

"She is being Corrected," he said, sitting without preamble on one of the chairs around the small table. To Ajan he called, "Any change?"

"No, Physician," Ajan answered.

The physician nodded and said to me, "Eat."

"What did she do to merit Correction?" I asked, taking up the bowl of consommé. Grasping for words past my surprise, I said, "It has only been half a day since the lady's arrival!"

"Less than that, I judge," the physician said with a sigh. "As to what she did... I have no idea, for it has not been shared with us. But no doubt it was some matter of speech, for she has been gagged."

I paused over my bowl, frowning. Fathriked did not speak, of course; ordinarily one would not bother to Correct a Decoration with a gag for that reason. I looked up at the physician, still wearing that frown.

"Yes, I know," the physician said with another sigh.

"I suppose her acts were somewhat irregular," I murmured.

"Her acts were irregular at our request," the physician said, "and because the lord's acts were irregular first. From him all this... irregularity... was proceeding. It galls me to see her Corrected."

"Because it is wrong?" I asked.

"Because it treats the symptom, and not the disease," the physician answered, irritated. I poured him a cup of tea and he drank from it, without even realizing he had it in his hand, I thought. "The cruelty or justice of it is immaterial in comparison to its effectiveness. Above all, Correction should be effective."

"So Shame would say were he awake," I murmured.

"And he is not, so we labor on without him," the physician said. "I came partially to see how he is getting on. But mostly because..." He trailed off.

"Because you felt alone in the knowing," I said. "I understand. Does Seraeda know of the Correction?"

"I am not certain," he said. "She has not yet resurfaced from her investigation in the lab."

"Gods grant her some clue as to our mystery," I said. Leaning back, I called through the door, "Ajan, come eat while the physician checks on Shame."

Ajan joined me at the small table while the physician made his evaluation. The youth ate slowly, I noted: like someone who is aware of his own hunger and does not want to sicken himself with overmuch eagerness. I admired this fresh evidence of the discipline imposed on the Guardians. I had never been in such proximity to one so trained for so long, and found myself enjoying the experience in a way I would never have expected: me, with so little understanding and familiarity with violence? To find comfort among Guardians!

The physician rejoined us. "He is fighting it well. Bathe him, it will help."

"It won't give him a chill?" I asked, surprised.

"I didn't say dunk him in cold water," the physician said, voice dry. "Use two spoons of the salts in the blue satchel and keep the water lukewarm. I don't want the fever sweat clogging his pores, his skin needs to breathe."

"We'll do it," Ajan said.

"Good," the physician said, rising. "I will go back to my own patients."

"I'll see Seraeda later," I said.

"Very good," he answered, and left us there.

Ajan finished up a last skewer of fish and said, "If you will start the water, osulkedi, I'll bring Shame."

I thought to object to him carrying the other Ai-Naidari alone, but it was not as if I would be of much help. So I left him to it and went to the bath to find the blue satchel—on a shelf, it turned out, alongside four more satchels of scented bath salts—and add the required spoons to the water as it ran into the basin. The smell that rose on the steam cleared my nose and mouth and seemed to reach even behind my eyes... drawing in a deep breath, I bent to adjust the temperature and had just decided it was perfect when Ajan arrived, carrying his master. The muscles in his arms and shoulders stood in sharp relief against his skin; I was transfixed by the power implied in them, and the tenderness of the Guardian's hands.

Shame, though... Gods and ancestors! I helped Ajan lower him into the water, one hand under his skull, cushioned by his dark mane, the other on his arm.

"Ienul," Ajan commented at the look on my face: "puts on bulk," that is, not a characteristic typical of us. Our world holds us lightly, so we grow high and thin, like rainflowers; to grow dense is rare. Shame was all muscle under dark and white pelage, in a way even his Guardian could not approach.

I have since seen many images of you, aunera, and know that even our densest Ai-Naidari is slender in compare. But such as Shame is rarely seen among us, and I was struck by his nudity: by the breadth of his wrists, by the hatchmark patterns of muscle woven through ribcage at his sides, and by the unlikeliness of his powerful torso.

"He must be an amazing dancer," I found myself saying.

"You have not seen the like," Ajan agreed with a smile. Glancing at me as he reached for a sponge, he said, "You have a look on your face, Calligrapher."

"A look," I repeated.

"As if someone has given you a blow," he said with a chuckle.

"Beauty affects me," I murmured.

"Beauty affects the rest of us," he said. "You, I think, it concusses."

I eyed him with a wrinkled nose and he laughed.

Together we washed Shame, and the eye-watering smell rising off the waters seemed to ease him. I left Ajan to dry his master and changed the sheets with the spares beneath the bed-table. After that I sent the Guardian to use the remainder of the bath-water for himself and spent the time profitably in untangling Shame's mane and braiding it. He would probably not thank me for it, as I had never seen him with it bound, but better ridiculous than knotted.

"I'm ready," Ajan said, returning shortly after.

"Good," I said. "I will be back when I have put paid to my errands."

And so saying, I went out on the first of those errands... to find the fathrikedi.

There is a small note clipped to the page here that reads:

unil [ oo NEEL ], n. quiet. Particularly, a quiet one cultivates in order to calm the spirit and silence the busy mind and its voices.

The fathrikedi was indeed on the pedestal, and quite a picture she made there; she had been arranged in an arc, on her toes with her arms lifted and her tail completing the curve of her spine. Bells had been hung from it; another bell depended from the delicate handle of the gag she held between her teeth. Such bells were typical in both living statue poses and in Corrections, in order to betray any movement on the part of the individual.

Naturally, none of the bells was so much as shivering. The pose she'd been asked to hold—or had chosen, for all I knew—required great strength, but she made it look effortless. Such is the training of the fathriked: I have noted that aunera have a tendency to think of the Decorations as weak, kept creatures. It would be closer to the truth to think of them as athletes. Their discipline is one of stillness rather than movement, most of the time, but stillness no less than movement demands grace and power in it.

They dance also. We all do. But they, particularly.

The pedestal had been placed in one of the central chambers, a great round room with arteries leading to other parts of the house. The light falling on her from the central skylight was muddy: it was another cloudy day, so dim there was barely a highlight to be found on the curve of those hanging brass bells. It was not a day that would have agreed well with most Ai-Naidar, but her gray pelt seemed to smolder in the storm-light in a way I found uncomfortably arresting. I thought of Ajan's observation about beauty concussing me and wondered, not whether he was right, but how he'd noticed so easily.

When I moved in front of the pedestal to see her face, her eyes flicked to mine. She had not been blinded with the pearl-in-the-eyes drops, as living statues often are. I supposed the lady had wanted her to know she was seen, and to see in return. To communicate her shame and penitence with her gaze.

I doubted the lady had realized that the fathrikedi would use her eyes to communicate her outrage and pride instead.

I sighed and said softly, "Would it not have been better to be more discreet?"

She pulled her lips back from her teeth in a sneer, and there at last I finally saw the gleam of light reflecting off something: in this case, her wet teeth, bearing down so properly on the metal plate of the gag. Such a ferocious creature, to have the ishas of a Decoration! And yet it was hard not to admire her spirit. There was perhaps something compelling in keeping as tame something so obviously wild. Like a feral thing that permits itself to be caged... for as long as its whim so moved it, and not a moment longer. I understood a little better why the lord might have adored her, and wanted no other.

On the pedestal there was a notation: she was to remain there until the dinner hour. I could not imagine holding such an uncomfortable position for so long, but had no doubt she would manage, and that not a whisper of bell-song would sound until the lady came to end her Correction. I looked up at her again and said, "We will make things straight again in Qenain, fathrikedi."

Her lashes lowered, until I could see only a sliver of her bright red eyes beneath it. I accepted that acknowledgement and left her to her durance.

From the pedestal, I walked to the lab, and presented myself to its inhabitants in search of Seraeda. There I found her scowling at several vials, one of which she was measuring some clear fluid into with a dropper.

"I come at a poor time?" I guessed.

"Somewhat," she answered, and the expression she leveled on those vials put me in mind of the fathrikedi's snarl. Seraeda set the dropper down a moment and turned on her chair to glance at me. "The notes were incomplete and Baran's penmanship was horrendous-bordering-on-illegible. I've been reduced to duplicating the work to make sense of it."

"I see," I said, coming to her side and halting abruptly at the arm she put up before I could approach the table.

"Don't," she said. "Some of these materials are caustic, that we use to treat the samples." She lifted her hands to show me her gloves, extending past her wrists. Then went on to say, irritated, "Also, I am half-afraid that if someone breathes on them wrong, the results will be contaminated and I'll never figure out what it was Baran was talking about."

"Is it so important, then?" I asked.

"I don't know!" Seraeda exclaimed. And then, ears flattening. "It is at least as important as Qenain's spreading taint, though. Surely that's enough significance to be laying at the feet of a few flowers."

"It would be flowers that save or destroy Qenain," I murmured, and she looked at me sharply.

"Come back later, Farren," she said after a long moment. "Maybe I will know something then." With a sigh and a wan smile, she added, "Maybe I'll be better company to you, also."

"You are fine company even when you are all snarls and claws," I said, winning a better smile from her. "I will return later."

I was left then, with little to do and the louring mystery of Qenain on my shoulders. It seemed ridiculous that what should have been a minor matter could be so unclear to any of us, much less of such painful import that the fate of the House might credibly rest on whether we could resolve it. So much responsibility. How could Shame bear such things? I would have to ask him when he woke.

My pacing brought me to the gardens outside the house, beneath a low sky thick with clouds torn by a quick wind. I stood at the edge by the low wall, resting a hand on it and looking past it at the spars of the great Gate.

Somewhere, through that Gate, was the source of all this suffering. Was an aunerai—maybe several?—who were responsible for the creation of this situation.

The temptation to walk out of the garden and through that Gate was so powerful that I leaned toward it, hand tightening on the wall. How little effort it would take to slide over the wall and start walking...

...except I would have to know where I was going, once I arrived. And who to talk to. Which aunerai was it that had captured the lord's attention so? And would I ever know, in a sea of aunera, which was the key?

I did not go to the Gate. But I spent a very long time in the garden, standing at that wall beneath a sky that promised storms, and stared at it.

When I returned from the garden I was surprised to find the Guardian at the door back into the house looking at me, instead of past me. That looking-past expression is so well-known it has its own name, Guardian-gaze, so to have that mask broken startled me.

"Yes?" I asked, coming to a halt. A Guardian can initiate speech to a caste-better; there were several exceptions to that effect, mostly involving the safety of other Ai-Naidar. But better to save him the trouble of deciding to invoke those exceptions, and sooth, if that was the reason he'd broken his Guardian-gaze I found I did not want to know.

"Osulkedi," the Guardian said, inclining his head. He was a warm gray with eyes a clear green, so light I would have had to add water to the paint almost to the point of obliterating it to achieve the right tint. "May I ask after Ajan's master?"

"Sleeping through a fever," I said, wondering just what Ajan had been doing in his own wanders. Befriending the House's Guardians, apparently. "The physician says he should see the end of it within a few days."

"That is well," the Guardian said. "Please convey Shardan's well wishes to Ajan and his master."

"I will do this thing," I said, mystified at the exchange.

"Thank you," Shardan said, and I took this to mean that our discussion had ended, and passed through the door. But behind me, I heard the Guardian say, "Osulkedi."

I looked over my shoulder. The Guardian was once again facing forward, scanning the gardens with the practiced competence of his kind. When he spoke again, it was without turning to me. "We Guardians serve the master of the house."

For a long moment, I did not move. When I did, the nervousness of my limbs felt like flight. And I did not stop moving until I gained the safety of our rooms.

It occurs to me that some of you may wonder at my distress. I suppose living outside our society you would find our communication opaque at times. But perhaps some of you, those of you who seem most agreeable to our ways—or very likely, those of you who are Guardians yourselves—will understand the warning I was issued, for I am told that among aunera Guardians must also deal with political considerations. We live in a complicated social tapestry, and one cannot separate the political from the social, and Guardians no less than other Ai-Naidar are subject to those forces.

So a warning he had given me, this acquaintance of Ajan's. That the lady had her own notions about the goings-on in the house, which might not agree with the lord's, or ours as we'd been developing them. And that, if it became necessary, the Guardians of the house would do their duty: to the house, which is to say, to the Noble currently charged with its oversight. The lady, not the lord. Had Shardan meant otherwise, he would have said the House, indicating that he was empowered to serve what he felt was the best interests of Qenain, not its local mistress. I knew then that there were no Guardians of sufficient rank to act strategically, rather than tactically, which put us at the mercy of the lady's opinions.

Ah, I see I have encountered a translation issue: house and House. Let me briefly say they are different things: gadare, "house" is a building or place with a group of people of and serving the same family, while eqet is "House," an abstraction of the concept that encompasses the family entire and all its works and properties, and used invariably for those above the Wall of Birth. Nai, which you might recognize from our names, is merely "family," or more specifically, "belonging to a family," family-proper, the noun, is dare, as you may recall. There are many families within a House. So you may remember my name, prior to my ascension, Farren Nai'Sheviet a'Neriethen-jakkedi: which is to say, Farren, of the family of Sheviet, who serves the House Neriethen.

So, the Guardian had used the word gadare and not eqet, and thus our issue.

Now, the matter of jurisdiction in this case was not a simple one. The lady, as an Ai-Naidari above the Wall of Birth, had the right to command us. But in pursuit of the duties to which we'd been dedicated on elevation to osulked, and on a mission directly from Thirukedi to fulfill those duties, it was our right to be allowed the autonomy to act as we saw fit. In basic, the lady could command us to stop, but by courtesy she should not put us in the position of having to choose between our duty as osulked and our duty as Ai-Naidar to obey those above us.

It is not that I expected violence, at least, in the way so many of you might expect. I did not think the lady would imprison us or beat us or... or whatever crazed notion might spring from the heads of aliens, for whom physical violence always seems to lurk as the end-point of any disagreement. But emotional and social violence... that I could see. To be balked in our duties would be a great wound to us. The taint in Qenain was distressing enough to its members, without adding a conflict between its Nobles and the osulked sent to succor them.

As you might imagine, Ajan had one look at me and immediately put his ears back. "What happened?"

"What has not," I said and sat at the shabati before my blank paper block. I rested my hand on it, needing the comfort more than I cared how I might affect the surface with the oils of my skin. "The fathrikedi is indeed on the pedestal, and not at all resigned to whatever error sent her there. The observer has yet to discover the power of the mysterious formula her superior left behind. And a Guardian—one of your friends, if I am correct—has as much said that the lady may not want us here."

"That I could have told you," Ajan said, leaning against the door into the bedchamber, arms folded. His tail was twitching, a little agitated flick-flick that I found out-of-proportion disturbing, given how infrequently he was given to such displays. "The Gate-house was never staffed with Guardians appropriate to its use."

I glanced at him sharply. "Intentional?"

"No," he said. "More like... they didn't really anticipate the kind of issues that a Gate-house might end up dealing with. They've staffed it like a satellite of the House, appropriately. But it's not a satellite, it's an adjunct to the Gate trade. The Guardians here often feel uncomfortable with the situation; they have the power to make decisions appropriate to a more insulated house, not to one that has to deal with Merchants, aliens and considerable traffic from outsiders to the House."

Surprised, I said, "They have not brought up their concerns with the lord?"

"I asked," Ajan said. "But... they are fond of the lord, Calligrapher. They are personally devoted to him. To bring up those concerns might see them re-assigned elsewhere, away from him."

"They might also have been promoted," I said.

"Might, yes. But there is never a guarantee," Ajan said. The twitch of his shoulder and ear were noncommittal. "Among us, it is said that being capable of identifying a problem in the scope of one's duties, and expressing a desire to fix it, are enough proof that one should move up the ranks. But not all those above the Wall agree." His smile was without pleasure. "That is why we say there are good masters... and then, there are good masters."

"I am surprised the aphorism is not 'there are good masters, and then there are smart ones," I said. "Knowing the way Guardians talk."

"If it had been rendered the way Guardians talk," Ajan replied, "It would have been 'there are good masters, and then there are stupid ones.'" He grinned. "You don't yet seem to truly understand the insouciance of Guardians."

"No," I said, grimacing at the block. "I don't."

Following my gaze, Ajan said. "What will you paint tonight?"

"The ancestors alone know," I said with a sigh. "Because I don't. Go on to your rest. I'll sit the vigil."

Kor was better, I thought. At least, he didn't look so strained. I sketched him lying thus, smudging the shadows where they crept up into his dark fur with my fingertips, sullying the golden skin on my fingers and no doubt transferring several charcoal swipes onto my brow and cheeks when impatient with the results. "How nice," I muttered to him, "to sleep through all this anxiety and tension." Naturally, he remained silent. I pressed my thumbs beneath my brow-bones, trying to fend off the nascent headache and succeeding only in leaving yet more charcoal in the hollows there, where they would no doubt give me a ghoulish appearance.

As it turned out, they must have lent me a comical aspect, for when Seraeda arrived with the dinner trays her lips curved into a twitching smile, as if she was trying hard not to laugh. Resigned, I said, "I must look a patchwork."

"Or like a young boy caught after playing in the dirt," she said, and handed me one of the napkins from the tray.

I took it from her, reflecting that I probably needed a mirror to do justice to my face after an hour of growling at my sketch paper. "I did not think to see you so soon."

"Observers no less than calligraphers need to eat," she said. "I thought it would be salubrious to do so together. Where is your shadow?"

"My... oh, Ajan?" I looked for him. "In the bath, perhaps. I wasn't paying attention."

"And your companion?"

"Better today," I said. "I think, anyway, not being a physician myself."

"Then we shall eat with as little distress as we might," she said, seating herself. The vase in the corner had been refilled at some point with gray irises, and their shadows draped over one of her shoulders like an asymmetric ornament. I wanted to touch it. What a lovely woman. Patently, I was going insane. I sat across from her and accepted a cup of tea, wondering what I would do about the situation if I left Qenain in something other than disgrace. The situation being, of course, my inability to think clearly when Seraeda was in proximity...

"This business with the fathrikedi," Seraeda said, distracting me from my reverie of her. "It is exactly what I feared."

"I thought we were to dine without distress," I said.

"Then don't bite into that yet," she quipped. Naturally she was dipping her own grilled quail into the light sauce: plums, I thought, or perhaps jewelberry. The prospect of discussing troubling affairs while eating did not seem to faze her. "The fathrikedi did not require Correction."

"Oh?" I said, wanting to hear her reasoning.

"She was not wayward," Seraeda continued. "Save, perhaps, in her unnatural attachment to her lord."

"Ah," I said. "The physician said something similar." In response to her lifted brows, I said, "That to Correct her was to address a symptom, rather than the root of the matter, which was the lord's erratic behavior."

She huffed softly, tendrils of her hair blowing from her brow. "Yes. He would say that. We are of a similar mind, of course... we do medical work, so the metaphor would occur to us both."

"Hopefully, the lady will be content with the act of Correcting the Decoration and let the household resume its business," I murmured.

"I somehow doubt we will be that lucky," Seraeda said. "Oh, do eat, Farren."

Obediently I attended to the food beneath her watchful eye.

"Obviously you need a woman to take care of you," she said, her lips twitching again. "You are so thin because your mind wanders. I hear this affliction is typical of artists."

"You mean to tell me observers are somehow less prone to mental distraction?" I asked. "Somehow I doubt this!"

She laughed. "We are more systematic about it, let us say!"

"Ah," I said, wisely. "So inspiration strikes you on schedule, and solutions to problems arrive in orderly processions, and at appropriate moments."

"Just so," she said, eyes sparkling.

"And I would never find you staring off into space, contemplating some scientific brainstorm, having forgotten where you were bound, or that you were blocking the hall," I went on.

"I would very much like you to find me so, if it meant you were to find me in your hall," she said, studying me over her cup with eyes I found... suddenly... very difficult to meet.

I would have preferred to have been rescued in any other way than the physician entering my chambers without so much as a knock to announce in a growl, "She is sending me away!"

Seraeda and I both stood, our flirtation forgotten.

"Away," the physician continued, in great agitation, sleeves swaying as he threw his arms wide. "All of us... myself, the assistant, the chief observer and the lord!"

"What?" I said, struggling to find some equilibrium. "Why? When?"

"Just now, she has told me. To give me time to prepare the patients. We leave in the morning. As to why..." The physician sat as we stared at him. "She has not said. And I asked, but she answered only that it was for the best for all involved. But she refused to make her reasons known to me." He eyed me. "But I am only sesukedi, Calligrapher. You... you might ask her, and you she might enlighten."

I probably need not say that the last thing I wanted to do was present myself to the lady and ask after her reasons. But it did fall to me... otherwise, who would do it? I held back my sigh, but Seraeda must have seen it for she refilled my tea cup and pressed it on me.

"Will you do it?" the physician asked, intent on my face.

"Of course," I said. "I will go right now, before she retires."

A moment of digression here, aunera. I am not certain of the protocol, and lacking it I am forced to rely on bald words, so forgive me for them if they seem overly familiar. It has come to my attention that you feel I wrong you with my assumptions: please, forgive me. It is not my intention to make you feel so much like aliens... it is only that your ways are inexplicable to me, and you do seem more... agitated. Shame has commented that it is perhaps that our laws begin from different bases: ours addresses social wrongs, and physical violence is a rare matter, springing from that seed; it appears to us that you begin with physical violence, and only vaguely address social insult. Yours would be a strange and uneasy place for us to navigate, never knowing whether we committed any fault, and fearful always that we would learn it too late at your fists when at last we had broken one too many unspoken rules.

It is Shame's opinion that it must be thus, for you, because you are all so varied in custom and inclination. Forgive me again, if I tell you I find such a thing harrowing to contemplate. Like a garden where different plants are rooted, one behind the next without rhyme or reason, and without signs or labels, and each plant needing separate care and growing at a different rate... how you manage such diversity without inefficiency and loss, I cannot fathom.

But perhaps you do not, and that is the price you willingly pay for diversity. For us, the loss of a single person—their productivity, their happiness, their lives—is too great.

I have lost the thread of the story, however. Let us return to it.

With great reluctance, I left Seraeda to watch over Shame until Ajan returned, and took myself through the dimmed light of the halls toward the lady's study. Perhaps I would be fortunate, and she would not be available...

...but she was. And so I was ushered in, to find her still at her desk, reading something—accounts, perhaps? I could not read it upside down. Some sort of journal, though.

"Osulkedi," she said, sounding tired but not surprised. "Do sit, if it pleases you."

Neither sitting nor standing pleased me, as I did not want to be there. "I do not intend to trouble you long," I said, Abased, my head lowered.

"That is well, as I need no more trouble," the lady said. "Speak, then."

"Lady," I said. "Why are you sending the lord and observer away?"

Such a sigh. "What would you have me do, osulkedi? Their presence here is deeply disruptive. Even when the household is not speaking of it, the pall remains. Every footstep in this house holds the echo of the taint. It cannot be escaped. The whispers. The worries. I must remove the evidence from people's sight if I wish to begin to remove it from their minds."

That, aunera, is an aphorism among us: What is out of sight falls out of mind. It is in fact the basis of several contemplative exercises, mostly for the young and untrained: to begin to clear the mind by closing the eyes, or cleaning one's space. Indeed, our word for what you would call clutter, devre, refers specifically to both spiritual and physical clutter: there is no separating them. The one becomes the other.

So I could find no fault in that reasoning, save that... "Lady, without the lord and the observer at hand, there is no guarantee that Shame and I might uncover the source of the taint."

"You would put your curiosity above the well-being of the house and the fallen?" she asked. There was no accusation in her voice, only weariness.

"It is not curiosity, lady, forgive me," I said, struggling to convey the depth of my disagreement with her decision without failing the Abased mode that made voicing it possible. "If we do not find the source of the issue, the chances that it might recur..."

"Are stronger than if you do not, I know," the lady said. "But if I leave them here, osulkedi, the chances of it spreading also grow. You have seen the fathrikedi. And she is only the tip of that spear. The entire household is becoming disordered. Will you have me leave the disease here while you work on its cure?" She flattened her ears. "No, osulkedi. I will not see this entire house sickened. The mind-ill will not be harmed by their quarantine in facilities more capable of caring for them... and their absence will begin the work of healing this house."

"But we cannot do our work, lady, without them!" I said.

"Osulkedi," she said, her voice tensely formal, "you will have to find a way."

That was a clear enough dismissal, and really, what more was there for us to say to one another? We had made our positions known, and in the end, I had to bow to hers. And in truth, her reasons were sound. I could hardly complain, knowing the choice she'd made would probably injure her brother the more deeply: as an Ai-Naidari above the Wall of Birth must, she had put the welfare of those in her care above her own blood family. That is the duty of the Noble and the Regal. That it made my task nearly impossible was of no moment in compare to that duty.

There is a word for a situation in which duties conflict among Ai-Naidar: gaul, we say. And for the feelings that arise in response to that conflict: agathe. Agathe... the tearing grief and guilt and paralysis of knowing that the fulfillment of one duty causes us to fail in another. How deeply we strive to minimize these situations! The Books of Civilization exist in part to save us from that pain. Perhaps you have felt it also... I do not well understand your own concepts of duty and love, though I know you have them. Perhaps you then have felt agathe, that emotion that rises when you can make no right choice: when no matter what you do, someone is failed or wronged or hurt.

I skirted perilously close to agathe, leaving the lady's study. Perhaps then I could be forgiven for not fully seeing the implications of her decision. For if she could send away her own brother to save her household from taint, what would she do to the osulked investigating it?

"And now what?" the physician said upon my return. "How will you save Qenain?"

Seraeda flipped an ear toward me as she poured the tea and handed me a cup. I contemplated it morosely, wondering how the salvation of the house had come to rest entirely on my thin shoulders. "If the lady is right, the removal of the afflicted will begin the process without my intervention," I said.

"The lady is certainly right, at least in part," Seraeda said, sipping from her own cup. Over its brim, she said, "But she has sacrificed the lord to that aim, there is no doubt. He will not be returning to this house again."

Recognizing the truth in her words, all three of us remained silent. What the others pondered, I knew not. For my part, I wondered if I could have given up a family-member to taint in order to prevent the fall of a house. The lady began to assume heroic proportions in my mind.

"Well," the physician said grudgingly, rising. "I should go prepare for the journey tomorrow."

"And I should rest. The black flower is beginning to grow in my sleep," Seraeda said with a sigh.

"I will see you off in the morning," I said to the physician.

"I would like that," he answered. "I have enjoyed making your acquaintance, osulkedi."

We bowed to one another, hands folded in our robes.

Seraeda, watching, curled her tail in amusement and said, "So serious. As if you will never see one another again."

"We may not," the physician said, then eyed her. "Unless you know something we do not, Observer."

"Maybe," she said, with all the smugness that only the opposite sex can bring to bear. "Maybe not."

After they left I leaned against the closed door, feeling bereft... though of what, I could not say. I was relieved when Ajan entered and looked at me, one long gaze from feet to ears.

"You need to paint," he said, beginning to clear the dishes on the table.

"I do?" I said.

"You do," he said. "You're ruffled, and painting calms your mind. It is your meditation, the way practice is mine."

(That too is a truism among us, aunera. We say that your work must also provide your meditation, and if it does not soothe you to undertake some part of it, you are in the wrong work.)

"I have no idea what I would set down," I admitted.

"Then choose the first thing that comes to mind," Ajan said.

And that is how I came to paint agathe.

Yes, aunera, I know. It is a gruesome topic for a piece of art, and I hated that not only did I labor long over it, but that... yes, it calmed me. How can it be, that one might create something distressing, and yet find peace in that creation? I did not thank Ajan for the suggestion that led me to the page, for the revelation was as uncomfortable to me as the topic. I had not wanted to know that I could find satisfaction in the making of painful things.

But paint that painful thing I did, and chose to do so simply: I sheared the word at its center, one half of it higher than the other and the cut as sharp as a razor, painted, in fact along the edge of a metal rule. The word I colored in aching scarlet lake, evoking the translucence of blood, and carefully masked the letters so that I could smear orange into the red before it dried; orange, and the white one sees when blinded by a blow. And all this I darkened toward the cut in the center, so that the hole between the halves was implied: the oubliette of despair and tension into which we are condemned by gaul.

This painting consumed me for almost two hours, during which I kept one ear trained on the bedchamber and the susurrus of Shame's breath. What would he think of this one when he woke, I wondered? Most probably, he would bear it away as he had the first, to protect it from me. I was not comfortable with that revelation either: that in some ways, I too was a man of violence, and capable of a destruction motivated by passion. I merely needed the right impetus.

Perhaps all men are so, and I never realized it. Ancestors preserve me, and us all.

When I had finished the letters, I painstakingly cut a reverse mask to protect them and painted a gray radiance from the shear, as if the hole there could shine like a bleak star, drawing all light and will into it. I thought I was done then, but lifting my head I espied the vase of silver irises behind the chair where the Observer had sat... and so I added one to the picture, divesting it of two petals on the lower right, for the unease that asymmetry creates. This I drew over the summit of the word.

And then I left the shabati, feeling both calmer in mind and sick at heart. I stopped at Shame's bedside to reassure myself as to his status: was he cooler? I hoped my fingers did not deceive me, for surely we needed him now more than ever. And then I realized that I had lost Ajan... through the door, in fact, that led out of the bedchamber and into the little courtyard outside of it. Ours was not the only suite facing this private garden; such a floor plan is common in houses that entertain frequently, no matter their occupants, and Merchants no less than Nobles might have one. These spaces are called lever—say that leh-VARE, aunera, for I know you have similar-looking word that is said not at all the same—a private garden or courtyard for the use of guests. A leveri can be entirely enclosed or only partially, as ours was, leading as it did into the gardens behind the house.

There, amid the potted trees, Ajan was dancing.

I had no other word for such an act, though I knew by the weapons in his hands it was deadly. Nor did I have any context for the way he moved; no way to understand why that slash happened at that angle, nor what act his imaginary foe would have committed to be countered by this lunge or that sway. I knew only that its grace was indescribable... unbelievable, almost, for these martial exercises were all undertaken in despite of the obstacles around him, unplanned: the ornamental trees, the potted plants, the bench (from which he leapt after balancing neatly on its back on the ball of one foot)... I watched it all, transfixed, not just by the silhouette of his body interrupting the air, but by the red tassel and long gray scarf that trailed each of his weapons. Glint of bright steel, flick of scarlet cords, smoke-like shift of silk...

He was aware of me, though I was not aware of just how acutely until he made me part of his exercise. At his unexpected advance, I balked and stepped further into the garden to give him room... and in doing so, won myself an experience I would never have had otherwise: that of being the center of a Guardian's sphere of protection. For though I still could not picture the attack that would make sense of his movements, once I was within his circle I saw... I felt... that all that he did was solely to protect me. To bar steel and hand from my flesh.

There are moments in which knowledge erupts into the consciousness, fully formed, as shocking as a sudden flower's blooming. In that courtyard furled into that net of steel and sweat, I understood there was an entire discipline to which I was foreign and in which I was unlearned, with its own traditions and advances, its own lineage and reasons, and the young man I had been treating with such casual ignorance was not just heir to all its secrets, but had mastered them, and all that the remainder of us might bide in that ignorance, comfortable and safe.

That I could not imagine what threats he had been so exquisitely prepared to nullify hardly mattered. Or rather, it only served to illustrate the point.

Dizzied by the epiphany, I remained as still as I could. But even when I shifted, Ajan compensated. I breathed, and he wove his art, and I shook at the gift, and at the dark implication of its existence, and worse, my blissful lack of awareness of it.

He stopped because I was out of breath, not he. We met one another's eyes in that stillness. In that moment, there was nothing of the youth, and everything of the soldier.

At last, he said, "You asked to see my practice."

"And so I have," I said, regaining my voice somehow.

He grinned, and was once again the youth I'd met at Shame's side so seemingly long ago. "I have surprised you, I see. Didn't think it would be so pretty, did you?"

"Nor so acrobatic," I said, glancing at the bench.

He followed my gaze, then laughed. "That was my favorite part. My teachers always did say I had too great a love for climbing things."

I could so clearly hear the acerbic tone from this unknown tutor that I laughed also. "I suppose we all have a touch of rebellion in us."

"Do we?" Ajan said, untying the scarf from the pommel of his second blade. "That is not a thing I would have expected from your lips, osulkedi. More of a Guardian sentiment, if you will pardon my cheek."

"When you have put the artist among Guardians, what do you expect?" I said. "Why... the scarf?"

"But not the tassel?" Ajan said. He chuckled. "They are different things. Guardian things. Are you so eager to learn?"

"I am curious," I murmured, too embarrassed to explain my shame at my ignorance of his world.

"You would be, with your love of colorful things," Ajan said, folding the scarf. "The tassel is a dan-elet... a maze-the-eye. It serves to confuse the opponent, because it is bright and moves a great deal, and so the eye goes there instead of to the blade. The scarf... is a belevani." He cocked a brow at me.

"I thought belevan were love gifts," I said, obedient to his expression. "Does the word mean aught different among Guardians?"

He let the question sit between us, then grinned and said, "No!" And tossed the scarf into the air. It drew my eye, inevitably, and as it floated, gossamer, past the gate to the Qenain garden proper, I espied a figure hurrying through the rows. Seeing the change in my face, Ajan whirled around, swords at the ready. His ears flattened. "That looks like..."

"The lord!" I said on an out-breath, shocked. "Am I right?"

"I think you are," Ajan said, tension wiring his lean body.

"But... he was abed..." I said.

"Not anymore," Ajan said. "And evidently intent on an errand for which he wants neither witness nor company."

We glanced at each other, and spoke in unison.

"You stay with your master—"

"—we must investigate..."

A heartbeat's pause, in which Ajan looked deeply pained.

"Stay," I said firmly. "Your place is at the side of your masuredi... and this, this is for me to do."

He did not argue, and I knew who the love gift had been from. Who else? "Go carefully, osulkedi."

"I will return," I promised him, and hastened in pursuit of the lord of Qenain.