The following morning, while Shame was in the bathing chamber, Ajan came to me and, crouching, took up the hem of my robe and kissed it.

"Thank you," he said. "Thank you for saving him."

"Penokedi," I began, and sighed. "Ajan. Rise, please." As he stood, I said, "I have made a beginning only. This is the work of more than one person. Do you understand? One relationship cannot serve all needs."

He dipped his head at the aphorism and said, "You are wise, osulkedi."

Rueful, I said, "I am too young to be wise." Clearing my thoughts I said, "Off with you now. Finish your packing and break your fast. No doubt your master will want to leave the moment he has secured our permit."

"Of course," he said.

As he turned to go, I added, "Penokedi." When he paused, I said, "I will need your help in this. As I said, I have only made a beginning."

He met my eyes and said, with all passion, "Anything."

"Well I know it," I murmured. "Go now."

He went, leaving me to my thoughts which, I fear to admit, aunera, were rather meddlesome. I would blame this on parental instinct, as one learns to meddle quite a great deal as a parent... but I sense I would probably have meddled even had I not had Marul. All I can say in my defense is that this kind of social manipulation of relationships is quite expected among us, and we are far more forgiving of it that you seem to be.

So, yes. I was plotting to solve Ajan's difficulties as well as Kor's. As I began packing my own trunk, I thought back to my exclamation. How amazing! For it was true. I did feel too young to be wise, after too many years feeling much too old. The happenings in Qenain were stinging me back to life, it seemed... and perhaps just in time. Kherishdar is not served by an individual who lays down his burden before his years.

I was mostly done with my work when Shame left the bathing chamber, looking far more hale to my eye than he had yesterday.

"Shall I go with you to the lady?" I asked, my voice even.

He was toweling off his hair, moving around the room in search of his clothes, which Ajan intercepted him with. "No. Unless you wish it."

"No," I said, to his complete lack of surprise, I was sure. "And if you knew what I would say in advance, why did you ask?"

He grinned. "For the pleasure of showing you that I was letting you make the choice?" He donned again the robes of his office while I watched with a faint frown. "And now what is it? Have I displeased my ajzelin so swiftly?"

"You should wear colors," I said sternly.

This stopped him entirely. "Pardon?"

"Colors," I repeated. "Black makes you look forbidding. And those few paltry white edges that show at the hems only make the contrasts more dizzying."

Kor said slowly, "The priests of Shame always wear black, white or gray."

"There's a colored stole," Ajan said helpfully.

Kor looked over his shoulder with a scowl.

"It's true," Ajan said to me, wearing his most innocent expression. "As a priest who can administer every Correction, he is entitled to wear the colored stole."

"And what color is it?" I asked, beginning to enjoy the look on Kor's face. He was due some exasperation of his own.

"It's crimson on the face," Ajan said. "And flesh-pink on the other side."

"That sounds perfect," I said, donning my most thoughtful look.

"It would be dramatic," Ajan agreed, wearing a similar one.

"I can't wear that stole," Kor said, ears flicking back. "It's the First Servant's!"

"And you're entitled to wear it," Ajan said.

"Obviously you must, to honor the First Servant," I said to Kor.

"Farren, you don't understand," Kor said. "It's the First Servant's. Quite exactly, his stole. It's centuries old!"

"So be careful with it," I said, beginning to understand how Ajan had developed that unrepentant grin of his. I satisfied myself with looking innocent. "You need a touch of color on you."

"Artist!" Kor exclaimed finally.

"Yes, thank you," I said, laughing.

"I am going," Kor said, but he was smiling now too. "Are you almost done here?"

"Yes," I said. "Though I'd like to have breakfast and take my leave of the household before we depart."

"Very well," he said. "I will meet you here when you're done." He touched my shoulder as he passed, and I caught the hand as it fell and squeezed it. And then he was gone, Ajan falling into position at his back with all the precision of long-practiced maneuver.

Oh yes. I was going to meddle. No question.

So I left the gracious suite assigned us by the missing lord of Qenain and went to have my last cup of consommé in the kitchen, where I found the workers there far more settled than they had been before. The lady's decision may have seemed overly harsh to you, aunera, but it had already begun to work; the physician had departed in the morning (with some disgruntlement at having found one of his patients unavailable), and in the absence of the afflicted the household's Servants and staff had resumed their routines, and been calmed by them thereby.

My only puzzlement was over how the lady had explained the lord's disappearance. The Ai-Naidar in the kitchen seemed incurious; when I asked, they said they'd heard something about the lord being sent on in advance, as his was a more serious case. I left my queries there, since asking excited their anxieties and I had no desire to further distress them. They could do nothing to solve the situation, nor to illuminate it further... as Shame had said, we must travel to the source of the error, and learn what there was to learn there.

Besides, I knew someone who would be more amenable to my questions, and my company. It was there that I took myself, perhaps a little too pleased with the transformations I had affected in myself and Shame, and expecting perhaps that some glow off my person would alert Seraeda to my new self-improvements and compel her to ask questions that I would be glad to answer, if put to me, but that would have been gauche to prompt.

I fear I was a bit over-pleased with myself, yes, like a young man. So I was suitably deflated when my arrival caused Seraeda to lunge toward me and exclaim (ignoring my mantle of renewed vitality), "You must not allow them to stop trade with the aunera!"

Startled, I answered, "What?"

"The flower, Farren!" she said. "The flower is important!"

It would have been impolite to laugh in the face of her zeal, but I felt the urge nevertheless. She was truly, from bone to pelt, an Observer.

"Tell me," I said.

She drew me back to the office she had temporarily claimed. "The flower," she said as she closed the door, and then visibly composed herself, pressing her fingers to her brow. "Ah, I am starting at the ending! I must start at the beginning."

"It would help," I agreed, fascinated by her agitation.

"You know that our bodies age while our minds are clear enough to observe it," Seraeda said. "Save in unusual case."

"Yes," I said. We are not without senility, but it is rare to live long enough to court such a fate.

"This flower," Seraeda said. "This flower, Farren, may help."

"Help us live long enough to become senile?" I said, unable to help the observation.

She glared at me. I returned her look, wondering what had inspired it, until she rested her hands carefully, palm down, on the desk... and leaned over it to pin me to my chair with her eyes.

"I see the face of the enemy," she said. "But I did not expect it to be worn by you, Farren."

My ears tucked back against my head, confused and unsettled. "Seraeda, I am not your enemy."

"The attitude reflected by your statement is," she said, sitting in the senior observer's chair. "My investigations remain preliminary, but what I see indicates that chemicals derived from this flower, combined with native compounds we are already aware of, may extend the average lifespan by five years."

"That is remarkable," I said, meaning it. Her hostility had put me off-balance.

"What would you say if it could be proven to extend our lifespans by a decade, Farren?" she asked. "Twenty years? Would you still think it remarkable?"

"Seraeda...," I said, my ears still back.

"Would you?" she asked. "Or would you tell me 'we are not ready to live another twenty years? What would happen to the children waiting for their elders to pass on their responsibilities? What would happen to the worlds, if suddenly more people lived to eat the food currently harvested? What would happen to our cities, forced to contend with the sanitation needs of so many more people? What would happen to our spiritual development, if we became too accustomed to living longer than our wont?'"

Now I stared at her. "I think," I said slowly, "you have thought these objections out much more definitively than I have."

"Of course I have," she said. "I am an observer; it is my work to think. You, though, are an artist. Your reaction was an unexamined feeling, wasn't it. A feeling that said 'it is not for us to act above our natural station.' You made a joke. You were flippant. You do not believe."

This was rather much. "Seraeda, the joke was harmless."

"You think the joke was harmless," she said. "But it revealed you. Humor reveals the true heart, just as art does." She opened the desk drawer as she continued, her voice brisk and impersonal. "I remain unaware of the cause for Baran's collapse, or the reason behind his arguments with the lord. However, I did find this." She set a capped jar on the desk between us. "It is pigment."

"Pigment," I repeated.

"Yes," she said. "Medically inert, as far as I can tell. It is not the ink he used to write with, however, and I cannot explain its presence otherwise. We are not in the habit of having spare ink pots hidden in locked drawers."

Perplexed, I took the jar, but its contents mattered far less to me than Seraeda's state. "I will tell Shame that it is important we continue trading for the foreign flowers."

"It is not important," she said. "It is imperative."

To that, I said nothing, for it was not for me to make such decisions... nor for her, at that. In the end, it is Thirukedi's decision. And with my silence, we made clear our philosophical differences in the matter.

"I hope," I said, voice low, "you are not too sore with me."

"I don't blame you for your attitude, Farren," she said. "I'm just disappointed you haven't risen above it."

That stung. I stood quietly, taking the jar with me. "Thank you for the evidence."

"Such as it is," she said. "I hope it helps."

And that was as much farewell as I received from Seraeda the last time I saw her in Qenain's laboratory, as one of its observers.

Outside the room I needed several moments to compose myself. My hands were shaking, something I noticed only because my sleeves trembled on my wrists. I smoothed the fabric down to my hands, where the signs of empire were limned, and then pocketed the jar before going outside, where I expected to find Ajan waiting for his master... and fortunately, he was, standing with our beasts in the courtyard.

"My trunk?" I asked, subdued.

"Already sent ahead," he said. "If that pleases you, osulkedi."

"That is well," I said.

He studied me carefully, something I allowed while I made pretense at checking my mount's tack and re-acquainting myself with it, petting its soft nose. But kindly, he did not say anything, and somehow this silence between us remained restful. I had thought being left alone with my thoughts would distress me, but Ajan did not leave me alone. Without words, somehow, he drew me from myself, and that sufficed.

Shame emerged from Qenain's gate-house not long after, and I found great comfort in the sight. I expected nothing more than that, but his gaze swept over us, beasts and people both, and then halted abruptly on me. Before I could make explanation he was before me, hands on my arms and a frown on his face.

"What is it?"

"Seraeda..." I trailed off.

"Hurt you?" Ajan said from behind me, and I heard the growl in his voice. Kor looked past me at his penokedi and twitched his head in minute negation before looking again at me. "Something we need to know?"

"The aunerai flower may extend our lives," I said. "She guesses by as much as five years."

"Interesting," Kor murmured, eyes losing their focus. I remembered the look from what seemed like so long ago now, when we first met, and waited for him to return from his thoughts before speaking my own.

"You don't think this is a good thing?"

"To live longer?" he said. "It depends on the quality of the life those five years offer." He let me go. "I am sorry you argued."

"She is..." I looked for words. "She is an observer. Her chief thought is for the science."

"And you, perhaps not enough so for her taste," Kor guessed as he checked his mount's tack rather more knowledgeably than I had mine.

"She called me an artist," I said. "I don't think she meant it as kindly as you did."

"We sometimes say things we don't mean when passion takes us in the moment," Kor said, his voice gentle.

Thinking of her words, I said, "And sometimes, we reveal ourselves."

To that, Kor—Shame—said nothing.

We mounted then, the two younger Ai-Naidar with rather more grace than I managed, and without fanfare or farewell we departed. I was glad of the chance to be away from the Gate-house with all its uneasy memories. "I presume the lady gave you the permit?" I said, guiding my mount up alongside his as we gained the byway.

"She did," he said.

"She wouldn't have denied him," Ajan added. "Especially after he guessed about the messenger."

"The messenger," I said. "That he came?"

"That he brought news that Qenain acted without sanction," Ajan said.

I glanced at Kor. "It was true? You guessed."

"It was the only guess that made sense," Kor said. "Her reaction confirmed it." He eyed Ajan. "You should not be volunteering this information so easily, Ajan."

"The osulkedi is family now," Ajan said. "Isn't he?"

There was a long pause. You have all perceived with remarkable insight, aunera, the depth and importance of being ajzelin. But you perhaps do not know that our highest indicator of significance for a relationship has to do with whether it creates the expectation of family bonds or not—whether with it, one undertakes the responsibility of caring for one another and one another's relations... or if one holds oneself apart. Perhaps you understand: to break bread with a person is one thing. To give the last of your bread to your beloved's hungry grandmother... that is another.

Kor and I had not discussed whether we were willing to be family or not, and Ajan's question had pierced the core of our peculiar circumstance... for neither of us really had a strong family anymore. I had been divorced from mine by distance and death. He had never had one, by virtue of his orphan status, and his choices thereafter.

"Well?" Ajan said.

Kor glanced at me, his voice just... so slightly... tentative. "Farren?"

I sighed. "Ajan, you are too bold. And you will not be young enough to be easily forgiven for it for much longer."

"You see, I must be right, or he wouldn't be lecturing me like a son," Ajan said with a grin. To his master, "So I don't see why I should hold my tongue around him."

I felt Kor's gaze on my face, though I kept my eyes doggedly on the street as seen between my mount's pricked ears. Partially because I wasn't sure I was ready to look at him... and partially because I was not so good a rider to hold long, significant looks with someone while still keeping my mount walking forward.

"I should cuff you," Kor said to Ajan with a faint growl.

"As my master wills it," Ajan said, rather too cheerfully.

"Don't oblige him," I said, smiling a little. "We will discuss the family matter later. I'm not unwilling."

"Neither am I," he said quietly.

The mounts filled the ensuing silence with the clap of their hooves on the street, and I heard it as the chime of Ereseya's temple bells, like a shiver in my bones. How ironic to go from Qenain's laboratory and my shattered hopes of a possible family relationship, to the wind-swept byways outside it and the lifting hope of that possibility.

Thinking of the confrontation in the laboratory reminded me of the jar. "There was something else..." I took the vial from my pocket. "Seraeda found this jar of ink in the senior Observer's desk in a locked drawer."

"Ink?" Kor said, frowning. He extended his hand, drawing his mount alongside mine until our legs were almost bumping. I carefully handed it over and watched with no little awe as he undid the cap and smelled the inside without dropping the reins or losing control of his ride.

"It seemed a strange thing to have locked in a drawer," I offered. "I have pigments valuable enough to require protection, but I can't imagine what an observer would be doing with one of them, and it doesn't look like anything I have...."

"That's because you would not have it," Kor said, voice low. "And could not, without incurring serious punishment, Farren."

"Punish—but... what ink would..." I stopped, my fingers tightening on the reins and my eyes dropping to the figures on their backs. The figures drawn onto them...

...with ink that burned.

"The lord gave the chief observer a vial of the merethek ink?" I asked, shocked. "But that is never to be handled outside the rituals! And it is certainly not for those who are not lords to ever handle!"

"I know," Kor said, his voice still low.

"So what was it doing in the laboratory?" I asked, the fur on the back of my spine lifting.

"That," Kor said, "is what I believe we are about to discover."

 

viridity, n. 1a: the quality or state of being green b: the color of grass or foliage 2: naive innocence

aunera, n. 1: a color—emerald green, very lush and deep, with a slight tint of blue 2: anything alien, from people to worlds to emotions to thoughts.

This time the Guardians at the Gate with their brightly-sleeved weapons examined the permit produced by Shame and let us pass on. I was expecting more ceremony, perhaps, but there was none, only that careful check and then a wave of a hand. So we kept riding, into the breeze out of the Gate with its coolth and increasingly, its fragrance... something unknown to me, but that felt like the essential definition of cleanliness... or emptiness. Or newness...

I was still trying to find the word when we passed through the film and out of it, instantly, into the colony's bright, hot afternoon. My eyes began watering at once: the colors were so sharply delineated by that hard white sun that I could not find any gradients at all. Each blade of grass was its own, distinct color and I saw them all as separate things. That together those separate things should have made a gradual shading of the brilliant green at the top of the hill to the shadowed brown in its lap never seems to have occurred to any of them.

My first impression, then, of an alien world... was that it was quite intrinsically, poetically, and completely aunerai.

It also smelled liked flowers, and a high, dry smell like dust, though I felt nothing particulate against my skin with the Gate wind blowing at my back.

The Gate on this side was, like its face on our world, paved toward with roads and set about with buildings. Though there was more of it than there was on the opposite side, most of the architecture was familiar: on the right, I saw our warehouses, Guardian barracks, and Gate-houses, with the roads connecting them winding around the short hills in a way I found harmonious; there were, of course, the inevitable gardens, though the familiar flowers looked bizarre beneath the foreign sunlight. But on the left, connected by straight roads laid on a grid pattern, there were buildings made in a fashion unfamiliar to me: utilitarian things with slab sides in plain gray or white paint. They came in different sizes and heights, but that was the only clue to their use for they were otherwise identical, as if they had been upended in place out of similar molds.

Well, not the only clue. As Shame showed his permit yet again to a new set of Guardians, I saw plaques on the walls next to the doors, and my ears flattened to my head.

"Kor," I said, once he'd rejoined me. "They speak a different language."

He glanced at me. "Of course they do."

"That we don't," I said pointedly.

"We do business with them," he said. "Someone must speak both languages. The lord certainly does."

"He at least speaks some form of language they understand," Ajan said from behind us.

Sadly, aunera, that innuendo took me several moments to grasp.

"Ignore him," Kor said. "He's young."

"Less young than frustrated," I said, which was my way of teasing both of them at once; and since I won sharp glances from them both I counted myself quite the success.

"You know your duty," Kor said to Ajan, more seriously.

"Master," Ajan said, matching his mien. And then his mount fell back and I found myself riding alone with my peer.

"You leave him at the Gate?" I asked, puzzled.

"He'll join us soon," Shame said.

Not long after, then, we came to Qenain's Gate-house at the colony, and once again found ourselves leaving our mounts in the hands of their Servants and asking for the lord. Shame sat in the foyer beside the guest fountain, composed, his hands resting on his thighs. I sat across from him and studied the colors of the shadows on the inside of the building. They were grayer here than on our world... less purple, and still sharper despite the sun being on the other side of the walls. I wasn't sure what I would think of working here. All my art would feel too soft for this world. Too civilized to survive, somehow.

I was still considering the notion of art changing to suit its environment rather than to reflect the inner world of its maker, when the Servant returned to regretfully inform us that the lord was not in, and that she wasn't sure where we had gotten our information that he was, as he hadn't been back across the Gate in days.

"Is that so," Shame murmured.

"It is," she said, Abased and obviously distressed. "And we have work here in need of his approval, so if you do find him, osulkedi..."

"We will tell him his duties call him," Shame promised.

And then we were outside, waiting for our animals.

"Do you think he was there, and the Servant lying?"

"Do you?" Kor asked, glancing up at me.

I thought back to her expression, to the hurried movements of her body and the tightness of her gestures, and the way her face had felt open, like a flower. "No."

Kor said, "I agree. And I didn't expect him here."

"If you didn't expect him here, then... how are we to find him?" I said. "He could be anywhere. And these creatures..." I trailed off, staring at the complex on the other side of the road. It was not small. "Presumably his interest is in only one of them. How are we to find it? We don't even know its name!"

"Patience, Farren," Kor said, with a tone that was like a pleased smile. "Why don't we have tea while we wait?"

As our mounts were brought to us, I said, plaintively, "Wait for what?"

Naturally, he did not answer. I pulled myself into the saddle and followed him, and once I drew alongside him said, "You know you don't have to act inscrutable and all-knowing around me."

His mouth worked but managed to avoid breaking into the smile I heard again in his answer. "Indulge me, Farren."

I sighed. "Fine. But only because you are a good cuddler."

No doubt several people wondered why the high priest of Shame in all Kherishdar was laughing so hard when we rode past. I felt some sympathy for their not being able to ask.