Several of you have asked about our riding beasts, a topic I am afraid I know little about. They are much like ourselves: tall, slender things with narrow tails and heads and long ovate ears: grazers and herd-beasts, more comfortable in a group than alone.
As I said, they are much like ourselves.
What you will perhaps find unusual is that we do not speak of beasts as we would a person. I am given to understand several strange things about you, aunera, first being that you have a multiplicity of languages (how do you understand one another? Must you learn them all?), and second that many of these languages do not provide for easy ways to distinguish between people and everything else. Our language does this: there is a manner of speech particular to Ai-Naidar, and a manner that refers to animals, plants and objects: the non-Ai-Naidar case, I would call that.
I have tried in vain to decide on a way to render these distinctions in your language. The closest the scribe and I can come is to call Ai-Naidar "he" and "she" and to use "it" for everything else, from animals to objects. But even this division is unclear, for the scribe has confided that many of you use the pronoun "it" for your own beasts if you cannot confidently determine the sex of the creature. I cannot impart to you, then, the absolute wall our language builds between Ai-Naidar and other things. Like the Wall of Birth in our caste system, there is no rising above it without divine intervention.
I fear now I must tell you that aunera also are referred to in this manner, as non-Ai-Naidar. The scribe tells me some of you will not be insulted to be lumped in the same category as beasts and flowers, and I hope it is so.
Whatever the case, this distinction has relevance to our tale... for the use of weapons is controlled by their targets. The weapons allowed against Ai-Naidar are few, but there is no weapon that cannot be used against anything else. You have wondered why you have seen no guns among us? Now you know. I have never gone where their use is legal, for they cannot be turned against an Ai-Naidari. They are only employed against beasts... and aliens.
Let us continue from this unpleasant digression.
If anything, the traffic on the roads grew denser as we set out the following day. I wondered at it: the last major holiday in the capital, the Spring Welcoming, was a month behind us, and most people would have dispersed to their homes long since. The further we travelled the more people we encountered, until at last I wondered if we would have the luxury of staying in a Merchant's hall again.
Around dusk the carriage stopped. I peered out the window to find Shame, his Guardian and the carriage master conferring. I couldn't hear them, but from the twitch of Shame's ears and the rigidity of his back he was displeased. When we resumed moving, Shame rode ahead... and I called to the Guardian, using the caste-rank one would give the Guardian employed in public spaces.
"Basirkedi?"
The youth fell back to pace the carriage. "It's penokedi, osulkedi, if you would. I am Shame's Guardian in particular."
"I did not know osulked to require such service," I said, startled, for to be penokedi made this youth a Public Servant himself, and within my caste. No wonder he had so little habit of averting his eyes!
"His is a special case."
So many special cases, and this was only the beginning of my education in them.
He added, "My name is Ajan, also. If you prefer. I expect we will see much of one another, as I am not to be detached until Shame returns to the temple."
"Of course," I said; that at least, was customary, though he would not expect to call me by anything but my title. We shared a caste, but even so I occupied its topmost rank. "What did they decide?"
"Oh, we'll stay at Elikim's guest house tonight," the Guardian said. "You know Qenain's in Athurizin's district? And Athurizin's ascension day is approaching, so everyone is coming for the celebration. There's no other place to stay, not really, unless we want to crowd into some already over-burdened family's home. It's not likely that anyone without a Noble or Regal's size home is going to be able to keep us easily. It's just the one night, then we'll be at Qenain."
"Is it such a hardship, then?" I asked.
The Guardian glanced at me, and I read in his eyes a moment's uncertainty.
"I know nothing of these matters," I said. "Speak, please, and educate me."
"Shame needs to stand apart from other Ai-Naidar," the Guardian said at last. "Staying in someone's home is an intimacy."
"I imagine he shall have trouble at Qenain, then, yes?"
"That's different," the youth said dismissively. "He will be on duty then. It's harder when he is passing through."
"Even for just a night?"
The Guardian smiled, ears flicking backward. "A heartbeat is long enough, for Shame." (That is a single word for us, aunera: tsan, one of our words for subjective measures of time.) And then, almost to himself, "Or at least, it used to be." Then he looked forward at something I could not spy through the carriage window and said, "I am wanted, osulkedi."
I nodded, though technically I had no ability to stay or release him; if as he said he truly was Guardian in particular to Shame, only his ward and Thirukedi could command him. And I had enough to ponder from what words he'd shared... and more importantly, for the concern he'd revealed over the change in his ward's behavior. Too, it was hard to conceive of what it meant to be an osulkedi who must not draw too close to the people he served.
Again, this theme of apartness. Yet if I painted the Exception's aloneness in washes of gray and blue, then to paint Shame's I would need black ink on bleached vellum, bordered in red.
You imagine I am being dramatic, aunera. Truly, I do not blame you. It is against my nature to be quite... so... sensational in my description. It is a measure of how aberrant Shame's presence was in my life... my ordered, gentle life which is poorly acquainted with urgency or violence. It is not that I have not known sorrow or pain or joy. But... how can I explain? Mine is a contemplative art. It requires and teaches patience. Deliberation. A... way of arranging the world in one's thoughts. I had become accustomed to it, and indeed it was expected of me: it was how I had been chosen to my caste and elevated to its final rank.
Shame is a page from a different book. No, to be honest, a book from a different library, as alien to me as I must be to you, and we two, we are not even the same species.
I struggle, thus, to do justice to him, without even the vocabulary to make the attempt. I am reduced to color and line, the language that does not desert me when I am otherwise mute. Accept my apology, please. I will make it again, for I fear that I will only become more emotional as I share these happenings with you. There will be no apology lengthy enough to cover my mental state... I will have to beg your indulgence, and your pity.
[ Excerpt from the Book of Castes: Public Servant volume.]
On the matter of apologies.
[This section of the book is organized by offense given, and subdivided into a Public Servant's proper apologetic behavior based on the caste-rank of the person they have offended. The relevant section is excerpted.]
For private disruption caused by emotional excessiveness, particularly expressed verbally, from osulkedi to Ai-Naidari of unknown rank (duinikedi): Three apologies of acceptable form accompanied by a single held bow, as if to an Ai-Naidari of rank below Thirukedi.
[There is no entry for the appropriate number of apologies for an osulkedi guilty of private disruption caused by emotional excessiveness, particularly expressed verbally, to an aunerai.]
It was my intention to leave the carriage swiftly enough to be the first to greet the Head of House Elikim... I thought perhaps Shame would prefer it, since I was more comfortable staying with strangers. But it was far quicker for him to dismount from an animal and stride to the door than it was for me to wait for the carriage to come to a halt and disembark. Both Shame and his Guardian had entered the Noble's manse before I could join them.
I was shown every courtesy I had come to expect from any Ai-Naidari while traveling... and all the additional courtesies that those above the Wall of Birth were expected to extend to those beneath it. And yet as exquisite as those courtesies were, there was an air of distraction to their application.
I could trace Shame's path through the manse by the silence that lingered in his wake.
So I followed it.
Yes, so quickly did he influence me. But at the time, I thought only that Thirukedi had given me a directive and I had some premonition that I could not fulfill it if I let the priest pass from my sight. So even though I was uncomfortable forcing the Servants to follow me, rather than allowing them to lead me to my accommodations, I trailed up the carpeted steps to the second floor. House Elikim’s manse followed the mulever format, so named for its resemblance to the mulever cut used on gemstones... the stairs opened onto a rectangular room that ran half the length of the building, studded with ornately wallpapered doors that led to individual rooms. One's guests entertained in this central room with its long hearth and elegant tables; it served as a parlor for each of the private suites that opened onto it.
I found the priest's Guardian first, having a polite conversation with a woman in the rich raiment of a Noble, which I caught only a part of: he was declining dinner.
"But surely you have been on the road and could use a meal," the Noble said as I drew nigh.
"It is that we have been on the road, ij Elikim, that the osulkedi proffers his regrets. He is weary."
"Of course," the woman said, but by the cant of her ears she was surprised. It was not that she would have tried to compel us to dine with her, though she could technically command us to it. But courtesy required her to see to our needs and custom made the offering of food one of those needs. It was... an unnecessarily awkward position to force her into, a subtle discourtesy of our own. I was appalled: it would have taken only half an hour to observe the formalities and then retire to the rooms we'd been assigned. Surely another osulkedi could manage that much.
She was turning to go when she espied me at the door and paused. "Forgiveness," she said, politely, "My brother was to see to you?"
...and I had left him behind by chasing after Shame. I blushed and bowed. "A moment's confusion," I said, slightly more Abased in my grammars by way of apology.
"Ah," she said, smiling hesitantly. The Guardian turning her away from her own guest suite had probably set her off-balance. "Have you been shown your room?"
"No, ij Elikim," I said, bowing again. "There would be gratitude for the courtesy."
The more I spoke, the more she relaxed, realizing I was not planning to sow disharmony. To my great pleasure, she even assayed a faint smile. "And may I interest you in my table, then, or do you also take your nourishment from star-light and veil-glow?"
Daring a less-Abased tone, I replied, "I fear I am not so sublime a creature as to forgo physical food. Your table would honor me, lady."
She beamed and beckoned me down the hall. "Your room first, then, osulkedi. Then you shall see what physical food you might find in House Elikim."
The Nobles of Elikim were charming and deft hosts; I wondered what Shame had feared to avoid dining with them, but he'd missed an exquisite repast. They did not forget him despite his rudeness, and I accompanied the Servant with the covered tray back up the stairs after the meal, parting ways with him to go into my own room. And there I stretched myself on the tender mattress and fell asleep without issue, and would have slept contentedly the entire night.
Except that I dreamed of a seeming never-ending procession of Ai-Naidar, urgent and confused, and it distressed me enough that I woke in the middle of the night and rose from the bed. I shrugged on a dressing robe provided by the House. There would be warm wine by the hearth in the parlor; a glass of that would be enough to settle me again. I let myself out of the suite—
—only to find the parlor occupied by several members of the Household, whispering amongst themselves. A tired Ajan stood before Shame's door.
"Penokedi?" I asked, edging closer to him. I nodded toward the Ai-Naidar in the parlor. “What is this?”
Ajan glanced at them, eyes flicking forward again. "They want to talk to him."
"Talk to him," I repeated.
Now the Guardian glanced at me and said, more slowly, "They have invoked their right to talk to him."
I stared at the people in the parlor, ears flattening. "All of them?"
"You missed the first four," the Guardian said. "There's another one in there now."
"Can they do that?" I asked, appalled, even though I knew the answer... and Ajan knew that I should know. He met my eyes just briefly enough to avoid insouciance.
"Does this happen every time you stop at a household?"
"There have been rare occasions where it has not," the Guardian said.
I grimaced. It would have been incorrect for the Noble to stop her household from descending on a visiting osulkedi; the purpose of our traveling so was to make ourselves available, even if in a limited capacity, while we were on errantry. For me that meant painting or sketching, an act I could do with company if I felt the need for other Ai-Naidar, or alone if I requested solitude.
But I had read Shame's journals, and I had some notion of what it meant for someone to need his services. Looking at the number of people in the parlor, I couldn't imagine him seeing to them all before sunrise, even if he heard only their confessions. If they needed something more involved…
"Surely they must let him sleep!" I exclaimed.
Said the Guardian, "There is only one Shame in Kherishdar."
They did not. I knew it by the tautness of the Guardian's face when I left the room in the morning and found him still standing at Shame’s door. Concern for his ward, I thought, not the exhaustion he surely must feel at having been on his feet all night. But he was young enough to weather it well... better than I could have. My own sleepless nights, caring for my daughter in her infancy, had long since fled... I did not think myself capable of such vigils anymore, though I would be proven wrong in that.
"The coach is waiting," Ajan told me, his voice tight. "The Noble is much grieved that we are leaving before breaking our fast with the family."
"I imagine so," I said, pitying her. She had to know that her own had prevented her guest from sleeping, and she constrained from chastising them for not considering his well-being. It would have been wrong for her to command her own to forgo his services; it was wrong for her to ill-use a guest. Her distress must have been extreme, and we were compounding it by not accepting the meal she was offering by way of what must have felt a very meager apology.
It was for me to go down the stairs, then, and enter that carriage. But I could not force myself to go: some nameless curiosity held me affixed to the spot outside my room. When Shame’s door opened for a slim female wrapped in the silks of an upper-ranked household Servant, I marked the look on her face as she went by: wide-eyed, pupils dilated, ears flushed… a smile on her face like a secret and an ease in her shoulders like relief. She looked whole and alive and relaxed even as she hurried back to her duties.
What would it be like, some part of me whispered before I could silence it. To be attended to by Shame. What would he say to me to make such an expression appear on my face? I stilled a shudder, wrapping my over-robe more closely around myself. I should certainly go down now to the carriage… but I had to see the osulkedi. As I waited I avoided Ajan’s eyes: I skirted impropriety close enough, indulging this curiosity, without knowing he bore witness to it.
The door opened again. Shame closed it behind himself, the movements abrupt and precise. If the night had drained him, there was no sign of it in his body.
I was standing at the door to my room; perhaps he expected the parlor to be empty save for his Guardian. I caught, in the moment as he turned from the door, a glimpse of his unguarded face, one stripped by hours of his work to its essential character.
And ancestors save me, aunera. My heart stumbled beneath my breastbone and all my breath stopped up with it.
Completing his turn, he greeted Ajan and then espied me. From his glance he did not know that I’d seen into him—initially. But within a heartbeat of seeing my face, he knew. I waited, not knowing what to expect. Some brusque comment, perhaps. A chastisement? To be ignored—
—I did not expect his eyes to soften, nor the wry twist of his mouth. He put his hand behind my back without touching it and propelled me toward the stairs by suggestion alone; I could not resist him, nor did I want him to touch me, not knowing what those hands had done in all the long hours before.
“Come, Calligrapher,” he said. “We have our duties.”
“Will you at least ride in the carriage and rest?” I asked, and was immediately appalled at my own forwardness.
He chuckled. “The day I cannot stand a night in the service of my duty, osulkedi, is the day I am no longer fit for it.”
“So I thought when I was young,” I said. “But my fingers no longer permit me to work through the night no matter my zeal, nor my prophecies a decade past.”
His laugh was quiet. “Then permit me the arrogance of youth while I may claim it.”
I continued talking—insisting. “I still wish you would rest. Your body may need no sleep, osulkedi, but your spirit is another matter.”
He glanced at me with his odd coronal eyes. “Perhaps so.”
But that was the end of the matter. I went down the stairs and he followed me, hands folded behind his back. We took our sadly abbreviated farewells of House Elikim’s majors… and Shame returned to his mount with Ajan at his heel, and I once again boarded the carriage alone. All the way there I had pondered my appalling liberties with a man I barely knew. To speak so to a virtual stranger! He had, with superior courtesy, allowed it, but I should not have been so insistent. Even you have a word for it, your scribe tells me: “badgering.” This much, then, we have in common.
And yet, thinking on his face as he left the room, I could not find it in myself to regret the words, and sitting in the carriage, I wished he had listened to me, and found even an hour’s peace therein.
And now, aunera, let us speak a moment about our cities, for I would have you understand the distances we travel. All Ai-Naidari cities are built to allow for atan, which is to say the areas of responsibility. Each House above the Wall of Birth is responsible for the management of a certain number of Ai-Naidar and the area they live in; in cities of sufficient size, one may have multiple Houses undertaking this work. Thus the atan, literally "rays," like those which come off the sun, for that the wedge-shaped areas radiate out from the center of a city.
Each of these wedges is overseen by Nobles who answer to the Regal at the source of the atani. The closer to the Regal, the more Ai-Naidar a Noble is tasked with managing, and thus the higher the caste-rank. The further from the center, the fewer the people and establishments, and the lower the caste-rank.
These wedges extend all the way into the countryside, to encompass farms and mines and other such industries and any Ai-Naidar who work them... unless, of course, those industries become large enough to need personal oversight, at which point a Noble House is sent there to extend the atani. Should these places eventually become cities, then the pattern begins anew, with a Noble or Regal in the center and the atan partitioned according to the number of people who need management.
The Throneworld capital, of course, remains the largest Ai-Naidari city, and at its center is Thirukedi, from whom springs all of the powers of those above the Wall of Birth. His fiefdom encompasses the empire entire; its atani is complete.
The capital is not a small city.
From the Bleak, which is a day's journey outside the capital, we had traveled into the city...not to stay in it, but as a least-time route to our destination. Though House Qenain maintains a presence in the capital in order to manage its affairs, its principal estate is not in the capital at all, but at the Gate. They make their business in botany, in the breeding, cultivation and examination of the properties of plants from all the worlds of the empire, and so they find it most practical to remain near the transport.
(We shall return to this matter anon, for the strange history of House Qenain is relevant to our story.)
I append here a map so that you might see. Forgive us its roughness.
Leaving House Elikim, then, we resumed our progress toward the edge of the city. Once outside the wall, the trip to the Gate would take two days. I task you, do not imagine a road through empty countryside (though faith, on some worlds the Gate is so isolate). The Gate brings trade, travelers, news... all intent on the hub of the empire. The Gate road—called the Ashumel, after the great vessel in the chest which brings blood to the heart—is lined with buildings and services, so many that it is as an extension of the capital, and a great headache and burden it is to the Regal house tasked with its oversight. I have heard that House Athurizin has taken to requiring the Winter Tryst of its members to grow the House to the point of comfortably undertaking the management of the Ashumel. Perhaps that is rumor, but I would not be surprised.
Earlier you will recall young Ajan mentioning Qenain being in Athurizin's district—now you know the word, the atani—and that it was crowded because of people approaching for the ascension festival. That festival, celebrating the day the current Head of Athurizin came to that exalted rank, was drawing people from the entire atani… yes, all the way from outside the city, all along the Ashumel. Not only were people coming in and out of the Gate for travel, but the people along the road were heading inward also, to attend. Even the most modest of families would try to send at least one of their number, not just out of respect, but because such a festival is a grand event, and who would want to miss such a thing?
It did make travel rather slow. So slow, indeed, that we were at times obliged to stop to make way for traffic. It was during one of these times that I disembarked to stretch my legs and feel the sun on my shoulders, and found Shame's Guardian at my side, rather than at his.
"Penokedi," I said. "It is a beautiful day."
His eyes were on the train of supplies making its way through the intersection, but from his shoulders and the strict rigidity of his ears and spine I could tell there was aught amiss. "So it is, Calligrapher."
"Do you wish to share what troubles you?" I asked.
He glanced at me, humor creasing his eyes. "You needn't be quite so formal, osulkedi, unless it is your custom."
"It is not, entirely, but there is no need to give offense."
"To one such as a Guardian?" Ajan snorted. "Some would say we have no sensitivities to offend."
"I beg to differ," I said. "Every Ai-Naidari is due consideration. I ask so that you can decline to share, if you wish. To compel you is unkind."
He glanced at me and smiled. "Not all are so considerate of the feelings of a son of Saresh."
"Being one of those trained to the god of aggression does not make you a brute," I said. "You stand with me, however, and not with your ward, penokedi. Why?"
"Ah," Ajan said with a sigh. Really he was not all so old as that. I could have been his father, perhaps… he looked the right age. Seeing him so made some paternal feeling arise. "Shame needs time to himself."
I squinted at him, then lifted my brows. "You have argued with him."
Ajan's eyes widened, and then he wrinkled his nose. "How did you do that?"
"Instinct," I said, hiding my smile. "So, it was so?"
Ajan said, "I wanted to stop at the temple for the night. He believes we have no such time to spare." He looked at me. "Do we?"
"Thirukedi did not give me a schedule," I said, hesitant. "Though I would not tarry on any mission He gave."
"Perhaps," Ajan said with another sigh. "But it would have been good to stop somewhere familiar and see the others."
"There are others?" I asked, surprised.
The youth laughed. "Ah, Calligrapher. Yes, there are several of us, and there is enough to keep us all busy. More than us, really, but Shame takes most of it on his own shoulders."
"You… do the work of Shame?" I asked carefully, for this skirted perilously close to impropriety.
From his glance, he knew my concern. Just as the old have an instinct for what the young do not say, the young have an instinct for what their elders fear. "We do not make Corrections, osulkedi. But we care for his equipment, and we collect information, so that Shame may make the proper judgments and have good tools to hand to effect them." He chuckled. "Had you told me that my duty as a Guardian would involve having my nose in a book so much, I would have laughed."
"I can imagine," I murmured. "So… these compatriots of yours are also Guardians?"
"And a fathrikedi," said Ajan, "who insists on doing the duties of a Servant, and does them, as one might expect, with indescribable grace."
"No doubt!" I exclaimed. Somehow the notion that Shame might have a Decoration seemed incredible. He did not seem the type to indulge himself in the contemplation of beauty.
"It is perhaps for the fathrikedi that I am most concerned," Ajan said. "For since The Day the osulkedi has not made use of him."
"The Day?" I asked.
Ajan looked at me, direct, and I knew then that this was no slip of the tongue. He had chosen, for whatever reason, to confide in me. "You heard about the execution."
My heart stilled in my breast, just a little hiccup between beats. "Of course," I said.
"Did you attend?" the Guardian asked.
"No," I said, looking away. My ears flattened. "I would give excuses, penokedi. But the truth is that I had no desire to see it. I spent the day in my studio, working. Or trying to."
"It was the Emperor's hand that struck the final blow, as it had to be," Ajan said, low. "But it was my master who struck all the ones before it. He has refused himself any indulgence since, no matter how healthsome, and went to the Bleak not long after. Since his arrival there he has rehabilitated many souls, Calligrapher, but none of them have seemed sufficient payment for the one he failed to save."
"I had heard that the Ai-Naidari who went to the execution vines was beyond any aid," I said, feeling cold in my joints despite the sun on my head. "That not even Civilization could have succored him."
"And yet, there is guilt," Ajan said.
I thought of the stark entry I'd read, the first in Shame's personal journals that had mentioned violence. The image of the words rose to mind immediately, crisp black letters rendered in Shame's austere penmanship. Needed to make blood payment for guilt.
Was that what drove him? Did he seek to bleed himself as penance? To do so was to skirt too dangerously near to self-Correction, unspeakable, unthinkable. He must be prevented, no matter the cost. But did the Emperor expect me to know how to put needle to the soul of a man like this?
Ancestors! What if he needed actual blood? I thought of my pen trailing across parchment, spilling incarnadine ink, and shuddered.
Watching me, Ajan said, "You were sent to help him, weren't you, osulkedi."
"I… was it so obvious?" I asked, taken aback.
"It is to those accustomed to assessing such things," Ajan said. "So it is true?"
"It is," I said.
"Then I will help you," he said. At my look, he finished, "He is my master, osulkedi, and I love him."
The word he used, masuredi, was a telling one. Usually one serves out of duty; perhaps with pleasure, and perhaps with frustration and most often without any thought at all, good or bad. Only when love is married to duty does one speak of one's master as masuredi. It is not a common thing, any more than deep and abiding relationships seem to be among you, aunera.
That love had given me my first ally, and my first real seed of hope. A man who could inspire even one man to the devotion of a menuredi, a servant-who-loves, is not beyond aid.
"We will make this right," I said to him, with the same weight of promise I would have made to my daughter… because he reminded me so much of being a father, with his youth and dedication. I could do no less.
Climbing back into the carriage, I reflected that now I was well and truly committed. To disappoint Thirukedi would have been unspeakable… but He would have forgiven me.
Ajan… Ajan would never forgive me. If I failed, he would go to the fires hating me. So it is, with children.