Several of you have been discussing qet with what seems to me to be a great subtlety and understanding of its nuance. It is that kind of word: a thing nearly unspoken, understood without dissection... ironically, since it began as a legal term. It may be hard to believe, but the concept of qet evolved from a much different notion: that one's personal space and body, when violated, had a value that could be quantified based on the caste-ranks of the individuals involved in the incident. This idea has been incorrectly translated as "honor-price," though I suppose the parallels could be drawn. Our concept was less in response to violence and more a warning to all Ai-Naidar to respect the gradations of rank that separated us and gave form and order to our society. That was why we punished insolence, and sometimes severely. Once upon a time, aunera, someone beneath the Wall of Birth could be branded or even enslaved for touching one above it... can you believe such a thing?

Yes, we were barbaric once. It has been a long and careful evolution that Thirukedi has overseen, and in that time we have discarded many concepts and habits that no longer serve us. Perhaps that surprises you, given our veneration for tradition... but one cannot keep all the traditions of a civilization's lifetime, or how will there be growth? Thus, we have things that are vuqerin, which is to say distasteful because we have outgrown them and thrown them from us. That act is uvrel: "to cull."

I tell you these things, aunera, as a form of apology for what is to come, and to perhaps give you hope at the story's end, that not all things stay the same... even for us Ai-Naidar.

These days we require no cruelties to respect hasmera; we have seen what its ordering has done for the productivity of our society and the peace of our relationships, and that is sufficient to inspire obedience. And so what was once seqet, the value of one's body and space in relationship to another's, has become qet, a description of the gifts and silent duties exchanged between individuals.

A contemporary poet of ours once characterized qet as that innate knowledge that allows a person entwined with another to know, without speaking, to inhale when the other exhales, so that they breathe in tandem and the space between them is uninterrupted. We greatly value that space between people, aunera. It is one of our most precious things, because in it there is room for that breath, for change, for individual response. The castes order our thoughts and lives and civilization... but we find our intimacies in the spaces between each other, in that breath-pause, that place all of us have the right to negotiate, to reach an equilibrium, to find, tacitly, the balance of our qet with each other.

It has a name, of course. Shavaa. The negotiated space. The stuff of poetry.

That was not the word I chose for the day, however. That word it would take me several hours to decide on, in a day that began in the house's kitchen. Every house has its own meal customs, and in Qenain's Gate-house, breakfast was a matter for individuals to decide; probably because everyone in the house rose at different hours, in accordance with the many duties of a place devoted to trade that might be coming at any hour. So in the morning, I found myself on a stool in the kitchen, sipping a consommé provided by the chef to wake my palate and warm my stomach in preparation for the first meal of the day. It was sublime; I was accustomed to using tea for the purpose and found the consommé far more effective, and delicious.

"This pleases," I said politely. "Your talent is without estimation."

The chef had been standing attendance, awaiting my verdict: an Ai-Naidari whose pale cream fur was threaded liberally with the weak gold hairs of someone aging with grace. She was gratified and made a gesture to her staff, who brought me breakfast proper. "I am glad to have delighted," she said after the plates had been set before me. "It is not often I have the opportunity to serve one of your caste. You are a calligrapher, I have heard?"

"I am," I said. "And I have brought with me some slips of paper to make ridan, if you and your staff would like them."

This caused a rustle of surprised pleasure among the Ai-Naidar in the kitchen; one rarely sees ridan anymore, small circles of translucent paper marked with a beneficial word or symbol. In older, more superstitious times they were used at parties, thrown over the heads of the celebrants, and whichever clung to you was your portent. These days when they are seen at all, they are exchanged as a symbol of good wishes or good fortune, and are usually personalized in a way ridan were not originally. The element of random chance is gone, but I think the sentiment lovely, and I find the history of it comforting: to have kept something and guided it toward a more suitable use as time passed.

"We would be very glad to accept such a gift," the chef said, speaking for her staff as their senior rank.

"Can I stay, then, while I work?" I asked. "Would I be in the way?"

"Not at all, osulkedi," she said. Her smile was charming. "We are accustomed to dealing with far more tumultuous an environment than you could certainly provide by sitting here and painting."

"Then I shall stay here," I said, pleased. "And begin as soon as I have eaten."

And eat I did, and it was sublime, just as the consommé had promised. Balls of sticky rice the length of my thumb rolled around a filling of shrimp and greenspears, delicately balanced between the savory and the sweet; two tiny eggs, poached, upon a miniature crepe dusted with green-bright herbs; a bowl of perfectly steeped tea, and beside it, a narrow glass of the clear drink we call colloquially "morning," for its stimulating properties. I ate with relish—and not too much this time—and then allowed one of the staff to clear my plates so I could set up my portable palette and the little paper discs I'd brought.

And there, peaceably, with only occasional thoughts as to the activities and successes of my partner in this endeavor, I made ridan for the kitchen staff. For several hours I tarried, my ears twisting here and there to catch the sounds of their work, their voices, their conversations. I drew symbols of prayers, of wealth, of fertility and humor and fortune; I made a special one for the chef, which proclaimed its bearer one of exceptional talent. One by one these papers disappeared, probably to end up in people's rooms, framed or placed in special boxes with other treasures.

And by the end of this, when I packed my things and slid off my stool, I had identified a quality in the entire kitchen that, had I not seen it before in an Ai-Naidari too long in foreign lands, I would never have identified... for it was such an unusual quality that only experience would have equipped me to observe it in such a subtle manifestation, or to even believe its presence in a part of the household that would normally never be subject to such a thing.

I returned to my room and began my dareleni painting. The word was maien...

Taint.

I have been informed by the scribe that there is no distinct analog for the word maien in your tongue, and that perhaps I should be more specific, lest there be misunderstandings. Some of you may be familiar with the concept of tsekil from other stories... "to be soul-sick," that means. Maien is that which creates soul-sickness. It is a concept, an idea, a thought that, when contemplated, promotes alienation and twisted feelings; it inspires bad thoughts that themselves take root and become breeders of more soul-sickness.

Among us, such soul-sicknesses create reflections in the body. Some may grow fevered and faint. Others may be drained of their living energy so that they lose their motive power. We are accustomed to thinking of such sicknesses as real and terrible, and they can often destroy us; it is entirely possible to waste away from soul-sicknesses. So we not only take such sicknesses seriously, we consider maien very dangerous indeed. We guard against things that create ugly and twisting thoughts, and negative feelings, and soul-upset. I have heard that some aunera believe that to thwart evil, it must be understood... and I confess, I find such a thought both distressingly alien and unnecessarily complicated. All that is necessary to thwart evil is to refuse it entry into your thoughts. Does everyone do so, then there would be no evil to understand.

No, all the attempt to understand evil accomplishes is to make one a little more like evil. Our way—forgive me, aunera—it is better.

Alas, one might have a perfect approach and yet still fail in its execution. To contemplate only the good is our goal, but like so many goals it exists that we might strive toward it, not so that we might always succeed. And when there are aliens involved, it is even more difficult: again forgive me, aunera, but you permit things in your minds and mouths that I cannot conceive of. You live with your own personal taints, and even invite them in! Perhaps this philosophy works for you, but when we intersect... well. Perhaps you understand then, some of the challenges that lie before us.

I thought of the kitchen staff as I went to work on my painting. I thought of taint, of how it felt within this house. I ruled the paper, bending close, feeling the texture of it beneath my fingertips and the point of my pencil. My understanding of the situation was so diffuse yet... I traced in some blade-brambles amid the letters, but I kept them understated, not yet choking the word but making promises.

I wasted no time in painting it; my vow to Shame had left me little time to contemplate each of these words before embarking on them, and looking back on them now I feel that urgency in each work, a paring away of nonessentials, a grasping for the heart of the thing. I splashed down a gray wash tinted with rust and blood-browns, just hints in the dark, scattered the surface liberally with salt, and let the water bloom where it would... and as it dried, I pricked forth the letters with a second brush, coaxing the water to gather in the right places, until the word itself seemed formed of the mist... just the faintest coalescing out of it. The brambles received the same treatment, save for their blades; the narrow silver thorns for which the plant is named, those I gave bright edges here and there, like the sight of a wet knife in a flash of sunlight.

On impulse, I added, dark and crisp, a few faded petals of the black aunerai flower.

This, then, was the painting awaiting Shame on the shabati when he arrived with Ajan in tow. As always, he entered with the focus of a scalpel at an incision site, cutting directly into the room as he slid a black stole off his shoulders. He went straight to the podium and studied what I'd left for him. Then he looked up over the edge of the shabati at me and lifted those pale brows.

In response, I at last spoke the words that had been building in me for hours. "There have been aliens here!"

"Yes," Shame said. "I had heard."

I stared at him. "You knew?"

"I went today to speak to the technicians," Shame said, having a seat on the podium as he considered the piece. I tried not to be distracted by my gratification; his careful examination of art appeared to be habitual. "From them I discovered that the aunera have been here four times."

"Four times!" I exclaimed. And then, flattening my ears, "Aunera? There were more than one?"

"Two," he said. "Cloaked as mandated, and they spoke only to the lord, and infrequently, and in whispers. No one here understands their tongue, so no one knows what words were exchanged."

I frowned. "I had no idea Qenain had dispensation to allow aunera here. I thought... I would have thought... that required special permission."

"It does," he said.

"And do they have it?" I asked.

"That," Shame said, "I don't know." He touched the edge of the paper—again, careful of it. Very careful, as it was still damp, but he didn't seem capable of not touching it. I wondered at that, and what it revealed. "This is a piece of subtlety, Calligrapher. You have conveyed something in it I find intriguing."

"That being?" I asked, trying not to be too eager for commentary.

"Foreboding," he said, glancing at me. "Perhaps you know something I don't?"

"I doubt it," I muttered, much to Ajan's stifled amusement. More clearly, I said, "I found taint in the kitchen staff."

"Oh?" he asked.

"In their movements, their timing, their... their body language," I said, struggling for words. It must seem strange that I might do so, but I am a painter of words, not necessarily a poet. "They were disturbed by something, deeply enough that it no longer surfaced in conversation. But it was there."

Shame was studying me now, not my painting. "You have seen this before."

"A man who came to me," I said. "His lord had sent him abroad, and he returned, agitated and disordered in a very similar way." I shook my head. "Sometimes I wonder if the aunera are thus: twitching always, unsettled, casting here and there, never focused."

"Perhaps," Shame said. "Or perhaps, that is merely the result of the intersection of aunera and Ai-Naidar."

"Or even," Ajan offered, "the intersection of a particular aunerai and Ai-Naidari."

"Or even, "Shame agreed.

"Maybe we just make them feel this way," I said, looking at my paint-stained fingers. "They are a young race, aren't they? Like children around adults."

"We stray into dangerous speculations here," Shame said, rising from the stool. "We must not let our preconceptions color what we investigate." He nodded to Ajan. "Have a message sent to the capital, so we can learn if Qenain is permitted the incursion of aunera here, and so frequently." To me, he said, "The visits stopped abruptly a week ago, but the lord has been away more often since. That is how we came not to be invited to dinner; a formal table is set only when the family is in, and the lord is almost always away now. His returns are erratic and the staff does not seem able to predict them."

"No wonder the kitchen was disordered," I murmured. I looked up at him. "But we have an answer now, don't we? We know what's wrong with Qenain. We could leave—"

The look in his eyes when they met mine made the hair on the back of my neck rise, but I continued. "—and allow others to sort out the issue."

"Osulkedi," Shame said. "You came to me and said that we were needed at Qenain. That the Emperor Himself had tasked you to take me from the Bleak and bring me here."

"Yesss," I said slowly.

"Do you know what I do?" he asked, and there was a touch of exasperation there that felt, suddenly and comically, familial.

"Yes," I said. "You are Shame. You Correct the faulty, and bring them back into harmony with civilization."

"And you want me to leave?" he asked, and I was sure of the exasperation now. "Who do you suppose they'd send in our place? In my place?"

"I don't know," I said; strangely I was beginning to enjoy myself. "Perhaps the Emperor would come Himself to see to it." As he began to pace, I took a chance on formalizing the change of tone in our conversation and addressed him intimately. "Dealing with aunera is not minor business, Kor. It would not be out of bounds for Thirukedi to Correct Qenain for this. One does not bring aliens to Kherishdar without permission."

"We don't know yet if he is transgressing," Shame—Kor—said, and sat across from me on a chair.

"And if he is?" I asked.

"Then we will fix it," Kor said, eyeing me. "And you are needling me, Farren."

"Maybe I think you could use a little questioning of your certitude," I said, wishing for a brush or pencil in my hand so I could seem innocently at work with it. Next time I'd make sure of it, so I'd have an excuse to look away.

"Don't think you could hide your thoughts with body language," Kor said, sounding amused now.

"Oh no," I said. "I've given up hiding things from you."

Ajan, at the door, said, "The tray's here... ooh, they sent me one too." He opened the door for the irimked who entered; I recognized them from the morning and they smiled as they set out the trays and then departed.

As I took up a bowl of soup, I said, "Misdirection, now..."

"You'd have to work very hard," Kor said dryly.

"I'll have something to aspire to, then," I said, feeling absurdly cheerful.

Kor snorted. I tried my innocent 'I am eating' look and applied myself to the soup.

After the dareleni, Shame went to his prowling and I to my ablutions before bed. When I returned I found Ajan at the shabati, looking at the painting. There were fears in his eyes that I would have done well to attend... but at the time, I thought it none of my business, and that a Guardian would not welcome being drawn out on such things, or that his fears, like mine, were nebulous and without clear cause.

I was wrong on all three counts. It seems amazing to me, in retrospect, that I went to bed that night and slept with neither anxiety nor nightmare.

The following morning I rose and considered my next avenue of investigation while dressing for breakfast. Shame seemed confident that we two alone could solve the problems in Qenain, and presumably that meant that he was trusting to some of my talents to aid him in that endeavor. I remained dubious, and yet... from the journals, I had imbibed a sense of that assurance. So many problems he'd solved, problems so rancorous or so stubborn they'd proved too difficult for the entire tier of Corrective measures to solve: for among us, problems are usually solved by the next highest authority, and if they are not they are passed up the chain. It is only until they have baffled the most senior of a person's lords that Shame is sent for.

A man who regularly solves problems that confound the entire system created to resolve them perhaps cannot avoid feeling his power. And perhaps I was wrong to doubt him.

I glanced at my trunk and thought of reading further in the journals, which I had hidden there upon their arrival. Perhaps knowing more about how Shame had resolved earlier issues would help me understand how he was grappling with this one, or how he expected to succeed.

Why was I here? To help Qenain, or to help Shame?

Were they even separate missions?

In the end, I forsook the journals to finish dressing and take myself to the kitchens for another sublime repast; I could easily see myself growing too used to that consommé for breakfast. Then, properly fortified, I presented myself at Qenain's laboratory for a tour.

There I was greeted by one of the Observers, who graciously allowed me entrance. She was the senior there now, in the absence of the male who was still convalescing after his unsuccessful Correction. As a Public Servant, I outranked her. But I admit, aunera, that I did not so much notice it, for I was quite distracted by her loveliness. We were of an age, we two, if I was any judge, and she had eyes the color of tea leaves and a voice like a dawn-wren: excited, musical and boundless with energy.

"You are the Calligrapher!" she exclaimed after I had introduced myself and freed her to speak on her own behalf. "I had heard that you came with Shame. Welcome, be welcome. I have been expecting you, ever since he showed up. Come in!" She grinned. "I am betting you have not often seen a place exposed, ah?"

"No," I said. "No, I live in the city, out of the ambit of such areas."

"Come, then," she said. "Let me show you where we work."

So I followed her into the laboratory, where several other Ai-Naidar were at work, analyzing the properties of the petals with instruments suited to that task. Perhaps you imagine us without technology, or without science, but we have both. Our attitude toward them differs from yours, though. The ubiquity and intrusiveness of your machines strikes me as bizarre; among us, we minimize the use and view of such things. Thus, the observer's term: "exposed," agarath, which is what we say when technology must be obvious to be useful. And here it was distinctly obvious: the machines that studied the properties of the plants, their genetics, their reactions when combined with our biology. It was a place of great rigor and surprising elegance, and I surprised myself by enjoying the tour very much... even though I had ample opportunity to see the agitation of the observers, which was even more notable than it was in the kitchens.

At the conclusion of the tour, the observer led me into the senior's office and shut the door behind her. She looked at me with more directness than was strictly polite and said, "You are here to help us. You and Shame."

"That is correct," I said, trying not to admire the lines of her face.

She sighed out gustily and sat at the chair beside mine, in front of the desk—it still bore the name of her senior, I noted. "Shame was here yesterday," she said. "He wanted to know what had happened."

"And you told him...?"I asked.

"That I didn't know," she said, crestfallen. "Baran would not say what had upset him. But he and the lord... there was friction there for weeks, osulkedi. And that was bad enough. But then... then they fought...!"

"They did what?" I said, startled.

"They fought. Aloud. With strong words. With yelling!" She rubbed her face. "I caught part of it..." She trailed off, then said, chagrined. "Well, no. I didn't catch it by accident. When I realized what was happening, I listened. I had to, because who would take care of the others if something happened to Baran and I didn't know what had caused it? Except... that I learned nothing! I had come too late. The lord wanted something of Baran, and he was refusing, over and over. He gave many reasons for his refusal: it was perverse, it was wrong, it would lead to Qenain's destruction, it would shatter the lord's soul, it would violate every tradition... that it couldn't be done, and shouldn't be. But he did not again say what it was."

"Perhaps understandable," I said, her words finally penetrating my reverie. "If what he spoke of was so disastrous, he would hardly want to hold it in his mouth more than necessary."

"But it means I don't know what the lord asked of him," she said. "And that means I don't know the source of this rift that has been unsettling us all." She sighed and looked at me. "Calligrapher...." And stopped, narrowing her eyes; I had forgotten how accurately a woman could perceive a man's distraction. "Calligrapher?"

"Pardon me," I said, abashed. "I was merely..." Admiring her? When was the last time I'd admired a woman? I stopped, at a loss for words.

Her brows lifted. "Oh!" she exclaimed. And then, softer, "Oh!" And she flushed, just a pink tint at the delicate flesh on the inside of her ears. "I see. I would have thought a man like you would be... attached."

"I was," I said. "But I have been widowed for some time."

"A long time, apparently, to find me interesting!" she said with a laugh. "My parents told me if I wasn't careful I'd end up wedded to my work, with nary a child to comfort me in my old age."

I could see it... it was her passion that was so attractive. It was hard not to be drawn to someone so engaged with her life. "And are you? Wedded to your work."

"I love it more than anything," she said, and a hint of nostalgia touched her smile then, one that made me aware of the years she'd lived, that seemed so light on her otherwise. "ij Qenain laughed when I told him that story. He said I'd find my way into a family eventually, even if I had to be tricked into it with a promising sperm sample on a slide." She looked at me. "He had such an unusual esar, osulkedi. He had the kevej, the passion, the zest, the daring."

"Kevej," I murmured. "The one that can become recklessness."

"Every esar has its dangers," she said with regret. "I fear we are living in its shadow-side now. I miss the sunlight." She glanced at me. "Will you bring it back? You and Shame's priest?"

"Maybe," I said, and then, looking at her, "We will." Because we had to.

She grinned at me. "Do that, and perhaps I'll give you a slide to smear."

That made me laugh. "I think I like a little more permanence than you are suggesting, Observer!"

"Everything has to start somewhere, ah?" She rose and touched her hand to the door handle. "Can I tell you aught else?"

"Not yet," I said, and then thinking better of it, "Your name."

"Seraeda," she said, smiling.

"Farren," I said.

"Well, then, Farren," she murmured, and opened the door for me.

For some time, I stood silently in the back of the laboratory by the door, watching the observers at work... absorbing their unease, their sharp, abbreviated motions, the curtness of their conversation. Unlike the kitchen staff, they were aware of their troubles, and worse, they knew their senior had been directly involved in it. That they could continue work despite that knowledge spoke strongly of them as people, but I could not imagine them sustaining their discipline and morale long in the face of that unresolved conflict.

Seraeda returned to their number, and her presence eased their tension somewhat. But she was carrying her own burdens. I watched a little longer and then departed, frowning over both the situation and the sudden rebirth of a part of my spirit I'd thought long buried. I had become comfortable with my own numbness; to suddenly remember I was male and not yet dead was a nuisance.

This, I felt sure, I could blame on Shame.

I was still nurturing this grievance when I opened the door on our suite and found Ajan in the common room, pelt still damp and a towel around his hips as he set out something clean to wear.

"Penokedi?" I said, surprised. "Where is Shame?"

"Off on his own business," Ajan said. "I went nosing around the back halls and then came here to have a bath before dinner." He turned to me and I drew in a long breath. He had one of the most unusual set of ribbons I'd ever seen, a yoke around his shoulders, leading to a fanged hook-shape below the cleft of his collarbones. I think some of you know about the ribbons: that each year our lords mark us with a dye or a bleach (depending on the darkness of our pelts), in a personal ceremony that confirms the relationship between lord and people. Those marks are called enaril, "ribbons," after their most common design motif, which is long and curling.

Seeing the direction of my gaze, Ajan smiled and twisted so I could see how the ribbons flowed to his back, dipping slightly at the shoulder-blades and meeting over his spine, just below that most sacred place, the sen, the nape of the neck. "You like it?"

"I have not seen any like them," I said, admiring. The lines were crisp, almost as if they'd been drawn with a brush; the ribbons on an Ai-Naidari are often visible, and so I have seen ample evidence that not all lords have steady hands when drawing them. "Who did them? I fear I don't know the lord who has your jurisdiction."

"Shame did them, Calligrapher," Ajan said, glancing at me. "Did I not say I was penokedi? He is my master."

I stared at him. "That is..."

"An exception," Ajan said. "And duly recorded so in the Book of Exceptions. The servants who pledge to Shame are marked either by the priest himself, or by Thirukedi, for they serve a Public Servant whose lord is the Emperor and who moves throughout all jurisdictions in His service. And it is their choice, Calligrapher. Which will mark them."

"And you chose Shame," I said.

"Of course," Ajan said, pulling on his shirt. "Thirukedi is... well, Thirukedi. But I serve Him by serving Shame." He grinned. "Vekken—that's our teacher from the Guardian school, he's one of us now—he told Thirukedi himself 'A man can serve two masters, but he has time to love only one.'"

"He did not say that to the Emperor!" I breathed.

"Oh, he did!" Ajan said, chortling. "Don't worry, Thirukedi didn't smite him or anything."

"What did He do?" I asked, torn between horror and curiosity.

"Oh, actually, He laughed," Ajan said. "And said that if we were determined to choose the harder course, that was our privilege as Guardians." He grinned. "So no, he didn't get into trouble. You know what they say about Guardians and speech."

"Yes," I said; there's a word for it, even, "Guardian-talk," which is to say outrageous in every particular. We grant a great deal of latitude to those who feel called to give their lives for us. "So, Shame puts your ribbons on every year."

"Every year," Ajan said. And then, more quietly, "To be honest, Calligrapher, while it was our choice to have him do it, I don't know that it would have been his."

"I'm not surprised," I said. "You ask him to take on a lord's responsibilities to you, with all their concomitant intimacy, but he is not a lord."

"I know," Ajan said. "We all know. But... we love him as we would a lord, Calligrapher. What should we do? To bow our heads to the Emperor would diminish us—" He lifted his hand at my protest, and surprised at the insolence of the gesture I let him continue, "—it would. I grieve to say it. But if your love is specific, osulkedi, how does it serve you to deny it and pretend your allegiance is to some more distant figure? We all left the work we could have done to be Shame's helpmeets. And we are his helpmeets. We ask in return that he honor our feelings."

"And he does," I surmised.

"He does," Ajan said. "Though it seems to be harder on him with every passing year."

"If it is, it doesn't show in the ribbons," I said. "I have only ever once seen a steadier line. And they are beautiful." I roused myself to set out the materials for the afternoon's work. "Now that you say it, I can see him in the figure."

"They are like him, aren't they?" Ajan said, tugging his collar down to look at the hooked ends of the ribbons at his collarbones. "You know what amazes me about them? He does them without walking behind me."

"Ah?" I said, glancing up from my inks.

"He reaches around me and does the back by feel," Ajan said. "Every year, he does it like that, and every year it fills me with wonder." He laughed. "It shouldn't; we were taught to fight without having to see, so of course he has experience with being able to work by touch alone. But it still does."

"He must do it without gloves," I murmured, imagining it. "To feel your body so accurately."

"Always," Ajan said, pulling on his pants. I could hear the smile in his voice. "The first time, I asked him why he didn't protect himself from it and he showed me his fingers, and of course, the bleach hadn't done a thing to them since they're already white. 'Here is a lesson,' he said to me. 'The experience that marks one person can leave another untouched.' And then I said, 'or maybe it's that the experience just doesn't leave obvious marks on the other, but they're still there, unnoticed.' And then he told me I was too smart for my own good and that he'd have to keep special track of me to save me from all the trouble I was no doubt due."

I started laughing. "Have you always been this..."

"Insolent?" Ajan said, eyes sparkling. "I'm afraid so. But only with him. Because I love him. And... you know... if I didn't have an edge, I'd never cut through that layer on the outside, and then I'd never know he cared. He's so uvren, Calligrapher. He is the absolute epitome of uvren."

Uvren is what we call those who are reserved by nature, and show affection in such subtle ways it is easily missed; that dynamic of relationships we put on a scale, with uvren on one side and fashanil on the other, 'demonstrative.'

"I had noticed," I murmured.

"You couldn't get more uvren if you worked at it," Ajan said, and straightened his clothes. "So what are you painting today?"

"A word," I said, moved to tease him by his demeanor and his openness with me.

"Can I watch?" he asked, wistful. "I've never seen a calligrapher work."

"I... you... oh, of course," I said, startled. And then added, "But you must repay the favor. I have never seen a Guardian's training. Maybe you can show me how you practice."

"Agreed," Ajan said, grinning, and pulled a chair back behind my perch at the shabati.

Which left me with the day's word, and I hadn't really had a good sense for what to choose until just now, until the conversations with Seraeda and Ajan mingled and brought forth a common theme. I lifted the ruler and pencil and set to work.

If I had any fears about Ajan distracting me, they were swept away; I supposed Guardians were taught to be very still when needful, and he became as watchful as a hunting beast, and my awareness of him faded as the needs of the painting consumed me. And the word... the word was esar, that quality that defines a lord's style of leadership. There are many forms of esar, and upon ascension a lord is required to state his or hers, and to be tested by the application of its opposite, its shadow... such rituals are as varied as the forms of esar, and most of them are deeply difficult to watch or participate in. But we are all called to do so, for the ascension ritual is no mere formality, but a true test, and if a lord cannot withstand it, they are not confirmed in their role. Seraeda's lord must have undergone—and passed—some trial of passion or deprivation of passion; I did not know which, for he had not been my lord and so it had not been mine to witness. And it had surely been luck for such an Ai-Naidari to secure the role of lord of a House of Flowers; to be daring and comfortable with risk is a good thing for an enterprise that requires innovation.

I thought also of Shame, who technically should not need the formality of a stated esar; he was no lord above the Wall of Birth to promise himself to others. And yet, Ajan and the other Guardians who served him had apparently been within their rights to require him to take on some of the duties of a lord. I wondered what esar he would claim, if he had been required to state one. I knew he had one... perhaps several. But I didn't know that I could articulate what it was.

So the word was esar, but its focus for me was the dangers of its shadow, and without consultation of any of the more rational parts of my mind I embarked on a rather ambitious project for the hours I had, and drew the word twice; once the correct way, and once upside down as a cast shadow. Except that it was the cast-shadow that I painted in colors of light and brightness, and the word itself that I painted in murky tints: umber and carbon black and a touch of verdigris, not just to add a depth to the gray I was building, but also because I knew that as the years passed the pigment would fade, eventually growing brown, and then black.

All things change. And all things, without maintenance, decay. That sense of time and fragility felt important to me.

Once I finished the grays I flipped the painting and went to work on the brightness, adding hints of faces in the letters: because esar is inescapably about one's effect on people. I gave them smiles, touched with vermilion, like the blush of healthy flesh, and when I was done one could just barely see them if one looked. Then, on impulse, I flipped the painting again and did the same to the shadows, adding the suggestion of dejected or uncertain silhouettes.

When I had finished all this, I found my pencil and drew in a spiral fall of cloudsbreath petals, starting above the word and twining around the reflection, and where they neared and occluded the shadowed esar they were brittle and old and dry, and as they rejoined the sun they grew pale and healthy, veined in green. Cloudsbreath flowers are used for airing out rooms, and the plants are good for clearing allergens. In poetry they are linked with the normal business of living, and esar to me seems to be part of the normal business of being lord and vassal.

I sat back at long last, straightening my cramped back, and my forgotten watcher whispered, "Ancestors."

I glanced at him and was gratified by the awe in his eyes.

"Esar," he said. "That's a good one."

I thought so too. It wasn't until after I'd begun cleaning my brushes, however, that I remembered that Seraeda had spoken of her lord's in the past tense.

All things change, indeed.

"Esar," Shame said. "Interesting. May I?"

"Of course," I said, since the painting was well into the tacky-to-dry stage.

Shame lifted the paper and turned it so he could examine the word's reflection; I could see his eyes moving from one implied figure to the next, studying their expressions. He turned it right side up and did it again. To save myself from having to hide my flattered expression during these perlustrations, I had unearthed one of my small sketchbooks and was at work with a pencil. Drawing flowers, inevitably; someone had entered our chambers in the morning and replaced the honeyfletch with lilac-throated star-of-mornings. The pinbrambles remained; they did not seem as like to wilt as the honeyfletch had.

"I watched him paint it," Ajan said to his master. "I've never seen anything like it."

"I imagine not," Shame murmured and set it down. He glanced across the room at me. "So you have divined the root of the error in Qenain."

"The lord," I said. "How else? Everyone is affected by him."

"What did you learn?" Shame asked.

"That the observers heard him fighting with their lead; that he had asked something unspeakable of him, but none of them knew what," I said. I looked up at Shame, who had returned to studying the painting. "He is away, isn't he?"

"The lord? Yes, to the outworld, where he is overseeing the purchases there personally," Shame said. "When he returns..."

I flicked my ears back and tried not to finish that sentence in my head. What would it take to Correct such a man? We did not even know his error in all its specifics... though I knew Shame would have it out of him, one way or another. "Do you know when?"

"No," Shame said. "And neither does anyone else."

I frowned. "That seems... odd."

"Stressful, maybe, but not odd," Ajan offered, "There are masters who do not keep regular schedules, or who are apt to go off on their own with little warning. I wouldn't know anything about that." He smiled, the picture of innocence.

"As he said," Shame said, eyeing his Guardian with a wry mouth. "I would not expect the lord to keep to a schedule in work like this."

"So what do we do?" I wondered.

"Paint more!" Ajan exclaimed.

Shame laughed, then said to me, "Wait, Farren. We will have to wait."

"I suppose we could not chase him to the outworld ourselves," I murmured, evoking a very curious, sharp glance from my counterpart.

"An option of last resort," he said at last. "But an option. You would be willing?"

"Thirukedi sent us here," I said, uneasy. "If the lord remains out of reach, it is our duty to do... something, is it not?"

"So it is," Shame said. And then suddenly, "Do you play rivers and bridges?"

"I have, now and then," I said, startled by the change of topic.

"Then let us while away the dareleni," Shame said, meeting my eyes with amusement.

There was nothing for it, then, but to bring out the board and the playing pieces and settle to the game. As expected, I did better playing the river side than the bridge; the rules for the rivers seemed more natural to me, with their evocation of fluid and predictable reaction. Shame played both sides well, which I also expected. What else from a man who could think so like a Noble he could Correct one, imitate a Noble well enough to inspire allegiance from his servants... and then turn around and give surcease to the lowest Servant?

Setting up for a fourth game, Shame said, "We have learned nothing new from this, have we."

I snorted. "The game? No, of course not. Were we supposed to?"

"Everything," Shame said with some of that focused intent of his, "tells you something about a person."

I thought of his exchange with Ajan about the ribbon bleach and watched him place the pieces. "Doesn't it become burdensome? Forever examining everything that way?"

"Can you look at the world without subconsciously trying to mix a palette for it?" Shame asked.

I paused, then flicked my ears outward. "That was well-played." Rallying myself, I added, "And suggestive."

"Of what?" he asked, and turned the board to face me.

"Of how you believe others perceive the world," I said. "As a series of... biased perceptions."

"Bias implies untruth," Shame said, taking up a bridge. "I would say that how we perceive the world is colored by our ishas. Is that not the way of Kherishdar?"

I sat back, eyed him. "Philosophy."

"Unavoidably," he answered. "Life is philosophy, Farren. Even when we give it no name and don't examine it, it permeates our lives, our beliefs, our choices."

"So is your task an adjustment of people's philosophies?" I said.

"No," he said, quiet. "My task is a reminder of the philosophy that joins us all. That is the key to everything, osulkedi. We are wedded by our common beliefs, a philosophical underpinning that rules us all. Without it, we would be... isolate."

I quelled a shudder.

"I bring people home," Shame said.

"Then what do I do?" I wondered, voice low.

He smiled. "You make people glad to live there."

I fell silent, holding one of the river pieces between my long palms, fingers folded to enclose it. He waited courteously for me to place it, as the river-player traditionally went first, but I did not.

"There's something on your mind," he said.

"Divined that, did you," I murmured.

He chuckled. "It wasn't particularly difficult. So, what is it?"

"You have been..." I trailed off, wondering what word I might choose that would fail to give offense. Kind? Warm? "Forthcoming. With yourself. I would not have expected it of Shame; indeed, you were not so in the first days of our acquaintance."

He studied me with his clear eyes. "You think your words hurtful."

"They are not intended that way," I said, apologetic.

"I know. Perhaps then you will not be offended when I say, likewise, that I was unaware of your talent."

I sat back, returning his regard. He bore it without hardship, as one might expect a person of his notoriety would. Only one Shame in Kherishdar, and so starkly colored; of course, he was accustomed to stares. But there was no tension in the yoke of his shoulders, and I wondered at it... as much as I wondered at myself for noticing it.

"You are not surprised at the direction the conversation is flowing," Kor said. "Perhaps, then, you have also longed to have discussion with a true peer."

He used a distinct word: kava, "peer" rather than hharane, "caste-peer." The latter is what one calls other Ai-Naidar sharing your caste with you... the former, however, is something altogether different. More intimate. More presumptuous. More implying things I was not at all prepared for.

"I have known other Public Servants," I said finally. "My studio was not far from the physician's abode. We were acquainted with one another."

"But somehow, he did not strike you as a peer," Kor observed, beginning to line up his pieces in rows, little gray and white arches. "You are perhaps aware of your own talent."

"Osulkedi," I said, and could not stop my voice from sounding quelling.

He grinned at that, easy as a youth, and looked up at me without lifting his head, the effect of the uncanny eyes mitigated by his lashes and brows. "You fear I am about to reveal that you have some pride in your talent. Why shouldn't you, Farren? I have not yet seen your equal. There may be other artists with a hand as deft, but they are rare."

"Kor," I said, trying now to bring him back from his Shame eyes.

"It makes you uncomfortable," he said, quieter. Dare I say, with more understanding. "To feel so alone in your talent."

"I am not the only one who can paint!" I exclaimed.

"But you are the only artist I have met whom the Emperor has marked, permanently, with the signs of empire."

I fought the urge to hide my hands with their betraying marks in their sleeves.

"Do you not trust His judgment, if not your own?"

I looked away.

"Farren," he said, in that quiet voice. "You are not the only one who feels discomfort at being at the pinnacle of a particular ability."

"And that is why you have warmed to me," I said with a clipped voice, looking at him. "In my talent, you have decided you have found someone who also must stand alone as a master of his craft."

"Am I wrong?" he said.

"About your genius?" I said, and could not help but laugh a little, though the laugh was bitter. It was not so good a thing among us, to be set apart, even for positive reasons. "Certainly not. About myself—"

"Not something you are comfortable with," he said. "I understand."

"You," I said, "are accusing me of arrogance."

"After a fashion," he agreed, without distress. Indeed, with what I suspected, grouchily, was a touch of merriment.

"Shame," I said.

"Kor," he corrected.

"Kor," I allowed, still cranky. "I do not believe I'm better than everyone else."

He looked up then suddenly, and there was nothing intimate in those coronal eyes. I felt pinned by them, breathless and exposed. "Tell me that again, Calligrapher."

I swallowed past a narrowed throat and could not speak until something in his face changed, some crease around his eyes, some intensity there dying to banked coals. And then I scowled at him and said, "That was entirely unfair!"

He laughed. "The pursuit of truth, osulkedi."

"Is often inimical to an easy friendship," I said, folding my arms over my chest.

"Is ours to be an easy friendship, then?" he asked.

I studied him and said, "No... I don't think you ever do things the easy way. Do you."

"It's in my nature," he murmured, and I thought I saw a tint in the skin beneath his eyes, where the white pelt was thinnest. A blush? He surely had earned it.

Mollified, I set down the first of the river pieces. And if he won that game, well... I hardly expected any less.