18

Varenechibel’s Legacies

He was called the Winter Emperor, for his reign was brought in with early snow and its first month was characterized by bitter cold; the Istandaärtha froze solid below Ezho for the first time in living memory. It was impossible to keep the Alcethmeret’s vast and echoing lower rooms heated, and the public spaces of the court were even worse. Maia was always cold, despite layers of silk and wool and ermine, and he offended Esaran again by asking if the servants were able to stay warm enough. It was Nemer who reassured him: the servants’ quarters were built around the kitchens; their rooms were warmer than their emperor’s.

It was neither the first nor the last time that Maia wished simply to be a scullery boy.

His days were full of meetings—the Corazhas, the Lord Chancellor and his satellites, representatives of this wealthy family seeking a favor, of that lucrative business seeking a concession. There were formal audiences with each of the ambassadors to the court, Porcharn, Ilinveriär, Estelveriär, Celvaz, and of course Barizhan. The Untheileneise Court itself, like any city, required governance, and he mediated between the courtiers as best he could when he rarely had more than the most academic understanding of the grounds of the quarrel. The courtiers were at least polite about listening to him, though he had no confidence that they heeded him. Matters among the functionaries and servants tended to be far more practical, if no less passionate, but those he only heard about secondhand: Csevet dealt with them lest His Imperial Serenity be “bothered.” In the evenings, he dined with the court, as he was expected to do unless he could find some compelling reason to be elsewhere, and then there was dancing or a masque or some other entertainment at which the emperor’s presence was understood to be essential. He was late to bed again—and again and again as the days of his reign began to mount—but his eyes were blurry with work, not drink, and the pounding headache came from tension, from the constant, half-crippled feeling of having to make decisions without sufficient information, with an always incomplete understanding of the situations, the motivations, the possible repercussions. Even Berenar’s best efforts could not make up the deficit of years in mere weeks.

He tried not to curse his father’s memory, but he could not help knowing that it was his father’s spite that had crippled him. Thou wert the fourth son; thy half brothers were healthy, and one had gotten an heir. There was no need for anyone to imagine thou wouldst ever come to the Untheileneise Court, much less rule it. But he wondered, as petition after petition came before him from those who had been relegated from the court at Varenechibel’s command, what his father had intended for him, what his fate would have been if the Wisdom of Choharo had not been sabotaged.

The thought was an evil one, but it would not be banished; he wondered morbidly if Varenechibel’s tactics had actually brought him peace of mind, or if he had been always aware of those he dismissed from his presence, his first and fourth wives, his son, his cousin, an assortment of other relatives and members of the court who fretted him or angered him or made him uneasy.

It did not help that the letter Maia received from Csethiro Ceredin was brief to the point of brusqueness, written in a cold secretarial hand far more polished than Maia’s own. The letter spoke of nothing but duty and loyalty, ignoring entirely Maia’s attempts to offer a warmer relationship. Varenechibel had found affection, kindness, even love with Pazhiro Zhasan, but neither the letter nor the prescribed formal meeting held out any hope of the same for Maia.

The Emperor Edrehasivar VII met his future empress for the first time in the Receiving Room of the Alcethmeret. The emperor was immobilized in white brocade and pearls; Dach’osmin Ceredin was austere and immaculate in pale green watered silk; cloisonné beads, crimson and gold, were wound through her hair and hanging from her ears. The contrast made the vivid blue of her eyes—the same brilliant color as Arbelan Drazharan’s—stand out like a shout of defiance in her white, well-bred, characterless face. Maia found it impossible to meet her gaze steadily.

Dach’osmin Ceredin was accompanied by her father, the Marquess Ceredel. Where she was as unreadable as a porcelain doll, he was visibly nervous, full of bravado one moment and all but cringing the next. The Marquess Ceredel had a guilty conscience, Maia noted; later, he would have to ask Csevet or Berenar why.

This was not a great ceremonial occasion such as the signing of the marriage contract would be, but there was nothing informal about it. Edrehasivar VII announced to the Marquess Ceredel that he had chosen Csethiro Ceredin as his empress; the Marquess Ceredel professed his delight and sense of honor. No mention was made of the property Dach’osmin Ceredin would bring with her to the marriage, nor of the gifts and favors that the emperor would bestow on the Ceredada. Those details were being worked out by secretaries and stewards, and Maia hoped Chavar had as little part in the negotiations as possible. This interlude between the emperor and his father-in-law-to-be was mere theater; Maia wasn’t even sure whom it was intended for.

Throughout, Dach’osmin Ceredin stood beside her father, politely impassive, not a flicker on her narrow face or a twitch of her ears to indicate she was even listening. It made Maia both uncomfortable and anxious, and finally, at the point where the audience was meant to conclude, he said, “Dach’osmin Ceredin, are you content with this marriage?”

She raised one eyebrow a fraction in token of her knowledge that his question was useless and even foolish, then dropped a perfect curtsy and said, “We are always content to do our duty, Serenity.” Her voice was deep for a woman’s, and it carried in the emptiness of the Receiving Room like a tolling bell.

Maia, hot-faced and wretched, could only dismiss them, as Dach’osmin Ceredin had already dismissed him.

His marriage loomed before him like a disaster, but despite his black thoughts, or perhaps even because of them, Maia was pleased to grant an audience to Arbelan Drazharan when she requested one. He received her in the Tortoise Room, and the curtsy she swept him was magnificently formal, fiercely denying her age.

He invited her to sit, taking his own accustomed chair, and said, “What may we do for you, Arbelan Zhasanai?”

She managed to turn a snort into a cough, and said, “You need not give us honors which are not ours, Serenity. We are not zhasanai.”

“You were the wife of our father. You were Arbelan Zhasan.”

“Thirty years ago. And if you call us zhasanai, you illegitimate yourself. But you know that.”

“Yes,” Maia agreed. “But we would do you honor, nonetheless.”

“Your Serenity is most gracious, and we do appreciate it. But your mother was relegated, too, was she not?” The question was a formality; they both knew the answer.

“Yes.”

She folded her hands together and bowed to him across them, an old-fashioned gesture of respect and grief. “Varenechibel was like a killing frost.”

They were silent a moment, in token of having survived Varenechibel IV; then Arbelan said, “We wished, Serenity, to discover what your plans are for us.”

“We have not made plans on your behalf, nor would presume to. Do you wish to return to Cethoree?”

“No, we thank you,” Arbelan said decidedly. “But … it is your wish that matters, Serenity, not ours. We are of the House Drazhada.” By which she meant not merely that she was Drazhadeise by marriage, but that, like Varenechibel’s other wives, both the living and the dead, and like his daughters and his daughter-in-law and granddaughters—like his third son’s unfortunate fiancée—she belonged to the Drazhada. She was literally Maia’s, to do with as he pleased.

It was no wonder, he thought, that Sheveän hated him, Csoru despised him, Vedero regarded him with distrust and skepticism. No wonder that Csethiro Ceredin would give him nothing of herself but her duty. He was eighteen, ignorant, unsophisticated; he had no right to control their lives—except the right of law. “Arbelan Zhasanai,” he said deliberately, “we cannot ask our mother this question, and that saddens us. But it is in her memory that we ask it of you: what do you wish to do?”

She contemplated him, her face unreadable. Then she bowed her head gravely. “If it is not displeasing to Your Serenity, we would wish to stay in the Untheileneise Court. After so long, we have no other home, save Cethoree, where we do not wish to return.”

“Then you are welcome here.”

“We thank you, Serenity,” she said.

“Would you—?” He broke off, feeling his face heat.

“Anything that is within our power, Serenity, you know you have only to command.”

“No, it’s not like that,” he said. “It’s nothing … it’s not a command.”

Her eyebrows were up. Edrehasivar Half-Tongue Osmin Duchenin had called him when she thought he could not hear; a glance at Telimezh had been enough to tell him it was not the first time. He dug his nails into his palms, forced himself to take a proper breath, said, “We merely wondered if you would consent to dine with us, perhaps once a week?”

She was visibly startled, which in a lady of Arbelan Zhasanai’s generation was no small feat. “There is no impropriety,” he said hastily. “You are, as you said, Drazhadeise, and widowed and…”

“Serenity,” she said, and there was something in her voice he did not know how to name, “we would be both pleased and honored.”

It was but a small bulwark, but it was a bulwark nonetheless, one evening in seven when he did not have to meet the pale cold faces and glittering eyes of the court. And Arbelan Zhasanai, who owed him her gratitude, would not bear tales of the emperor’s gauche silences, his awkward efforts at conversation. Once she had taken his measure—once, he thought, she had determined that this was not some arcane and hideously subtle trap—she took over the conversation herself, with a power and ease that made him wonder what she had been like when she was Varenechibel’s empress, before her body and her husband had betrayed her. Although by tacit agreement they did not speak of Varenechibel himself, she told him stories of her youth, described the court of Varenechibel’s father, Varevesena. And those stories seemed always to lead her to speak of the modern court, of its petty wars and darker treacheries. He understood the worth of what she offered and listened intently, week after week, trying, even in this small way, to make up for the ignorance that was his inheritance.

He had learned the value of gossip from Setheris, from the differences, sometimes small, sometimes vast, between the official communiqués from the court and the letters Setheris received from Hesero. One never relied on gossip, Setheris had said more than once, but it did not do to discount it, either. Therefore, along with his lessons from Arbelan Zhasanai and Lord Berenar, Maia listened to the tidbits his household brought him, his edocharei, his nohecharei, Csevet: each of them heard different stories, different interpretations.

It was Arbelan Zhasanai who told him Sheveän continued to be discontented, Csevet who remarked that several courtiers seemed unnaturally interested in the laws of succession recently. But it was Nemer who, shyly, reluctance and indignation mixed, told him that people were beginning to say Nemolis’s son Idra should have taken the throne.

Maia was wearily unsurprised. There was no one in the Untheileneise Court, possibly no one in the whole of the Ethuveraz, who did not know Varenechibel would have preferred to see his grandson succeed him. If Idra had reached his majority before his grandfather’s death, he might well have raised his standard against his half uncle—and would almost certainly have defeated him.

But Idra was fourteen; he could not be a player in the machinations of the court, only a pawn. He was also, as things stood, Maia’s heir, and thus Maia’s instinctive desire to treat Sheveän as his father had treated all who had displeased him—let her see what life was like in Isvaroë or Edonomee or Cethoree—was untenable. He could do it, but either he relegated Sheveän’s children with her and did to Idra exactly what Varenechibel had done to Maia himself, or he separated Idra from his mother. And Idra’s little sisters—what would one do with them in that case? No, it was not possible. Edrehasivar was not and could not be Varenechibel.

He suffered the miserable certainty that nothing he could say to Sheveän would make the slightest difference. But he remembered that Idra had not seemed to resent him at the coronation, and so he summoned his heir to the garden of the Alcethmeret, where it had become the emperor’s custom to walk for half an hour each day, regardless of the weather. Even in the snow, or the miserable frozen rains of winter, he at least walked along the stoa that cradled the garden against the bulk of the palace.

Idra was punctual; if his mother had insisted on coming with him, as Maia had feared she might, the instructions he had left with his household had been effective, and Idra had been divested of her. Idra was perfectly dressed and groomed, his hair in the thick knot that befitted a child, while the amber that glinted warmly among his white braids signalled him to be a child of the ruling house. Like Maia, Idra had the Drazhadeise eyes, gray and pale and clear as water, and he met his emperor’s gaze unflinchingly when he straightened from his bow.

It was not a particularly nice day, but the sun shone fitfully through the clouds, and the wind had less bite than it had had the preceding day. Maia said, “Cousin, will you walk with us?”

“An it please you, cousin,” Idra said, meeting Maia on the level of formality he had chosen.

They walked in silence along the first broad curve of the path away from the Alcethmeret, and then Maia, having been able to think of no delicate or tactful way to put it, said simply, bluntly, “You are our heir.”

“Yes, cousin,” Idra said; Maia saw the wariness in his sideways glance, and hated it. But there was nothing he could do about it. He could not demand that Idra trust him.

“You must know, we imagine, that we are not on the best of terms with your mother.”

“Yes, cousin.”

“We regret this. Were it in our power, we would make amends.”

A silence, thoughtful. Idra said, “We believe you, cousin.”

“Do you? Good. Then perhaps you will believe us when we say we wish no enmity with you.”

“Yes, cousin.”

They were silent for another long sweeping curve of the path. Maia was painfully aware that Idra was only four years his junior—and that Idra was in some ways much older. Not for him the stammering embarrassment of an emperor who had never learned to dance or to choose jewels or to talk politely of nothing over a five-course dinner. He wished that he could unburden himself to Idra, ask his advice. But if they were not enemies, still they were not quite allies, and he could not ask Idra to choose his emperor over his mother.

Well, he could, but he did not want to, did not want to make loyalty and love enemies in Idra’s heart.

Yet he had to say something, had to reach out to Idra somehow. The Prince of the Untheileneise Court would reach his majority in two years, and unless Maia begot an heir, a thought from which he flinched as a horse shies at a threatening noise, Idra was going to be a fact of his political life until he had no political life left, no life at all. He said abruptly, “Do you grieve for your father, cousin?”

“Yes,” Idra said. “We do.”

And Maia, who had meant to say something about justice, about sympathy, heard himself say, “We do not grieve for ours.”

And Idra said, “Did you ever meet him?”

He had been braced for horror or disdain, a remark about goblin savages or an echo of Varenechibel’s cruel words about his “unnatural” child. But Idra’s voice was simply curious, and when Maia dared glance sidelong at his face, his pale eyes held nothing but a kind of wary sympathy.

“Once,” Maia said. “When we were eight. At our mother’s funeral. He … he did not have much interest in us.”

The damned whelp looks just like his mother.

“Our father spoke to us once of our grandfather,” Idra said, his voice still neutral. “When we were thirteen and expected to take our place in the court.”

As Maia should have done five years ago. He nodded to Idra to continue.

“He told us that above all other things, Varenechibel hated to make mistakes, and hated to be seen to have made mistakes. He said that was why Arbelan Drazharan was relegated to Cethoree instead of being allowed simply to return to her kin, and that was why you were … we remember how he put it: ‘pent at Edonomee.’ If our father had lived to succeed our grandfather, he would not have kept you prisoned there.”

“We are grateful to know that,” Maia said. And he was, although it was as much pain as gratitude that he felt.

“Our grandfather was very kind to us. But we are not so naïve that we did not see he was not thus to all. He did not care for our sisters as he did for us.”

“And you found this unworthy in him?”

“They were his grandchildren just as we were. And our father said it was good they were not sons, for too many sons—” He broke off, eyes widening.

“Confuse the succession,” Maia finished. “So also we were told.”

“By Varenechibel?”

“By our cousin Setheris, who was our guardian.”

“He had no right to say such a thing to you,” Idra said, with the same indignation with which he had championed his sisters’ right to be loved by their grandfather.

“At least Cousin Setheris was honest with us,” Maia said, and turned the conversation by asking Idra to tell him what it had been like to grow up at the Untheileneise Court. Idra complied, spoke charmingly and wittily, and Maia listened and smiled and thought, He would be a better emperor than thee, hobgoblin.

But at least he stood on good terms with his heir. At least he had that bulwark to shelter behind, as he sheltered behind his dinners with Arbelan Zhasanai. Nurevis proved to be another bulwark, friendly, utterly uninterested in politics, cheerfully ready to explain things that Maia found confusing, forever appearing with invitations to one social event or another. Maia refused more of those than he accepted, but he could not refuse them all. Even if he had wished to, it would be foolish to alienate the only courtier who had offered friendship unencumbered with obligation. And he did not wish to. Nurevis made a particular point of mentioning when Min Vechin would be attending one of his soirées or informal luncheons, and Maia blushed miserably, never having learned how to be teased—but he went. He told himself it was foolish; he told himself it was inexcusable. He knew he was a laughing stock, the hobgoblin emperor, Edrehasivar Half-Tongue, dangling after the opera singer. But Min Vechin smiled at him, and would approach him when invited, and did not seem to mind his failure to make conversation.

He told himself he thought only of companionship and knew he lied.

He did not ask his nohecharei what they thought, and they did not tell him. But he knew Beshelar and Dazhis disapproved, and he thought Telimezh pitied him. This is what thy life will be, Edrehasivar, he told himself, and tried not to think about his now-fiancée.

It had taken almost a week for the terms of the marriage contract between Edrehasivar VII Drazhar and Dach’osmin Csethiro Ceredin to be agreed upon. Berenar told Maia that this was uncommonly quick work—“the Marquess Ceredel must fear that you will change your mind.”

“Why should we?” Maia said, and then, remembering a forgotten puzzle, “Why is he so afraid of us?”

Berenar snorted. “When the Empress Arbelan was put aside, her brother, the current marquess’s father, fell with her. He had traded much too heavily on being the brother of the empress, both financially and politically, and the late emperor your father did not, as it turned out, regard the Marquess Ceredel with any great favor—or, indeed, any favor at all. The Ceredada very nearly went bankrupt, and as the late marquess would never admit to any wrongdoing or flaw in his own person, the current marquess was raised in the belief that the emperor is terrible and capricious and persecutes the hapless House Ceredada. Also, we suspect he may be discomfited by the favor you have shown Arbelan Drazharan.”

“But she is his aunt!” Maia protested.

Berenar shook his head. “The Ceredada did not support her.”

It took a moment for Maia to assimilate his meaning. “Perhaps the marquess is right to fear us,” he said darkly.

“The current marquess, like his late father, is not notable for wisdom,” Berenar said dryly, and Maia knew it for a reminder that the emperor, being surrounded by it so much of the time, had to be patient with folly. He would have to hope that Dach’osmin Ceredin took after her mother’s line.

Certainly, there seemed to be nothing foolish about her when they met again, this time in the Untheileian to sign the marriage contract with all the court as their witnesses.

The marriage itself would not take place until spring, both for the auspices and because a wedding could not be thrown together at the last minute. Coronations, Csevet said, were much simpler, for there was nothing that had to be negotiated, nothing that was not mandated by five thousand years of tradition. Weddings, on the other hand, were nothing but negotiations, and—Csevet did not quite say but Maia could tell—the Ceredada were proving difficult to negotiate with.

Signing the contract, with its attendant exchange of oath rings, was a legal ceremony and could be treated purely as business. That was clearly how Dach’osmin Ceredin saw it; she was well, but not lavishly, dressed in pale brown velvet, and her greeting when she came up on the dais was polite and not unamiable, but brisk, like a woman who had a more important appointment to get to.

She signed the contract without histrionics or fuss. In contrast to the perfect, impersonal penmanship of the letter she had sent, her signature was dense and ferociously energetic; he saw that she used the barzhad, the old warrior’s alphabet, instead of the secretary’s hand favored by the court and thus perforce all of the Ethuveraz who did not have the freedom to be idiosyncratic. His own signature looked like an unformed scrawl next to hers, but he tried to put the comparison from his mind.

The ceremony of the oath rings, like the ceremony of signing, was one that required no spoken words. The iron rings, as plain for an emperor as for a cowherd, were themselves the oath. He was awkward, sliding the ring on Dach’osmin Ceredin’s thumb, but she helped, unobtrusively, and at least he did not drop the ring. She was much defter in her turn, and she was not afraid to take an uncompromising grip on his hand.

It was done and she curtsied and then was gone again. They had yet to exchange a total of more than fifty words.

He felt twisted up inside himself, intimidated by his empress, dreading the gossip that would inevitably begin to spread, wound about in self-contempt and the expectation of humiliation. Although he knew he ought to, knew he needed to, he could not meditate. Not with two other persons in the room, not with one. He was too self-conscious, too afraid of what would be said. Remembered, too painfully, that his nohecharei were not his friends. He could not bear the thought of their polite incomprehension any better than he could bear the thought of the court’s scorn. At night, he lay twisted among the sheets of his great bed and wished for the peace and cool darkness of the vigil-chapel.

And he wished for it more and more as the weeks passed, and to the murmurs that Idra Drazhar had a right to the throne were added new murmurs, rumors, evil things that grew like weeds: the idea that somehow Maia himself had been responsible for the wreck of the Wisdom of Choharo.

It was nonsense—but such utter nonsense that it could not even be dealt with. It was not as if the truth of the matter—Maia’s confinement at Edonomee, his lack of experience with intrigue and politics, the fact that he had not the slightest idea of how one would go about hiring someone to sabotage an airship—was not well known. It simply did not have enough force against another truth: that Maia, youngest and despised of Varenechibel’s children, was now emperor. Even if he could have said, to those who whispered, that he did not wish to be emperor—and he could say no such thing, trapped as he was behind Edrehasivar’s mask—he would not have been believed. No one in the Untheileneise Court would ever believe that one could wish not to be emperor. It was unthinkable.

The investigation into the Cetho Workers League continued (the Lord Chancellor assured the emperor), but was seemingly no nearer finding the murderer or murderers. He called Thara Celehar before him, demanded to know what progress he was making and why it was not more. He frightened Celehar, and was ashamed, later, of having done so, realizing in what a monstrous guise he must have presented himself to make any impression against Mer Celehar’s apathy. But for all his browbeating, Celehar could tell him only that he was seeking, questioning the living and, to the best of his ability, the dead. “It is not a matter of machines, Serenity,” he said, white-faced but not apologizing, merely explaining. “It does not happen to schedule.”

Csevet gave a small, meaningful cough then, and Maia recollected himself. He said, as gently and as quietly as he could, “Is there anything we can do, Mer Celehar, to help you in your search?”

“We are sorry, Serenity, but there is not. We can only work to the best of our abilities.”

“We know. We…” Emperors did not apologize, and he remembered Idra saying that the one thing Varenechibel could not forgive was a witness to his mistakes. “We are sorry for implying that you were not so doing.”

Celehar’s eyes widened, and then he bowed his head, masking his reaction. “Serenity. We shall report to you as soon as we have any information.”

“We thank you, Mer Celehar,” Maia said, and sank wearily back in his chair as Celehar bowed and left the Michen’theileian. Maia had been emperor, had been Edrehasivar Zhas instead of simply Maia Drazhar, for over a month now. The business of ruling the Ethuveraz had become easier, though no less tedious. He knew the names of most, if not all of his courtiers, was beginning to have a sense of their factions, their allegiances and enmities. Whatever remarks Setheris might be making—and Maia could imagine their tenor only too well—he had not intruded his person on Maia’s notice, and for that, Maia was (pathetically, he told himself) grateful. His nohecharei and edocharei did their duties; Csevet organized his emperor as if he had been born to the task. There was discontent, uneasy muttering, but indeed it would have been remarkable if there had not been—and Maia would have had to have the charisma he knew he lacked.

Chavar continued intractable, hostile, but he had not been openly insolent or so egregiously incompetent that Maia was forced to take notice. He still wanted to replace Chavar as Lord Chancellor, but he could not do it until he had a candidate in view, and he had none. Csevet and Chavar’s secretaries had worked out an elaborate system to ensure that the emperor and the Lord Chancellor spoke to each other directly as little as possible, and that made it if not comfortable, then at least bearable for the two of them to work together.

Nurevis Chavar was vastly more obliging than his father. Although his circle of friends barely overlapped with that of Csethiro Ceredin, Nurevis did his best not only to invite Dach’osmin Ceredin to his parties, but also to make the gesture look more neutral by inviting those friends they had in common as well. Maia was grateful, but he also secretly wished Nurevis wouldn’t bother. The Chavadeise public rooms had become a divided camp, with Dach’osmin Ceredin on one side and Osmin Duchenin on the other, and Maia felt miserably sure that he was welcome to neither. Osmin Duchenin made no secret of her anger at being passed over, and Dach’osmin Ceredin was cold and formal and possibly angry as well. When he was not near her, the laughter from her side of the room was uproarious, and he wondered if she, like Osmin Duchenin, was mocking him.

Maia tried to stick to neutral territory: Nurevis, and Nurevis’s friends who had not two political thoughts to strike together among the lot of them. They ignored Maia benevolently, and he listened to their incomprehensible conversations about hunting and horses and clothes and felt at least a little safer. Nurevis talked to him around his duties as host, but Maia was more and more grateful to Min Vechin, who was careful not to be seen to monopolize the emperor but who stopped by him periodically—frequently rescuing him from one or another of the courtiers determined to gain the emperor’s favor by sheer force of verbiage—and talked lightly and without expecting more response than yes or no. It was restful and she was beautiful, and he thought she was flirting with him, although he had no idea of how to respond. She made him feel almost normal, almost as if he belonged.

And then one evening, after Min Vechin had drifted gracefully away for the third or fourth time, Dach’osmin Ceredin approached him. She curtsied in a sweep of bronze and red-purple, but she was frowning, and Maia was not entirely surprised that she opened on the attack.

But he was surprised when she said bluntly, “Serenity, Min Vechin is using you.”

“Of course she is,” Maia agreed.

Dach’osmin Ceredin’s eyebrows shot upward, and Maia was unable to keep his bitterness pent decently behind his teeth. “How stupid you must believe us to be, to think we are unable to discern that for ourself. We thank you.”

She looked as if she’d just been bitten by a cushion. “Serenity, we did not mean—” She stopped herself, and he watched as her colorless skin flushed a hard, painful red. “We beg your pardon. You are correct, and we ought not to have spoken so.” He thought she would turn on her heel and flee—it was what he would have done—but she stood her ground, though she bowed her head for some moments. Maia let her be, his own anger having subsided as quickly as it had risen.

When Dach’osmin Ceredin raised her head, there was a light in her vivid eyes that hadn’t been there before, and when she spoke, her speech was faster, more clipped, and rich in the animation it had previously lacked: “Since we have disgraced ourself already, we may as well ask: if you know she is using you, Serenity, why do you accept it?” She did not sound judgmental now, merely curious.

But Maia had no answer—at least, none that he could articulate. He said lamely, “She is very beautiful.”

“And she has the sense not to frighten you,” Dach’osmin Ceredin said, and Maia took a step back, wanting to protest her deduction, but unable to deny its truth.

“We should take lessons from her, we see,” Dach’osmin Ceredin said more than a little sourly, and Maia felt his shoulders hunch, his ears flatten. That tone of voice from Setheris had frequently preceded a blow or a vicious insult. But Dach’osmin Ceredin swept another curtsy—not as graceful as some of the other court ladies, but as precise and sharp as a swordmaster’s salute—and said, “Serenity, we do not wish you to be frightened of us.” And perhaps to prove the truth of her words, she turned and went back to her friends.

Maia did not stay long after that.