But: "No," I said. "Only the young believe such things. There is no beauty in grief, osulkedi. Lessons, perhaps. Growth. But no loveliness. No art. There is nothing in tears but ugliness."

"Perhaps, Calligrapher," Shame said. "But tears grave a line more indelible than any ink in a soul."

"Art is a slower agent for change," I said. "But it is no less sure."

A pause. Then Shame said with a grin I could hear in his voice, "Well, Ajan, it is for you to judge between your caste-betters. Which of us has the truth of it?"

Between us on the floor I heard the young Guardian shift on his pallet. I flushed, having assumed he was asleep; even if he hadn't been, I would never have thought to embarrass him by drawing him into a discussion he was duty-bound to ignore.

But he answered, young Ajan, and put paid to us both. "I think, masuredi, that love shapes us best and deepest, and everything else is her handmaiden."

And to that, neither of us found any reply.

shiqera [ shih CARE ah ], (verb) –to take care of; to parent; to mother. Most often used in a parental context, but not limited to that relationship.

enaima [ eh nai MAH ], (verb) –to let someone go; to let them grow up; to let them take care of themselves. Most frequently used in the context of parenting, but is not specific to that relationship.

In the morning, then, two of Kherishdar's osulked rode forth from the inn, accompanied by one young Guardian—wise perhaps beyond his years—and both those Public Servants had slept and that was good. We regained the road leading to the Gate and moved to its edge, where fewer people trod, and resumed our journey.

With the sun warming my joints and Shame's straight back in my view, I began to have some sense of the enormity of what I attempted. I had taken him to task for doing too much for himself while blithely ignoring that he was the sole priest of Shame in Kherishdar. He had no peers. Ajan might understand some of what he did, having facility with violence... but the violence of the Guardians is without moral application. Another Public Servant could understand Shame's call to serve our people, but not the tools he used nor the tasks he undertook to express that service.

What I had accused him of, then, was unfair. To claim understanding where there is none is a great arrogance; worse, it blinds one to truth. This project Thirukedi had set for me was more complex and subtle a matter than my easy aphorisms would have me assume—as I should have realized. Thirukedi would never have set one of his servants to a task that benefited only one of the parties. I too, had something to learn from my mending of the pot.

Had I not even said it myself? A simple aphorism would not succor such a soul.

I would have to be more careful. And more humble. I wanted to apologize, and had the feeling doing so would be counter-productive. Fortunately, I was riding behind and to one side of Shame so he could not see me to pry the words out from behind my teeth. That much I had learned, and prided myself ruefully on it.

"This," Shame said unexpectedly, "is a fine but quiet day."

Behind us both, Ajan said, "Was that a request, master?"

"It may have been," Shame said with a smile I could hear in his voice.

"Then," Ajan said, cheerful, "I shall sing."

"Maybe something by Kuleketh," Shame said. "Unless the Calligrapher has some request?"

Surprised, I said, "Kuleketh would be delightful. Ah... " I looked up at the thin streaks of clouds. "Maybe 'sapphires of morning'?"

"A fine choice," Ajan said and began to sing, and a clear and beautiful tenor he had, so much that the hairs on the back of my neck rose.

the bright fine bell of morning

ringing

brings me from my silver-edge dreams

and I find those dreams

repeated

in the silver-edge clouds of the sky

and the sapphires of morning

powdered

for the firmament's veil

nothing less

nothing finer

nothing more sacred than this life

Such a gift Ajan made me then, with that exchange, with his singing. For in it I saw some shard of hope. Shame loved him as much as the youth loved his lord, and the music pleased him. Ajan finished one song, chose another, or teased some new suggestion out of Shame with a subtlety I would never have expected from a Guardian and a youth. And all of them true beauty: the spiritual poetry of Kuleketh, Farsha Far-Sighted's historicals, and even the pastoral lyrics of Senjan, who wrote mostly of the woods and wild, of flowers and ponds and small, deeply-lived lives.

Shame saw poetry in blood. But so long as he still saw poetry in honest and beautiful things, I knew I could reach him, for those were the only tools I had. I only hoped I would be as good at it as Ajan. More accurately, and more fearfully: I had to hope that somehow, I could do better.

Ajan's singing brought us to the Gate-complex, then. Qenain's Gate-house was one of many there, for the volume of the commerce traveling through the Gate made warehouses at the site an economic necessity. Perhaps if there were more of them it would be different, but the Gates are not numerous: there is some relationship I do not understand between their size and the distance they cover, and Gates large enough to bridge the distance between worlds are enormous, their spars easily towering above the clouds. I cannot even fathom how they are erected, for the world Gates were created long before I was born.

You may fear, perhaps, that we have lost the expertise, aunera. But Thirukedi would never allow such knowledge to be lost. The theories behind the Gates are forever preserved, and so long as the theory is known it is only a matter of time before the engineering is possible, even if the engineering is forgotten in the between times.

The Gate was visible long before we arrived, then. The Gate, in fact, is visible from the capital, if the weather is clear. But the closer one draws to it, the more astonishing it is. The arch's feet are the size of an entire district, each one: imagine walking several blocks before reaching the end of one of those vast pylons! And from each of these feet, the arch rises and is lost to the blue haze of the air. So pervasive are these monuments that the Gate-complex has its own sayings: 'Weather comes and goes, but there the Gate,' is common—an expression urging patience—as is 'Even if you can't see it, the Gate's still there,' a frank reminder of the persistence of reality.

Really, the cluster of buildings at the base of the Gate is not memorable, in compare. Its only unique feature is that it only extends toward the capital, and the Gate itself cuts the complex off as sharply as any blade; there is something about the space behind a Gate that makes it uncomfortable to use, and so we do not. There is room enough on the worlds for such eccentricities.

We passed through the gate (shaped like the Gate, but in miniature) into the complex in early afternoon. If anything it was busier here than on the road, and we quickly dismounted in favor of leading our beasts rather than trying to ride through logjams of wagons and carts. Most of my memory of this part of our journey was of the sun's brightness: in the capital, there is no street without shade and few blocks without some fountain or kept pond. But the complex was left largely without vegetation or water fixtures so that the sun could offset the strange coolth generated by the Gate. The temperature was pleasant enough, warm with a cool breeze, but my eyes watered.

We could tell when we had arrived at Qenain, then, because it smelled of flowers rather than dust and sun-baked pavement. I looked up, wiping my watering eyes, and found tenderblossoms trained over an arch framing the door, and that was beautiful: little creamy sprays with dark, dark leaves, powdery yellow pollen scattered on the ground. The house was wider than I expected, with more windows, though I could not see through them with the glare outside and the dusk within. But seeing them, I craved that respite from the sun.

And everywhere, of course, more flowers. Ivy crawling out of window-boxes, sprouting lilac irises with speckled petals; exotic orchids hanging heavily from clay pots suspended from the eaves; rainflowers tall as lances fringing the edges of the property, their narrow silver faces turned away from the brunt of the light.

"Fancy," Ajan murmured as we drew nigh.

"Decorative," I said.

Ajan chuckled and knocked on the door.

We were ushered into a cool, dim foyer, one musical with the sound of a small fountain. As the Book of Exceptions decreed, the irimkedi who showed us inside could and must speak first, and so he did. "Be welcome to Qenain," he said, Abased.

"Thank you," I said, since Shame did not seem inclined to answer. "I am Farren Nai'Sheviet-osulkedi, a calligrapher. This is Shame—" introducing him any other way seemed impossible, "and his Guardian. We were sent for."

"I shall inform the lord that you are here," the Servant said, bowing again. "Please, take your comfort."