"Very good," Shame said. "You do well, Guardian."

And indeed it was so, and very disturbing it was, to see an animal adorned like a person so.

Further deliberations were interrupted by one of the irimked, who escorted us to our room... our suite, I should say, for we had been installed in a palatial one, with a single bedroom set with two couches, a receiving room of spectacular size and comfort and a private bathing chamber with attached sauna and massage table. I had rarely been offered such luxurious accommodations and felt rather mazed by them. The central room even had a shabati, which is to say a kind of narrow table like a podium, one well-suited to the use of calligraphers.

And of course, everywhere there were flowers. Fresh-cut honeyfletch in narrow vases framing the tall windows, spilling yellow blooms into the sunlight; delicate pinbramble vines arranged in long braided arcs dotted with their dusky, secretive flowers; petals strewn on our beds, one set the straw-yellow of a wineflower and the other the shocking black of the aunerai flower we'd seen in the capital. Even the pallet set aside for Ajan at the door to the sleeping chamber was scented with evergreen needles, fresh and enlivening. The perfumes of these flowers had been chosen to mingle, for their combined fragrance was sublime.

"There is something very wrong in this House," Shame said, cutting through my reverie.

"Something besides the senior overseer choosing not to work," I said, looking at him as he prowled the room's borders.

"A senior overseer does not stop working without cause," Shame said. "Nor does his moral decay spread to others unless the rot had already set in in some other way."

"It does seem a little strange," I said. "Whatever it is has agitated the lord entirely. I fear for his state of mind."

"Has the situation agitated the lord?" Shame asked, voice growing remote in a way I found very uncomfortable. "Or has the lord created the situation?"

"You ask questions I have no answers for," I said after a moment.

"Which is why," Shame said, "we will have to remain until I have found the answer."

Foreboding intruded... again. Foreboding was becoming far too familiar a guest. "And this finding out the answer... how exactly does that work?"

I had been glad not to be the target of his too-clear eyes all afternoon, and was not glad now to be pinned by them.

"He'll interview everyone he can," Ajan said behind me. "And find out information in other ways, also."

"And those other ways will involve Correction," I said.

"It's sometimes more like confession than Correction," Ajan said. "People like to talk to Shame, they usually don't need much prodding to do so."

Shame eyed him over my shoulder. "And is my Guardian done with the lecture?" he asked dryly.

As I backed away so as not to be trapped between them, Ajan bowed. "As my master pleases!"

"So then," I said, recovering myself. "You mean to tell me that you will install yourself in this House and, if necessary, singlehandedly Correct your way to the root of the problem, and then Correct that?"

"That would be my duty," Shame said, with lingering amusement.

"To do such a thing alone?" I said. "An entire Gate-house! Be reasonable, osulkedi." I gestured to Ajan, my sleeve pulling back from my wrist at the unwonted violence of the gesture. "You have aid awaiting your word at the temple. Send for your assistants. Let them be your eyes and your helpmeets, let them do their duty!"

"And expose them to the rot here, before I know its nature?" Shame asked. "Absolutely not. I would send Ajan back, even, if I knew I could compel him."

"Which he can't," Ajan murmured, unrepentant of the insolence.

"So you make excuses to isolate yourself?" I said, shaking my head. "Grim and dutiful Shame, sleepless in pursuit of the truth that only he can uncover! No. I cannot permit such a thing."

Both of them were looking at me now, Shame with lifted brows and Ajan with (ancestors save me from the young!) admiration.

"And your objection?" Shame asked.

"You will wear yourself to a shred," I said. "There will be nothing left of you."

"Nevertheless," he began.

"And that is nothing to say of the sin of hubris," I interrupted, "which you commit by assuming that you alone are capable of Qenain's redemption. I cannot allow you to fall into such grave error, for who will Correct you, and in what time? When time is very obviously precious here. No, osulkedi. I will find some way to help. I am osulkedi myself, though by your words you would fain forget it. My ways may be gentler, but they work no less than yours. And—" I was struck by inspiration, "—you will return here every night for the dareleni."

Shame's brows lifted. "I shall?"

"Yes," I said. "For I will paint you something, and we shall come together and discuss the art. That is a traditional activity for the dareleni, so we shall observe it together, and find some rest in it."

"In addition to helping me find the source of Qenain's rot, then, you will be painting something for me every day, is that it?" Shame asked.

"Yes," I said, not at all certain I had the stamina for the endeavor but vowing it anyway.

Perhaps he saw it in my eyes: that determination and the reason for it. For he inclined his head and said, "All right, Farren. We are agreed."

And left me thus, my mouth ajar, no doubt to begin his work. Seeing me, Ajan laughed and said, "How now, Calligrapher?"

"He knew my name," I said.

"Of course!" Ajan said. "Did you not give it to the Servant?"

I glanced at him, found him grinning. He bowed to me, entirely correct but with feeling, and followed his master out.

And that is how I embarked upon the project for which I am known to this day: The Book of Truth and Flowers. It is part art, part philosophy, and part record of the fall of House Qenain. And I assure you, aunera, I neither chose the name—rather a self-aggrandizing and pretentious one, to be sure, as if I owned all the wealth of truth in my small head!—nor did I know what I wrought when I labored over it those long and breathless days and nights, feeling as if something pursued me, like the worst kind of deadline: the one that brings trial at its conclusion, and endings.

I had some time before the dareleni, but not as much as I would have liked. You do not have such a custom, I do not think; well and again, we do not always observe it ourselves, though it is an old custom and a wise one. The hours between supper and solitary preparations for sleep are traditionally reserved for family to gather and quietly digest: digest the meal, and the day. When more than one person gathers with this aim, then the hours are known as the dareleni, the family-time. Activities vary by personality and habit, but most of them emphasize calm: games of contemplation, discussion over small wine or tea (for as I mentioned before, our tea is not a stimulant), sharing of poetry or art, crafting or mending... anything that can be done quietly in company.

As our dreaming minds help piece together our revelations while we sleep, people help us do so while we wake, and so there is the dareleni. One does not observe it alone. One might spend the hours between supper and preparation for sleep in the same activities, but that is not keeping the dareleni. That is marking time.

I perhaps do not need to say that I have not kept the custom for years now. I hoped, as I unpacked the trunks that arrived not long after Shame's departure, that I would remember how.

Several of you have mentioned that you have wished for me to make more description of my calligraphy. Now perhaps you will be satisfied, for the works that I made daily during my stay dominated all my thoughts and nearly all of my memories of events. I had not packed thinking of a grand project but serendipitously I was set up to create one: I had brought a paper block, because I hadn't wanted to arrange for the transport of single sheets, which needed to be packed in between rigid boards to prevent bending.

The block, on the other hand, was a stack of papers glued together at the seams; one separates them with a knife when one wants a single sheet. It is far more convenient for storage and shipping, and protects the paper besides.

That I packed a single block is responsible for The Book having a regular form, since each word was on the same size sheet. As I said, that was fortunate but utterly unplanned: do not listen to the stories that say otherwise. I was not in possession of any mystical foreknowledge of what I was about to do.

So then. I had less than three hours. I unpacked my tools, sliced my first sheet of paper free, and took it back to the shabati to begin.

And stopped. What word? What to choose?

For how long I stared at the window, at the sun glowing in the petals of the honeyfletch, I don't know. But at some point, I made my choice and took up the ruler to begin tracing out the guidelines. It was my intent merely to write the word in the center, as I often do: decorative, certainly, with illuminated capital, using color to reflect meaning. But as I sketched out the letters, the honeyfletch crept into the drawing, crawling into the letters and filling their bodies with bright cadmium yellows and orpiment. And I found the aunerai flower also, like a poison, curving in a long arc around the word's beginning, framing it with vine black and madder lake: as I felt it framing our errand here, mysterious and compelling, drawing all attention to itself. It issued from nowhere: not from off the edge of the page, suggesting some origin, but evanescing from somewhere beneath the calligraphy... and so I painted my confusion and unease into the piece along with all the intentional things.

But really, very little of that painting was intentional. I question whether even the word I chose was my doing, or if it was whispered in my ear by some benign ancestor, guiding my path.