Shame glanced at him, and glad I was his eyes were not leveled at me, for I would not have liked to be pierced by them. He bent down once more to touch the elder's shoulder, then rejoined us.
"For," the lord finished, seeking—seeking!—Shame's gaze again, to the point of bending his head in an attempt to meet his eyes, "if the Correction does not take, and it may not, surely you will know how it is to be amended."
"Are you so certain of failure, then?" Shame asked.
"I cannot know!" the lord said. "These Corrections from the Book, they work, but to be sure they lack a certain subtlety. They have no nuance, you understand? A Correction should have nuance, particularly for those more apt to understand it. Complicated men need complicated Corrections."
I wondered if he had gone mad, for to my ears the lord babbled... and when I looked closely, I found the stole draped off his shoulder trembling, as if beneath it his body shook. This was not lost on Shame either, no doubt, for he regarded the lord with the force of his coronal stare, and beneath it the lord's tremor increased.
If I had not known better, I would have thought that he was enjoying it.
Shame looked away then, and the lord of Qenain took that as a signal to lead us into the house personally, as if we were guests well above the Wall of Birth. Ajan trailed us at a polite distance. "Please, come this way and I shall have quarters prepared for you. I see I erred... how could I have thought of turning you away! I am but the most callow of instruments. I have so much to learn."
"Forgive me, sir," I said, carefully Abased—I was no Shame to speak above my station—"but do you have so many in need of Correction that you require... ah... more understanding than you already have? Surely the Book is sufficient for most Houses."
"Oh, but it is a most vexing situation," the lord said with a sigh. "The senior overseer of our laboratory—the man I have just whipped, you will understand—refuses to work. And because he refuses, the rest of the laboratory workers also begin to lag and grumble, and soon enough I will have a revolt. And then who will do the research?"
Surprised, I said, "It is a serious thing, to refuse one's work. Did he give no reason?"
"None I understood," the lord said, mournful. "But the work must be done."
"Of course," I said, wondering what could possibly have driven the senior overseer to such a thing.
"Here you may wait," the lord said, bringing us to a solar. "The rooms will be prepared..." He trailed off and smiled. "Ahh, there you are, my dear."
The room was a beautiful, round with half its circumference empaneled in long narrow windows with black fretwork, the faceted edges slicing rainbows from the light and spangling the room with them. But for all the loveliness of the room, it receded in view of the Decoration who lay recumbent on the center divan.
She was gray as brume entirely, a light velvety color from toes to ear-tips, with a wealth of gray curls that darkened ever-so-slightly at their tips. And her limbs: such an elegance, and so perfect in proportion! But beauty, even supernal beauty, is not unusual in the fathriked, who are chosen for it. It was her face that set her apart, for even in repose there was a sweet wickedness in the curve of her lips. And when she opened her eyes, it was like a slap: they were bright as flame, orange with flecks of shocking scarlet, and as impish as her smile.
It was hard, hard not to stare at her. It was a little like trying not to turn one's face toward the sun.
The lord held out a hand to her and she rose, stretching languorously, unhurried despite his summons. She came to him, stepping over a sleeping hunting beast, and slipped her hand into his, lifting her chin. Her only ornament was a single jeweled collar, rose pearls on watered white gold.
"My Decoration," the lord said, introducing her to us. "My only Decoration... for as you can see, I need no other."
She looked upon us with a sensual interest I found unsettling in one who was probably of an age with my daughter. I know there are Ai-Naidar for whom such considerations matter less, but having lost my own daughter to the fathriked caste I was more sensitive to it. I could not suffer such attention without wondering who my daughter was touching at that very moment, and though this inability to give her away to that great every-love marks a substantial flaw in me, I cannot seem to rise above it.
She knew it too: there was a flicker in her eyes, and her smile lost some of its invitation and became a gentler thing, for which I was grateful.
Shame, though, she found quite intriguing, though from his look I wondered if he was absent desire at all. My late wife had once turned such looks on me, and I pledge you, aunera, I did not remain unmoved by them for long...! Indeed, when Shame looked away, back toward the divan, I thought his rejection alarming, and awaited the lord's reaction with trepidation.
But that worthy only laughed. "Ah, is she not a little much? But so exquisite! Such boldness, so much fire! I look into her eyes and often wonder what she would say, if she could talk... but we all know that Decorations must not speak, do we not, my pet, my coddled lovely? Shall I have her wait on you?"
"Unnecessary," Shame said. "But thank you."
"Of course," the lord said. "You brought an attendant with you. Well, it shall not be long."
And with that he took himself away, his elegant creature following him, and as she passed him Ajan, still waiting just outside the door, looked after her with lifted brows. In the silence that followed the lord's departure, he said to Shame, "Unnecessary!"
Shame ignored him. He had gone into the room in a whisper of cloth and was now crouched alongside the divan... which is when I realized he hadn't been looking at it at all, when he looked away from the fathrikedi. He was looking at the beast.
"Why, there is a beast in the house," I said, perplexed.
"Why is there a beast in the house, more like," Ajan said.
"Yes," Shame said to him in the tone of a teacher. "What else?"
Ajan tilted his head. Then his ears strained forward. "He's wearing a collar, just like the fathrikedi's."
"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.
