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?"
