"Novel," Thirukedi said. "Appropriate to your talents."
I tried not to shudder. Even though the rules allowed me to touch another with impunity when serving as their instrument of Correction, I had still found it uncomfortable. Touching is a thing between the trusted, to be gently negotiated beforehand. The instances in which it was appropriate for such as I to touch someone above the Wall of Birth were... very few. I could probably count the paragraphs in the Book of Exceptions, were I so minded.
"She was appropriately grateful?" He asked. Nuil, is that word, and it has no aunerai analog that I know. It is a gratefulness that comes only from having a poison drained from one's spirit, a gratitude known most frequently from Correction, a word I paint in the cerulean blue of joy and the brown of dried blood.
"It seemed so," I said. "It was good to have served her."
"But a discomfort," Thirukedi said.
I inclined my head again.
"Would you do it if asked a second time?"
"Of course," I said, because to say otherwise was unthinkable.
"For the same eritkedi?"
I almost glanced up, startled. "Was there a second transgression?"
"Of a different kind," Thirukedi said.
I found myself speechless, though I could not decide which understanding affected me more: that the Noble I had tasked myself to such careful treatment had relapsed into shameful behavior or that Thirukedi had bothered Himself to learn the details. For what? For this small discussion? Surely I was not so important. What broken pot did He intend me to mend, if it was clear that I had failed with the one I had tried before?
"There is no shame in it," Thirukedi said. "You succeeded in preventing her from transgressing in the same way."
"But not in another," I said, ears flattening.
"No," Thirukedi agreed. "There was a pattern there that you had no opportunity to see. There is no shame in it, Calligrapher; Correction is an art, not a skill. You were made for different tasks."
I sighed, folding my hands before me on the table. "There is yet regret," I said. "That the effort was not enough."
"Sometimes no effort is enough," He said. "I am sending you to the Bleak."
My silence was not the silence of respectful attention, but of shock.
"There," Thirukedi said, "you are to deliver my message to the osulkedi who serves Shame. He has been there the better part of two seasons now, attempting Corrections of those most in need... but it is enough. His services have been requested by House Qenain's gate complex, and it is there you will tell him to go, on my command."
He sipped his tea and finished, "He is the broken pot."
I stared at the finish on his bowl, stunned. Still, I found my voice... for such an incredible assignment demanded precise understanding. "And he is to be mended?"
"By you, yes," Thirukedi replied with a smile in His voice. "Accompany him to Qenain. Observe him, advise him... be to him what you have been to others in need. I suspect that will be sufficient."
"Forgiveness," I whispered. "Thirukedi... an aphorism, no matter how beautifully painted, may not be enough to succor such a soul."
"I suspect not," the Emperor replied. "This is not the work of a single painting. Your duty to him will take time. But mark it, Calligrapher... he is worth the time. He is my osulkedi, just as you are. Not since the first servant of Shame has there been one such as he... and he is shattering. He has given Kherishdar his service for years. If we did not save him, the very Civilization he has broken himself to uphold will not be worthy of him... is it not so?"
I bowed my head. "It is as you say."
"Go," Thirukedi said. "Retrieve him from the Bleak. I have set aside for you the records of his many Corrections... you may read them on the way. Until he is well you have no duty of more paramount importance."
"Yes, Thirukedi," I said. Then, quietly, "What is his name?"
"He is Kor Nai'Nerillin-osulkedi. But as his duty is to Shame, so he has preferred to be called."
(Here, clipped to the pages, is a small piece of paper upon which is written one of the broken pot parables.)
Reck this: Once there was an aridkedi, a country Merchant who specialized in the creation of pots for her small town. She was the sole seller of pots, for no other potter had her talent. Greatly did she please her community, and so she lived well and they benefited by her skill. So great was her skill, in truth, that she mended any of her wares if they cracked, and if that mending did not take, she gave the Ai-Naidari a replacement as an apology for her lack of talent.
The potter was not called upon to give out any replacements, though she was occasionally called upon to mend her works, for they were of such quality they were often used well past when another pot would have been deemed worthless.
One day, however, a client brought her one of her mended pots, which had broken again. She could not believe it had failed, and promised the client he would have the pot again, better than new. And so she fixed the pot, but within days it had broken again. Once more she mended the pot, but it was mere hours before it fell in pieces.
As promised, she gave the Ai-Naidari a new pot without charge... but she returned to the pot and attempted to fix it once again. Each time it failed, she applied herself to its mending.
It came to be that another aridkedi became the merchant of pots for that community. The most talented potter in town had become so obsessed with her failure that she had no more time to make new pots.
This is the tale of the broken pot. Reck it well.
I found the records Thirukedi had spoken of awaiting me on my return to the studio, held in the arms of the coach-master who had come to arrange my trip to the Bleak. We spoke briefly: I would leave tomorrow at dawn, which would bring me to my destination in late afternoon. As I had the habit of rising early it was of no inconvenience to me. I had only to pack for the journey and the trip following to Qenain's Gate complex and my part of this would be done, until I met Shame.
Ah, no, aunera. Do not take it for arrogance, for Shame to wish to be known so. For him to take as title one of Civilization's virtues was not self-aggrandizement, not a way of saying that he alone contained all the virtue of Shame and no other may lay claim to it. Other Ai-Naidar would understand it, correctly, as a sign that he was subordinating himself to that great virtue... that he knew himself to be a part of it, and wished to expose the self-knowledge, that dedication, to others. We assume ourselves always to be part of things, not separate examples. It is why almost all our words are groups, and they must be modified to form the singular. We are the Ai-Naidar, you understand... and I am an Ai-Naidari. The whole always comes first.
But this is digression from what I meant to impart to you, aunera, which was this:
