"I doubt it," I muttered, much to Ajan's stifled amusement. More clearly, I said, "I found taint in the kitchen staff."
"Oh?" he asked.
"In their movements, their timing, their... their body language," I said, struggling for words. It must seem strange that I might do so, but I am a painter of words, not necessarily a poet. "They were disturbed by something, deeply enough that it no longer surfaced in conversation. But it was there."
Shame was studying me now, not my painting. "You have seen this before."
"A man who came to me," I said. "His lord had sent him abroad, and he returned, agitated and disordered in a very similar way." I shook my head. "Sometimes I wonder if the aunera are thus: twitching always, unsettled, casting here and there, never focused."
"Perhaps," Shame said. "Or perhaps, that is merely the result of the intersection of aunera and Ai-Naidar."
"Or even," Ajan offered, "the intersection of a particular aunerai and Ai-Naidari."
"Or even, "Shame agreed.
"Maybe we just make them feel this way," I said, looking at my paint-stained fingers. "They are a young race, aren't they? Like children around adults."
"We stray into dangerous speculations here," Shame said, rising from the stool. "We must not let our preconceptions color what we investigate." He nodded to Ajan. "Have a message sent to the capital, so we can learn if Qenain is permitted the incursion of aunera here, and so frequently." To me, he said, "The visits stopped abruptly a week ago, but the lord has been away more often since. That is how we came not to be invited to dinner; a formal table is set only when the family is in, and the lord is almost always away now. His returns are erratic and the staff does not seem able to predict them."
"No wonder the kitchen was disordered," I murmured. I looked up at him. "But we have an answer now, don't we? We know what's wrong with Qenain. We could leave—"
The look in his eyes when they met mine made the hair on the back of my neck rise, but I continued. "—and allow others to sort out the issue."
"Osulkedi," Shame said. "You came to me and said that we were needed at Qenain. That the Emperor Himself had tasked you to take me from the Bleak and bring me here."
"Yesss," I said slowly.
"Do you know what I do?" he asked, and there was a touch of exasperation there that felt, suddenly and comically, familial.
"Yes," I said. "You are Shame. You Correct the faulty, and bring them back into harmony with civilization."
"And you want me to leave?" he asked, and I was sure of the exasperation now. "Who do you suppose they'd send in our place? In my place?"
"I don't know," I said; strangely I was beginning to enjoy myself. "Perhaps the Emperor would come Himself to see to it." As he began to pace, I took a chance on formalizing the change of tone in our conversation and addressed him intimately. "Dealing with aunera is not minor business, Kor. It would not be out of bounds for Thirukedi to Correct Qenain for this. One does not bring aliens to Kherishdar without permission."
"We don't know yet if he is transgressing," Shame—Kor—said, and sat across from me on a chair.
"And if he is?" I asked.
"Then we will fix it," Kor said, eyeing me. "And you are needling me, Farren."
"Maybe I think you could use a little questioning of your certitude," I said, wishing for a brush or pencil in my hand so I could seem innocently at work with it. Next time I'd make sure of it, so I'd have an excuse to look away.
"Don't think you could hide your thoughts with body language," Kor said, sounding amused now.
"Oh no," I said. "I've given up hiding things from you."
Ajan, at the door, said, "The tray's here... ooh, they sent me one too." He opened the door for the irimked who entered; I recognized them from the morning and they smiled as they set out the trays and then departed.
As I took up a bowl of soup, I said, "Misdirection, now..."
"You'd have to work very hard," Kor said dryly.
"I'll have something to aspire to, then," I said, feeling absurdly cheerful.
Kor snorted. I tried my innocent 'I am eating' look and applied myself to the soup.
After the dareleni, Shame went to his prowling and I to my ablutions before bed. When I returned I found Ajan at the shabati, looking at the painting. There were fears in his eyes that I would have done well to attend... but at the time, I thought it none of my business, and that a Guardian would not welcome being drawn out on such things, or that his fears, like mine, were nebulous and without clear cause.
I was wrong on all three counts. It seems amazing to me, in retrospect, that I went to bed that night and slept with neither anxiety nor nightmare.
The following morning I rose and considered my next avenue of investigation while dressing for breakfast. Shame seemed confident that we two alone could solve the problems in Qenain, and presumably that meant that he was trusting to some of my talents to aid him in that endeavor. I remained dubious, and yet... from the journals, I had imbibed a sense of that assurance. So many problems he'd solved, problems so rancorous or so stubborn they'd proved too difficult for the entire tier of Corrective measures to solve: for among us, problems are usually solved by the next highest authority, and if they are not they are passed up the chain. It is only until they have baffled the most senior of a person's lords that Shame is sent for.
A man who regularly solves problems that confound the entire system created to resolve them perhaps cannot avoid feeling his power. And perhaps I was wrong to doubt him.
I glanced at my trunk and thought of reading further in the journals, which I had hidden there upon their arrival. Perhaps knowing more about how Shame had resolved earlier issues would help me understand how he was grappling with this one, or how he expected to succeed.
Why was I here? To help Qenain, or to help Shame?
Were they even separate missions?
In the end, I forsook the journals to finish dressing and take myself to the kitchens for another sublime repast; I could easily see myself growing too used to that consommé for breakfast. Then, properly fortified, I presented myself at Qenain's laboratory for a tour.
There I was greeted by one of the Observers, who graciously allowed me entrance. She was the senior there now, in the absence of the male who was still convalescing after his unsuccessful Correction. As a Public Servant, I outranked her. But I admit, aunera, that I did not so much notice it, for I was quite distracted by her loveliness. We were of an age, we two, if I was any judge, and she had eyes the color of tea leaves and a voice like a dawn-wren: excited, musical and boundless with energy.
"You are the Calligrapher!" she exclaimed after I had introduced myself and freed her to speak on her own behalf. "I had heard that you came with Shame. Welcome, be welcome. I have been expecting you, ever since he showed up. Come in!" She grinned. "I am betting you have not often seen a place exposed, ah?"
