"Of course," Ajan said, pulling on his shirt. "Thirukedi is... well, Thirukedi. But I serve Him by serving Shame." He grinned. "Vekken—that's our teacher from the Guardian school, he's one of us now—he told Thirukedi himself 'A man can serve two masters, but he has time to love only one.'"
"He did not say that to the Emperor!" I breathed.
"Oh, he did!" Ajan said, chortling. "Don't worry, Thirukedi didn't smite him or anything."
"What did He do?" I asked, torn between horror and curiosity.
"Oh, actually, He laughed," Ajan said. "And said that if we were determined to choose the harder course, that was our privilege as Guardians." He grinned. "So no, he didn't get into trouble. You know what they say about Guardians and speech."
"Yes," I said; there's a word for it, even, "Guardian-talk," which is to say outrageous in every particular. We grant a great deal of latitude to those who feel called to give their lives for us. "So, Shame puts your ribbons on every year."
"Every year," Ajan said. And then, more quietly, "To be honest, Calligrapher, while it was our choice to have him do it, I don't know that it would have been his."
"I'm not surprised," I said. "You ask him to take on a lord's responsibilities to you, with all their concomitant intimacy, but he is not a lord."
"I know," Ajan said. "We all know. But... we love him as we would a lord, Calligrapher. What should we do? To bow our heads to the Emperor would diminish us—" He lifted his hand at my protest, and surprised at the insolence of the gesture I let him continue, "—it would. I grieve to say it. But if your love is specific, osulkedi, how does it serve you to deny it and pretend your allegiance is to some more distant figure? We all left the work we could have done to be Shame's helpmeets. And we are his helpmeets. We ask in return that he honor our feelings."
"And he does," I surmised.
"He does," Ajan said. "Though it seems to be harder on him with every passing year."
"If it is, it doesn't show in the ribbons," I said. "I have only ever once seen a steadier line. And they are beautiful." I roused myself to set out the materials for the afternoon's work. "Now that you say it, I can see him in the figure."
"They are like him, aren't they?" Ajan said, tugging his collar down to look at the hooked ends of the ribbons at his collarbones. "You know what amazes me about them? He does them without walking behind me."
"Ah?" I said, glancing up from my inks.
"He reaches around me and does the back by feel," Ajan said. "Every year, he does it like that, and every year it fills me with wonder." He laughed. "It shouldn't; we were taught to fight without having to see, so of course he has experience with being able to work by touch alone. But it still does."
"He must do it without gloves," I murmured, imagining it. "To feel your body so accurately."
"Always," Ajan said, pulling on his pants. I could hear the smile in his voice. "The first time, I asked him why he didn't protect himself from it and he showed me his fingers, and of course, the bleach hadn't done a thing to them since they're already white. 'Here is a lesson,' he said to me. 'The experience that marks one person can leave another untouched.' And then I said, 'or maybe it's that the experience just doesn't leave obvious marks on the other, but they're still there, unnoticed.' And then he told me I was too smart for my own good and that he'd have to keep special track of me to save me from all the trouble I was no doubt due."
I started laughing. "Have you always been this..."
"Insolent?" Ajan said, eyes sparkling. "I'm afraid so. But only with him. Because I love him. And... you know... if I didn't have an edge, I'd never cut through that layer on the outside, and then I'd never know he cared. He's so uvren, Calligrapher. He is the absolute epitome of uvren."
Uvren is what we call those who are reserved by nature, and show affection in such subtle ways it is easily missed; that dynamic of relationships we put on a scale, with uvren on one side and fashanil on the other, 'demonstrative.'
"I had noticed," I murmured.
"You couldn't get more uvren if you worked at it," Ajan said, and straightened his clothes. "So what are you painting today?"
"A word," I said, moved to tease him by his demeanor and his openness with me.
"Can I watch?" he asked, wistful. "I've never seen a calligrapher work."
"I... you... oh, of course," I said, startled. And then added, "But you must repay the favor. I have never seen a Guardian's training. Maybe you can show me how you practice."
"Agreed," Ajan said, grinning, and pulled a chair back behind my perch at the shabati.
Which left me with the day's word, and I hadn't really had a good sense for what to choose until just now, until the conversations with Seraeda and Ajan mingled and brought forth a common theme. I lifted the ruler and pencil and set to work.
If I had any fears about Ajan distracting me, they were swept away; I supposed Guardians were taught to be very still when needful, and he became as watchful as a hunting beast, and my awareness of him faded as the needs of the painting consumed me. And the word... the word was esar, that quality that defines a lord's style of leadership. There are many forms of esar, and upon ascension a lord is required to state his or hers, and to be tested by the application of its opposite, its shadow... such rituals are as varied as the forms of esar, and most of them are deeply difficult to watch or participate in. But we are all called to do so, for the ascension ritual is no mere formality, but a true test, and if a lord cannot withstand it, they are not confirmed in their role. Seraeda's lord must have undergone—and passed—some trial of passion or deprivation of passion; I did not know which, for he had not been my lord and so it had not been mine to witness. And it had surely been luck for such an Ai-Naidari to secure the role of lord of a House of Flowers; to be daring and comfortable with risk is a good thing for an enterprise that requires innovation.
I thought also of Shame, who technically should not need the formality of a stated esar; he was no lord above the Wall of Birth to promise himself to others. And yet, Ajan and the other Guardians who served him had apparently been within their rights to require him to take on some of the duties of a lord. I wondered what esar he would claim, if he had been required to state one. I knew he had one... perhaps several. But I didn't know that I could articulate what it was.
So the word was esar, but its focus for me was the dangers of its shadow, and without consultation of any of the more rational parts of my mind I embarked on a rather ambitious project for the hours I had, and drew the word twice; once the correct way, and once upside down as a cast shadow. Except that it was the cast-shadow that I painted in colors of light and brightness, and the word itself that I painted in murky tints: umber and carbon black and a touch of verdigris, not just to add a depth to the gray I was building, but also because I knew that as the years passed the pigment would fade, eventually growing brown, and then black.
All things change. And all things, without maintenance, decay. That sense of time and fragility felt important to me.
Once I finished the grays I flipped the painting and went to work on the brightness, adding hints of faces in the letters: because esar is inescapably about one's effect on people. I gave them smiles, touched with vermilion, like the blush of healthy flesh, and when I was done one could just barely see them if one looked. Then, on impulse, I flipped the painting again and did the same to the shadows, adding the suggestion of dejected or uncertain silhouettes.
When I had finished all this, I found my pencil and drew in a spiral fall of cloudsbreath petals, starting above the word and twining around the reflection, and where they neared and occluded the shadowed esar they were brittle and old and dry, and as they rejoined the sun they grew pale and healthy, veined in green. Cloudsbreath flowers are used for airing out rooms, and the plants are good for clearing allergens. In poetry they are linked with the normal business of living, and esar to me seems to be part of the normal business of being lord and vassal.
I sat back at long last, straightening my cramped back, and my forgotten watcher whispered, "Ancestors."
I glanced at him and was gratified by the awe in his eyes.
"Esar," he said. "That's a good one."
I thought so too. It wasn't until after I'd begun cleaning my brushes, however, that I remembered that Seraeda had spoken of her lord's in the past tense.
All things change, indeed.
"Esar," Shame said. "Interesting. May I?"
