"Yes," he said.

I almost asked him how he would Correct such a sin, but I feared he would tell me, and that it would involve blood and knives and terrible things; or worse, that it would involve forgiveness and tenderness beyond my ability to bear. It made me wonder a little, what I feared in myself, that I should find such things so difficult to witness. A normal, healthy Ai-Naidari would have been uplifted by the spectacle of such compassion.

Perhaps the fathrikedi was right. Perhaps I still bled from a wound that not many Ai-Naidar were equipped to understand, and held my inability to heal as a secret shame. I wondered, glancing across the tea tray at my companion, if Shame knew... if he could know. What had Shame known of love?

How could I possibly ask?

And yet... "You have not said how the painting told you of my grief."

He looked up at me, surprised. "Do you do these things without conscious intent, then? The artistic choices?"

"Tell me what you saw," I said.

He canted his head, as if he perceived my attempt to understand him and was allowing it. "You choose the word for a rarity, but you didn't paint the word. You painted a floor of flowers around it, leaving it the white of the page. And the flowers you chose were sovereigns."

"So they were," I murmured.

"Pale sovereigns," he said. "As if they had already begun to wilt. A flower used for temple festivals celebrating youth and newness, grown old and indistinct, like memories, and unspoken, unpainted, shemailn, visible among them only by its absence."

"You perceive clearly," I murmured.

"You reveal too much," he said, not without (I thought with some surprise), fondness.

"If what you said was true, and I am a great artist, then I have revealed nothing," I said. "What will the average Ai-Naidari take away from that painting, then?"

"That treasure is fleeting," Shame said. "And their hearts will contract over those they have lost... or beat too quickly over those they have and fear they will lose."

"And if they have no treasure yet?" I asked, studying his face for his answer, thinking in my hubris that I knew it.

"Then they will wonder, a little, if they will be up to the challenge when it comes to them," Shame said. "Will they be able to accept loss when it inevitably arrives? Or will it diminish them?"

"I wonder," I murmured.

"Do you?" he said. "I would think you already knew." He rose, leaving the tray with me, and went back to the shabati, where he lifted the painting free.

"Where are you going?" I asked, surprised.

"To put this away," he said, stern and gentle both, "before you regret having painted it."

I stared after him, my spirit struck like a temple bell, ringing, ringing. There, I thought, goes the priest.

It was a short dareleni we kept that night, and Shame left not long after secreting my painting away... and I... I found myself in a whimsical and contrary mood. He thought he knew me so well! Well and again, perhaps he did... but not entirely. That is how I found myself in the halls that evening—let him come back to find my bed as yet unused!—intent solely on pleasurable conversation, and perhaps a cup of tea.

Yes, indeed. After too many years, I found myself at a woman's door.

Seraeda opened it for me, saw my face and smiled all the way to her eyes and lifted brows. "Ah!" said she. "This is a welcome surprise, though you are late-wandering, osulkedi."

"Farren," I reminded her.

"Farren," she allowed. "What brings you here, then?"

"The want of company," I began.

"—which you surely have, rooming as you do with the inimitable priest of Shame?" she suggested mischievously.

"—more attractive company," I continued more firmly. "And conversation that does not involve duty."

She giggled. "What, you do not find Shame attractive?"

"Every Ai-Naidari finds Shame attractive," I said. "As that is right and proper. And you, Observer, are teasing me." We shared our grin before I continued, "Am I too late? I have no wish to disturb your rest—"

"Oh, not at all!" she said. "But I am in my nightgown. Give me a moment, Calligrapher—Farren—and I shall change. We'll find something in the kitchen and repair to a quiet place to enjoy it."

"That sounds perfect," I said, and tried not to wonder what her nightgown looked like. From what little I could see through the narrow opening of her door, it was embroidered at the collar... with flowers, of course. But also with something else... molecules, perhaps? I wanted to ask, but it would be quite, quite outré to reveal that I had been staring near enough to her décolletage to remark on her neckline. That she would probably find it deeply amusing rather than offensive only emphasized the need for caution. Amusing a woman too much is as good as courting her, and as much as I enjoyed her company I wasn't quite sure I was ready for more than that.

I was not kept waiting long. Seraeda slipped out of her room, dressed quite properly in a robe of silvery-gray with hints of peach and beige and gray-brown at the collar and sleeves.

"So," she said. "Tea?"

"And maybe something small to eat," I said.

"Excellent," she answered. "Let us raid the kitchen."

That is how I found myself hidden away with a lovely woman in one of the house's many semicircular alcoves, the candlelight flickering along the edges of the beveled windows that framed our table and seats. It was a perfect night for such a thing, for no sooner had we seated ourselves that it began to rain, just the lightest of patters.

"Ah, this is cozy," Seraeda said, pouring for me as I served us both slices of a delicate foam cake. She reached under my wrist to steal one of the berries we'd brought as garnish and nibbled on it while pouring her own cup. "I had no idea you were passing-nocturnal."

"I'm not, usually," I said. "But I have been keeping odd hours here in Qenain. At home in the studio, morning is the best time to work, so I am usually up before dawn preparing my materials so I need not waste any of the light."

"You can't work by lamp?" she asked, curious. "Even the ones that mimic the sun?"

"It's not the same," I said, and sipped from my cup. "There is some quality we have never been able to duplicate. To my eyes, anyway."

"I would think it would be more variable than the lamp, sunlight," she mused, putting her cheek in her palm and resting the berry against her lip as she paused between bites to speak. It glazed her lower lip an endearing light red. "Surely the quality of the light changes as the seasons progress."

Her observation brought me back to less rarified thoughts. "Well... yes," I said. "Winter light is very different from summer light, as much as morning from afternoon light. I often schedule my painting around those changes."

"Ah!" she exclaimed, brows lifting. "So you mean to tell me you paint different things to take advantage of the differences in the light?"

"I... yes," I said. I'd never really thought about it before, but, "Yes, I do."

"That seems far more complex than just using a lamp, which will always cast the same kind of light!" she said, laughing. "You are imprisoned by nature."

"Say more accurately I am inspired by it, and guided by it," I answered, trying the sponge cake. "It is well to move in tune to the world around you. To move against it is..."

"Unwise?" she suggested, mouth quirking.