Perhaps all men are so, and I never realized it. Ancestors preserve me, and us all.

When I had finished the letters, I painstakingly cut a reverse mask to protect them and painted a gray radiance from the shear, as if the hole there could shine like a bleak star, drawing all light and will into it. I thought I was done then, but lifting my head I espied the vase of silver irises behind the chair where the Observer had sat... and so I added one to the picture, divesting it of two petals on the lower right, for the unease that asymmetry creates. This I drew over the summit of the word.

And then I left the shabati, feeling both calmer in mind and sick at heart. I stopped at Shame's bedside to reassure myself as to his status: was he cooler? I hoped my fingers did not deceive me, for surely we needed him now more than ever. And then I realized that I had lost Ajan... through the door, in fact, that led out of the bedchamber and into the little courtyard outside of it. Ours was not the only suite facing this private garden; such a floor plan is common in houses that entertain frequently, no matter their occupants, and Merchants no less than Nobles might have one. These spaces are called lever—say that leh-VARE, aunera, for I know you have similar-looking word that is said not at all the same—a private garden or courtyard for the use of guests. A leveri can be entirely enclosed or only partially, as ours was, leading as it did into the gardens behind the house.

There, amid the potted trees, Ajan was dancing.

I had no other word for such an act, though I knew by the weapons in his hands it was deadly. Nor did I have any context for the way he moved; no way to understand why that slash happened at that angle, nor what act his imaginary foe would have committed to be countered by this lunge or that sway. I knew only that its grace was indescribable... unbelievable, almost, for these martial exercises were all undertaken in despite of the obstacles around him, unplanned: the ornamental trees, the potted plants, the bench (from which he leapt after balancing neatly on its back on the ball of one foot)... I watched it all, transfixed, not just by the silhouette of his body interrupting the air, but by the red tassel and long gray scarf that trailed each of his weapons. Glint of bright steel, flick of scarlet cords, smoke-like shift of silk...

He was aware of me, though I was not aware of just how acutely until he made me part of his exercise. At his unexpected advance, I balked and stepped further into the garden to give him room... and in doing so, won myself an experience I would never have had otherwise: that of being the center of a Guardian's sphere of protection. For though I still could not picture the attack that would make sense of his movements, once I was within his circle I saw... I felt... that all that he did was solely to protect me. To bar steel and hand from my flesh.

There are moments in which knowledge erupts into the consciousness, fully formed, as shocking as a sudden flower's blooming. In that courtyard furled into that net of steel and sweat, I understood there was an entire discipline to which I was foreign and in which I was unlearned, with its own traditions and advances, its own lineage and reasons, and the young man I had been treating with such casual ignorance was not just heir to all its secrets, but had mastered them, and all that the remainder of us might bide in that ignorance, comfortable and safe.

That I could not imagine what threats he had been so exquisitely prepared to nullify hardly mattered. Or rather, it only served to illustrate the point.

Dizzied by the epiphany, I remained as still as I could. But even when I shifted, Ajan compensated. I breathed, and he wove his art, and I shook at the gift, and at the dark implication of its existence, and worse, my blissful lack of awareness of it.

He stopped because I was out of breath, not he. We met one another's eyes in that stillness. In that moment, there was nothing of the youth, and everything of the soldier.

At last, he said, "You asked to see my practice."

"And so I have," I said, regaining my voice somehow.

He grinned, and was once again the youth I'd met at Shame's side so seemingly long ago. "I have surprised you, I see. Didn't think it would be so pretty, did you?"

"Nor so acrobatic," I said, glancing at the bench.

He followed my gaze, then laughed. "That was my favorite part. My teachers always did say I had too great a love for climbing things."

I could so clearly hear the acerbic tone from this unknown tutor that I laughed also. "I suppose we all have a touch of rebellion in us."

"Do we?" Ajan said, untying the scarf from the pommel of his second blade. "That is not a thing I would have expected from your lips, osulkedi. More of a Guardian sentiment, if you will pardon my cheek."

"When you have put the artist among Guardians, what do you expect?" I said. "Why... the scarf?"

"But not the tassel?" Ajan said. He chuckled. "They are different things. Guardian things. Are you so eager to learn?"

"I am curious," I murmured, too embarrassed to explain my shame at my ignorance of his world.

"You would be, with your love of colorful things," Ajan said, folding the scarf. "The tassel is a dan-elet... a maze-the-eye. It serves to confuse the opponent, because it is bright and moves a great deal, and so the eye goes there instead of to the blade. The scarf... is a belevani." He cocked a brow at me.

"I thought belevan were love gifts," I said, obedient to his expression. "Does the word mean aught different among Guardians?"

He let the question sit between us, then grinned and said, "No!" And tossed the scarf into the air. It drew my eye, inevitably, and as it floated, gossamer, past the gate to the Qenain garden proper, I espied a figure hurrying through the rows. Seeing the change in my face, Ajan whirled around, swords at the ready. His ears flattened. "That looks like..."

"The lord!" I said on an out-breath, shocked. "Am I right?"

"I think you are," Ajan said, tension wiring his lean body.

"But... he was abed..." I said.

"Not anymore," Ajan said. "And evidently intent on an errand for which he wants neither witness nor company."

We glanced at each other, and spoke in unison.

"You stay with your master—"

"—we must investigate..."

A heartbeat's pause, in which Ajan looked deeply pained.

"Stay," I said firmly. "Your place is at the side of your masuredi... and this, this is for me to do."

He did not argue, and I knew who the love gift had been from. Who else? "Go carefully, osulkedi."

"I will return," I promised him, and hastened in pursuit of the lord of Qenain.

Reck this: Once there was an aridkedi, a country merchant whose pots were of such astonishing quality that she alone would serve for her small town; they would have no one else. Among one of her many virtues was her promise to mend any pot that cracked, for so great was her skill that her pots did not often break and when they did, if they could not be fixed, she offered a replacement.

One day, an Ai-Naidari came to her with a broken pot and requested that she mend it. The aridkedi took it in her hands and examined it carefully, then said, 'If I mend this pot, it will break again, for the break is in a bad place. Allow me to replace this pot for you instead.'

But her patron would not hear of it. 'I am fond of this pot and want no other,' he said. 'Please, mend this one.'

'I can mend this pot," the aridkedi said. 'But it will never bear weight again.'

'Then I will make sure it is never subjected to any stresses that might break it,' the other said. 'For I love this pot, and I will not replace it.'

So it came to pass that the aridkedi mended the pot, and the Ai-Naidari took it away with him and set it on a shelf, and never again used it to bear weight, and indeed he cherished it and looked upon it every day.

He also returned several days later and bought a pot that could bear weight.

This is the tale of the broken pot. Reck it well.

It was perhaps not my best idea, admittedly... to go rushing off thus with neither pack nor plan. All I was certain of was that to lose the lord now to this covert errand was to lose the thread of the mystery of Qenain, and worse, to lose the chance at addressing the taint. Thirukedi had in His wisdom sent two of us to the House of Flowers to do His work, and if I had to leave behind the broken pot to which I'd been assigned, I consoled myself that it was only to uncover the hammer that had finally shattered him.

Had I been more experienced in subterfuge I might have worried that my pursuit lacked subtlety; that I cared little to conceal myself or soften the sounds of my footsteps. Perhaps in that way Ajan would have been the wiser choice. But I could not send the Guardian to do an osulkedi's task and I could not tear a servant from his master's side in his master's need, and so beneath starlit branch and night-blooming vine, I hurried on in the lord's wake, with little concern that he would notice me. And in truth, it would hardly have mattered if he had, for he was so far in front of me that once I reached the back gate out of Qenain's property, I ran. And if there is anything more ridiculous than a middle-aged artist with his robes rucked up above his knees, dashing after a man above the Wall of Birth like some kind of errant child, I really cannot imagine it.

But run I did, for the lord had the lead and he was opening it. Like me, he was spurred by the urgency of his task. And I should have known that it was drawing him... to the Gate.

Yes, aunera. I see many of you have guessed already the ultimate destination of the lord of Qenain, and it was an inevitability, wasn't it? The Gate created this situation, and as I ran down the street toward its great presence I knew that I would be drawn through it. I might avoid it tonight, but before the end of our mission to Qenain... I would touch foot to alien soil.

But gods hear me... not tonight.

It was my goal to reach the lord before the lord reached the Gate, and I truly thought I could. But as I turned the corner onto the broad lane leading through the jambs and felt that cool wind against my neck and brow, I saw him vanish.