I sighed out. "Ancestors preserve us. No wonder my message disordered her mind so, if it came on the heels of... whatever news it was the messenger gave her."

Ajan murmured, "You are very forgiving of her, osulkedi."

I glanced at him, then at Kor, ears flicking back. "He really does speak very plainly. You might counsel him on it before it wins him trouble."

Kor chuckled softly. "He trusts you, or he would not speak so in your presence, Farren."

"You are very forgiving of her, and you didn't earn what she dealt," Ajan said, looking up at me boldly.

"But I did," I said, answering the anger I sensed beneath the words; despite my astonishment at his forthrightness, I was moved that he felt such outrage on my behalf. "I will not blame the lady for a situation for which there is no right course, Ajan. The taint here creates discord: a Public Servant who threatens to undermine a Noble's authority; a Noble who must Correct a Public Servant for doing his duty. What would you have done?"

"I would have let you do your duty," Ajan said. "And trusted that duty to reveal my rectitude, in the end."

"And disorder the house's workings in the process?" I said. "Qenain would have suffered. If you do not yet know this, Ajan, then you will learn: the rumor of wrongdoing will follow a person even if they are shown to be innocent of it. What people will remember is the wrongdoing, not the verdict."

Ajan's fingers closed on the haft of one of his knives. His voice was tense. "Osulkedi, she broke you. Had my master not been here, she would have ruined you."

I looked down at my cup and drew in a long breath, thinking of what the lady would have done, had I truly been broken for my duties, for the empire's use. I thought of the sorrow in her eyes when she ordered me released, and knew that she was confused and frightened. Something alien had come into our lives, something for which our traditions, our customs, even our books had no wisdom to offer. I said to Ajan, quiet, "Accidents happen."

"Accidents!" Ajan bristled.

Shame set a hand on his head, between his ears... dark fingers on bronze head. Ajan fell silent at the touch, eyes closing. Then he twisted his head to look up. "You know I'm right."

Kor touched his chin, thumb resting just below his lower lip. And then he smiled. "I thought I knew everything at your age, too."

Ajan stuck his tongue out at him and Kor chuckled, shaking the youth's head gently by that chin-hold. "Be respectful."

"Yes, master," Ajan murmured, but the touch had gentled him.

"You have not disagreed with me," I said when Kor looked up from him.

"No," Kor said. "But I am perhaps a little more aware of the history of Correction and its many weaknesses than the penokedi at my feet." Ajan snorted. Kor ignored him, continuing. "The healing of social sin is not a simple matter, and could not be; people are too different from one another... from themselves, even, as they grow older and change. And Kherishdar, too, is changing, and so Correction must change with it. The Book of Corrections still contains acts that are punishments, and those served a valuable purpose when they were first codified: they made clear the rule of law, and made those who broke it accountable to others publicly, and such things are powerful necessities when a society is still new to law. But the law is no longer young, and as people we grow more sophisticated. With that sophistication comes, or should come, respect for the differences in individuals and the flexibility to respond to them. The idea that Correction can heal—should heal—is relatively new, from a historical perspective. And you are right, Farren: in the past, Correction broke some number of its supplicants, and that tragedy was acceptable because of the good it did in other areas."

"But you think that things should change," I said, startled. I had not thought of Correction as... an art with a historical tradition, one that was evolving. In truth, I had not thought of Kherishdar itself as something that evolved. We prided ourselves on our stability, on the ancient pedigrees of our traditions, our ways. It had never occurred to me that the rate of change was merely so slow that the individual Ai-Naidar living through it never noticed it.

"I don't think anything, in the way you suggest," Kor said. He had left his hand on Ajan's head, and now his thumb was lightly passing through the strands of the youth's hair, ruffling it. "I reflect Thirukedi, Farren. He has directed the change in Kherishdar since its inception and He continues to do so. He in His turn has entrusted me with the office of Shame in the empire, and it is then my duty to ensure that Correction in Kherishdar reflects the direction He has been guiding us toward. And He has been guiding us toward a system of more compassion and understanding of the individual."

"The Book of Corrections," I began.

"...is too brief, and too general," Shame said. "And I expect that I will spend many years rewriting it. Not everyone will have my sense of other people's hearts. I must find a way to impart that knowledge."

I stared at him, then, deeply affected. This man, revealed by sickness to be no less vulnerable an Ai-Naidari than any other, nevertheless had confessed to the necessity of a task so much greater than himself... I had thought that the office of Shame alone was larger-than-life, without the addition of such a far-reaching project. And yet, I could see how he was right.

"Thirukedi chose well," I said at last.

Shame lowered his head.

I sipped my tea then, and gave him time to compose himself. When he had, he tugged gently on one of Ajan's ears. "Go on, then, Guardian. My peer and I have matters to discuss."

"Yes, master," Ajan said, rising. And grinned. "I was hungry anyway."

I watched him leave... and presumably, Kor watched me, for after the door closed he said, "He is like a brother to me. A much younger brother."

"There is a great deal of love there," I observed, setting my tea cup on the table.

Kor sighed. "Yes. I will not work without love. And that is my problem."

I looked at him, then, and he held up a hand. "Not yet," he said. "I must go through my exercises, and you must paint. We will discuss Qenain's fault—and mine—when we are both more settled."

"Are you sure you should be straining yourself?" I asked. I eyed the stimulant. "You should not allow a drug to give you a false sense of strength."

Kor chuckled softly. "Farren, I have worked this body harder than you perhaps realize for all the years I have been Shame, and several before. I know how far I can push it. I have been bed-bound for days now, and my entire body is sore. I must stretch it before I lie down again."

That I could accept, so I repaired to the shabati without doing either of us the disservice of protesting his suggestion. He knew I needed to work through my thoughts, and he knew how I did it; well and again, I suspect his stretching was his way of doing so. I cut a page from the block with sure fingers and set it on my workspace, pulling myself onto the stool; from that vantage, I looked into the bedchamber and watched him begin his exercises. Having seen Ajan at work, I could tell the motions were akin; some Guardian-taught protocol, then, and even weakened by his illness Shame executed them with the neatness of long repetition.

His grace, unlike Ajan's, was all patience. Patience, and inevitability. That foot would land there; that hand end up thus. Even hobbled by weakness, even trembling with it, there was no question in my mind that he would do exactly what he planned.

There was something of Shame-the-virtue in that implacability. His body reflected his mind reflected his ishas reflected his position. I adored it: I adored the wholeness of him. It is not that we are not normally whole in that way; we are put in place specifically so that we may be whole, and devote ourselves to a life that suits our talents and our spirits. But certain works in Kherishdar require far more of an individual, and one does not expect that wholeness to be so easy in those Ai-Naidar. And yet, Kor was that easy in being Shame. It became him.

I had spoken truly. Thirukedi had chosen well. It made the mystery of Kor's sin all the more compelling.

I looked down at the paper and stroked it with light fingertips, barely brushing the surface. And this became me, and I became it. So what would I paint to reflect the evening I had passed through?

I had wondered once, long ago in House Elikim, what it would be like to be Corrected by Shame. And now I knew.

As I petted the paper, my thoughts returned to the lady, to my Correction only partially completed... to the lord's flight. To the distress of Qenain. I felt it piercingly, that distress. And setting my jaw, I took up my vial of black ink and spilled it on the page, letting it bloom in the tooth, spreading in unexpected patterns. As it glistered, I took up my pen and drew the ink down out of the clot it had formed on the page, and used it to form the letters of the word henej. Henej: to reject, as the body does poison, violently, powerless to stop it. As all Qenain now struggled to vomit up the taint, so the ink ran into what space it could, escaped from the vial, beyond my control save to make of it what I could when it finished.

There was a kind of peace in this making, aunera, despite how little I was involved in it. I enshrined in it not just Qenain's agonies, but my own at the half-finished Correction. Staring at it, some premonition moved me to add one more motif: again, pulling a touch of ink from its spill, I suggested a petal of the black blossom.

Shame was still at his exercises when I had finished, so I poured myself a second cup of tea and allowed it to give me some peace while I waited. Naturally, my reverie grew so profound that Kor had to chuckle before I saw that he was leaning on the door into the bedchamber, and probably had been for some time.

"The artist at work," he said.

I huffed and set my cup down. "Mockery does not suit you."

"It is not mockery," Shame said. "It is observation. You never cease to work, Farren. Especially when you are away from your table. Otherwise, you would not be so sure with the brush when you sit at it."

I looked up at him, then smiled ruefully. "I should know better by now."

"Yes," Kor said gravely. "Come, then, and prepare for bed, and you may ask the questions that have been consuming you."

I followed him into the bedchamber. There he sat on the edge of the bed and watched me as I drew my stole of office from my shoulders and folded it with hands that were far steadier than I expected.

"You must not blame Ajan," he said. "The servant becomes like the master."

"And you expect me to believe that the priest of Shame is irreverent?" I said.

He declined to respond to that, his mouth quirking in a partial smile. "Just remember," he said. "You and I no less than Ajan become more like our own master."