From the pedestal, I walked to the lab, and presented myself to its inhabitants in search of Seraeda. There I found her scowling at several vials, one of which she was measuring some clear fluid into with a dropper.
"I come at a poor time?" I guessed.
"Somewhat," she answered, and the expression she leveled on those vials put me in mind of the fathrikedi's snarl. Seraeda set the dropper down a moment and turned on her chair to glance at me. "The notes were incomplete and Baran's penmanship was horrendous-bordering-on-illegible. I've been reduced to duplicating the work to make sense of it."
"I see," I said, coming to her side and halting abruptly at the arm she put up before I could approach the table.
"Don't," she said. "Some of these materials are caustic, that we use to treat the samples." She lifted her hands to show me her gloves, extending past her wrists. Then went on to say, irritated, "Also, I am half-afraid that if someone breathes on them wrong, the results will be contaminated and I'll never figure out what it was Baran was talking about."
"Is it so important, then?" I asked.
"I don't know!" Seraeda exclaimed. And then, ears flattening. "It is at least as important as Qenain's spreading taint, though. Surely that's enough significance to be laying at the feet of a few flowers."
"It would be flowers that save or destroy Qenain," I murmured, and she looked at me sharply.
"Come back later, Farren," she said after a long moment. "Maybe I will know something then." With a sigh and a wan smile, she added, "Maybe I'll be better company to you, also."
"You are fine company even when you are all snarls and claws," I said, winning a better smile from her. "I will return later."
I was left then, with little to do and the louring mystery of Qenain on my shoulders. It seemed ridiculous that what should have been a minor matter could be so unclear to any of us, much less of such painful import that the fate of the House might credibly rest on whether we could resolve it. So much responsibility. How could Shame bear such things? I would have to ask him when he woke.
My pacing brought me to the gardens outside the house, beneath a low sky thick with clouds torn by a quick wind. I stood at the edge by the low wall, resting a hand on it and looking past it at the spars of the great Gate.
Somewhere, through that Gate, was the source of all this suffering. Was an aunerai—maybe several?—who were responsible for the creation of this situation.
The temptation to walk out of the garden and through that Gate was so powerful that I leaned toward it, hand tightening on the wall. How little effort it would take to slide over the wall and start walking...
...except I would have to know where I was going, once I arrived. And who to talk to. Which aunerai was it that had captured the lord's attention so? And would I ever know, in a sea of aunera, which was the key?
I did not go to the Gate. But I spent a very long time in the garden, standing at that wall beneath a sky that promised storms, and stared at it.
When I returned from the garden I was surprised to find the Guardian at the door back into the house looking at me, instead of past me. That looking-past expression is so well-known it has its own name, Guardian-gaze, so to have that mask broken startled me.
"Yes?" I asked, coming to a halt. A Guardian can initiate speech to a caste-better; there were several exceptions to that effect, mostly involving the safety of other Ai-Naidar. But better to save him the trouble of deciding to invoke those exceptions, and sooth, if that was the reason he'd broken his Guardian-gaze I found I did not want to know.
"Osulkedi," the Guardian said, inclining his head. He was a warm gray with eyes a clear green, so light I would have had to add water to the paint almost to the point of obliterating it to achieve the right tint. "May I ask after Ajan's master?"
"Sleeping through a fever," I said, wondering just what Ajan had been doing in his own wanders. Befriending the House's Guardians, apparently. "The physician says he should see the end of it within a few days."
"That is well," the Guardian said. "Please convey Shardan's well wishes to Ajan and his master."
"I will do this thing," I said, mystified at the exchange.
"Thank you," Shardan said, and I took this to mean that our discussion had ended, and passed through the door. But behind me, I heard the Guardian say, "Osulkedi."
I looked over my shoulder. The Guardian was once again facing forward, scanning the gardens with the practiced competence of his kind. When he spoke again, it was without turning to me. "We Guardians serve the master of the house."
For a long moment, I did not move. When I did, the nervousness of my limbs felt like flight. And I did not stop moving until I gained the safety of our rooms.
It occurs to me that some of you may wonder at my distress. I suppose living outside our society you would find our communication opaque at times. But perhaps some of you, those of you who seem most agreeable to our ways—or very likely, those of you who are Guardians yourselves—will understand the warning I was issued, for I am told that among aunera Guardians must also deal with political considerations. We live in a complicated social tapestry, and one cannot separate the political from the social, and Guardians no less than other Ai-Naidar are subject to those forces.
So a warning he had given me, this acquaintance of Ajan's. That the lady had her own notions about the goings-on in the house, which might not agree with the lord's, or ours as we'd been developing them. And that, if it became necessary, the Guardians of the house would do their duty: to the house, which is to say, to the Noble currently charged with its oversight. The lady, not the lord. Had Shardan meant otherwise, he would have said the House, indicating that he was empowered to serve what he felt was the best interests of Qenain, not its local mistress. I knew then that there were no Guardians of sufficient rank to act strategically, rather than tactically, which put us at the mercy of the lady's opinions.
Ah, I see I have encountered a translation issue: house and House. Let me briefly say they are different things: gadare, "house" is a building or place with a group of people of and serving the same family, while eqet is "House," an abstraction of the concept that encompasses the family entire and all its works and properties, and used invariably for those above the Wall of Birth. Nai, which you might recognize from our names, is merely "family," or more specifically, "belonging to a family," family-proper, the noun, is dare, as you may recall. There are many families within a House. So you may remember my name, prior to my ascension, Farren Nai'Sheviet a'Neriethen-jakkedi: which is to say, Farren, of the family of Sheviet, who serves the House Neriethen.
So, the Guardian had used the word gadare and not eqet, and thus our issue.
Now, the matter of jurisdiction in this case was not a simple one. The lady, as an Ai-Naidari above the Wall of Birth, had the right to command us. But in pursuit of the duties to which we'd been dedicated on elevation to osulked, and on a mission directly from Thirukedi to fulfill those duties, it was our right to be allowed the autonomy to act as we saw fit. In basic, the lady could command us to stop, but by courtesy she should not put us in the position of having to choose between our duty as osulked and our duty as Ai-Naidar to obey those above us.
It is not that I expected violence, at least, in the way so many of you might expect. I did not think the lady would imprison us or beat us or... or whatever crazed notion might spring from the heads of aliens, for whom physical violence always seems to lurk as the end-point of any disagreement. But emotional and social violence... that I could see. To be balked in our duties would be a great wound to us. The taint in Qenain was distressing enough to its members, without adding a conflict between its Nobles and the osulked sent to succor them.
As you might imagine, Ajan had one look at me and immediately put his ears back. "What happened?"
"What has not," I said and sat at the shabati before my blank paper block. I rested my hand on it, needing the comfort more than I cared how I might affect the surface with the oils of my skin. "The fathrikedi is indeed on the pedestal, and not at all resigned to whatever error sent her there. The observer has yet to discover the power of the mysterious formula her superior left behind. And a Guardian—one of your friends, if I am correct—has as much said that the lady may not want us here."
"That I could have told you," Ajan said, leaning against the door into the bedchamber, arms folded. His tail was twitching, a little agitated flick-flick that I found out-of-proportion disturbing, given how infrequently he was given to such displays. "The Gate-house was never staffed with Guardians appropriate to its use."
I glanced at him sharply. "Intentional?"
"No," he said. "More like... they didn't really anticipate the kind of issues that a Gate-house might end up dealing with. They've staffed it like a satellite of the House, appropriately. But it's not a satellite, it's an adjunct to the Gate trade. The Guardians here often feel uncomfortable with the situation; they have the power to make decisions appropriate to a more insulated house, not to one that has to deal with Merchants, aliens and considerable traffic from outsiders to the House."
Surprised, I said, "They have not brought up their concerns with the lord?"
"I asked," Ajan said. "But... they are fond of the lord, Calligrapher. They are personally devoted to him. To bring up those concerns might see them re-assigned elsewhere, away from him."
