"It would be dramatic," Ajan agreed, wearing a similar one.

"I can't wear that stole," Kor said, ears flicking back. "It's the First Servant's!"

"And you're entitled to wear it," Ajan said.

"Obviously you must, to honor the First Servant," I said to Kor.

"Farren, you don't understand," Kor said. "It's the First Servant's. Quite exactly, his stole. It's centuries old!"

"So be careful with it," I said, beginning to understand how Ajan had developed that unrepentant grin of his. I satisfied myself with looking innocent. "You need a touch of color on you."

"Artist!" Kor exclaimed finally.

"Yes, thank you," I said, laughing.

"I am going," Kor said, but he was smiling now too. "Are you almost done here?"

"Yes," I said. "Though I'd like to have breakfast and take my leave of the household before we depart."

"Very well," he said. "I will meet you here when you're done." He touched my shoulder as he passed, and I caught the hand as it fell and squeezed it. And then he was gone, Ajan falling into position at his back with all the precision of long-practiced maneuver.

Oh yes. I was going to meddle. No question.

So I left the gracious suite assigned us by the missing lord of Qenain and went to have my last cup of consommé in the kitchen, where I found the workers there far more settled than they had been before. The lady's decision may have seemed overly harsh to you, aunera, but it had already begun to work; the physician had departed in the morning (with some disgruntlement at having found one of his patients unavailable), and in the absence of the afflicted the household's Servants and staff had resumed their routines, and been calmed by them thereby.

My only puzzlement was over how the lady had explained the lord's disappearance. The Ai-Naidar in the kitchen seemed incurious; when I asked, they said they'd heard something about the lord being sent on in advance, as his was a more serious case. I left my queries there, since asking excited their anxieties and I had no desire to further distress them. They could do nothing to solve the situation, nor to illuminate it further... as Shame had said, we must travel to the source of the error, and learn what there was to learn there.

Besides, I knew someone who would be more amenable to my questions, and my company. It was there that I took myself, perhaps a little too pleased with the transformations I had affected in myself and Shame, and expecting perhaps that some glow off my person would alert Seraeda to my new self-improvements and compel her to ask questions that I would be glad to answer, if put to me, but that would have been gauche to prompt.

I fear I was a bit over-pleased with myself, yes, like a young man. So I was suitably deflated when my arrival caused Seraeda to lunge toward me and exclaim (ignoring my mantle of renewed vitality), "You must not allow them to stop trade with the aunera!"

Startled, I answered, "What?"

"The flower, Farren!" she said. "The flower is important!"

It would have been impolite to laugh in the face of her zeal, but I felt the urge nevertheless. She was truly, from bone to pelt, an Observer.

"Tell me," I said.

She drew me back to the office she had temporarily claimed. "The flower," she said as she closed the door, and then visibly composed herself, pressing her fingers to her brow. "Ah, I am starting at the ending! I must start at the beginning."

"It would help," I agreed, fascinated by her agitation.

"You know that our bodies age while our minds are clear enough to observe it," Seraeda said. "Save in unusual case."

"Yes," I said. We are not without senility, but it is rare to live long enough to court such a fate.

"This flower," Seraeda said. "This flower, Farren, may help."

"Help us live long enough to become senile?" I said, unable to help the observation.

She glared at me. I returned her look, wondering what had inspired it, until she rested her hands carefully, palm down, on the desk... and leaned over it to pin me to my chair with her eyes.

"I see the face of the enemy," she said. "But I did not expect it to be worn by you, Farren."

My ears tucked back against my head, confused and unsettled. "Seraeda, I am not your enemy."

"The attitude reflected by your statement is," she said, sitting in the senior observer's chair. "My investigations remain preliminary, but what I see indicates that chemicals derived from this flower, combined with native compounds we are already aware of, may extend the average lifespan by five years."

"That is remarkable," I said, meaning it. Her hostility had put me off-balance.

"What would you say if it could be proven to extend our lifespans by a decade, Farren?" she asked. "Twenty years? Would you still think it remarkable?"

"Seraeda...," I said, my ears still back.

"Would you?" she asked. "Or would you tell me 'we are not ready to live another twenty years? What would happen to the children waiting for their elders to pass on their responsibilities? What would happen to the worlds, if suddenly more people lived to eat the food currently harvested? What would happen to our cities, forced to contend with the sanitation needs of so many more people? What would happen to our spiritual development, if we became too accustomed to living longer than our wont?'"

Now I stared at her. "I think," I said slowly, "you have thought these objections out much more definitively than I have."

"Of course I have," she said. "I am an observer; it is my work to think. You, though, are an artist. Your reaction was an unexamined feeling, wasn't it. A feeling that said 'it is not for us to act above our natural station.' You made a joke. You were flippant. You do not believe."

This was rather much. "Seraeda, the joke was harmless."

"You think the joke was harmless," she said. "But it revealed you. Humor reveals the true heart, just as art does." She opened the desk drawer as she continued, her voice brisk and impersonal. "I remain unaware of the cause for Baran's collapse, or the reason behind his arguments with the lord. However, I did find this." She set a capped jar on the desk between us. "It is pigment."

"Pigment," I repeated.

"Yes," she said. "Medically inert, as far as I can tell. It is not the ink he used to write with, however, and I cannot explain its presence otherwise. We are not in the habit of having spare ink pots hidden in locked drawers."

Perplexed, I took the jar, but its contents mattered far less to me than Seraeda's state. "I will tell Shame that it is important we continue trading for the foreign flowers."

"It is not important," she said. "It is imperative."

To that, I said nothing, for it was not for me to make such decisions... nor for her, at that. In the end, it is Thirukedi's decision. And with my silence, we made clear our philosophical differences in the matter.

"I hope," I said, voice low, "you are not too sore with me."

"I don't blame you for your attitude, Farren," she said. "I'm just disappointed you haven't risen above it."

That stung. I stood quietly, taking the jar with me. "Thank you for the evidence."

"Such as it is," she said. "I hope it helps."

And that was as much farewell as I received from Seraeda the last time I saw her in Qenain's laboratory, as one of its observers.

Outside the room I needed several moments to compose myself. My hands were shaking, something I noticed only because my sleeves trembled on my wrists. I smoothed the fabric down to my hands, where the signs of empire were limned, and then pocketed the jar before going outside, where I expected to find Ajan waiting for his master... and fortunately, he was, standing with our beasts in the courtyard.