"My trunk?" I asked, subdued.

"Already sent ahead," he said. "If that pleases you, osulkedi."

"That is well," I said.

He studied me carefully, something I allowed while I made pretense at checking my mount's tack and re-acquainting myself with it, petting its soft nose. But kindly, he did not say anything, and somehow this silence between us remained restful. I had thought being left alone with my thoughts would distress me, but Ajan did not leave me alone. Without words, somehow, he drew me from myself, and that sufficed.

Shame emerged from Qenain's gate-house not long after, and I found great comfort in the sight. I expected nothing more than that, but his gaze swept over us, beasts and people both, and then halted abruptly on me. Before I could make explanation he was before me, hands on my arms and a frown on his face.

"What is it?"

"Seraeda..." I trailed off.

"Hurt you?" Ajan said from behind me, and I heard the growl in his voice. Kor looked past me at his penokedi and twitched his head in minute negation before looking again at me. "Something we need to know?"

"The aunerai flower may extend our lives," I said. "She guesses by as much as five years."

"Interesting," Kor murmured, eyes losing their focus. I remembered the look from what seemed like so long ago now, when we first met, and waited for him to return from his thoughts before speaking my own.

"You don't think this is a good thing?"

"To live longer?" he said. "It depends on the quality of the life those five years offer." He let me go. "I am sorry you argued."

"She is..." I looked for words. "She is an observer. Her chief thought is for the science."

"And you, perhaps not enough so for her taste," Kor guessed as he checked his mount's tack rather more knowledgeably than I had mine.

"She called me an artist," I said. "I don't think she meant it as kindly as you did."

"We sometimes say things we don't mean when passion takes us in the moment," Kor said, his voice gentle.

Thinking of her words, I said, "And sometimes, we reveal ourselves."

To that, Kor—Shame—said nothing.

We mounted then, the two younger Ai-Naidar with rather more grace than I managed, and without fanfare or farewell we departed. I was glad of the chance to be away from the Gate-house with all its uneasy memories. "I presume the lady gave you the permit?" I said, guiding my mount up alongside his as we gained the byway.

"She did," he said.

"She wouldn't have denied him," Ajan added. "Especially after he guessed about the messenger."

"The messenger," I said. "That he came?"

"That he brought news that Qenain acted without sanction," Ajan said.

I glanced at Kor. "It was true? You guessed."

"It was the only guess that made sense," Kor said. "Her reaction confirmed it." He eyed Ajan. "You should not be volunteering this information so easily, Ajan."

"The osulkedi is family now," Ajan said. "Isn't he?"

There was a long pause. You have all perceived with remarkable insight, aunera, the depth and importance of being ajzelin. But you perhaps do not know that our highest indicator of significance for a relationship has to do with whether it creates the expectation of family bonds or not—whether with it, one undertakes the responsibility of caring for one another and one another's relations... or if one holds oneself apart. Perhaps you understand: to break bread with a person is one thing. To give the last of your bread to your beloved's hungry grandmother... that is another.

Kor and I had not discussed whether we were willing to be family or not, and Ajan's question had pierced the core of our peculiar circumstance... for neither of us really had a strong family anymore. I had been divorced from mine by distance and death. He had never had one, by virtue of his orphan status, and his choices thereafter.

"Well?" Ajan said.

Kor glanced at me, his voice just... so slightly... tentative. "Farren?"

I sighed. "Ajan, you are too bold. And you will not be young enough to be easily forgiven for it for much longer."

"You see, I must be right, or he wouldn't be lecturing me like a son," Ajan said with a grin. To his master, "So I don't see why I should hold my tongue around him."

I felt Kor's gaze on my face, though I kept my eyes doggedly on the street as seen between my mount's pricked ears. Partially because I wasn't sure I was ready to look at him... and partially because I was not so good a rider to hold long, significant looks with someone while still keeping my mount walking forward.

"I should cuff you," Kor said to Ajan with a faint growl.

"As my master wills it," Ajan said, rather too cheerfully.

"Don't oblige him," I said, smiling a little. "We will discuss the family matter later. I'm not unwilling."

"Neither am I," he said quietly.

The mounts filled the ensuing silence with the clap of their hooves on the street, and I heard it as the chime of Ereseya's temple bells, like a shiver in my bones. How ironic to go from Qenain's laboratory and my shattered hopes of a possible family relationship, to the wind-swept byways outside it and the lifting hope of that possibility.

Thinking of the confrontation in the laboratory reminded me of the jar. "There was something else..." I took the vial from my pocket. "Seraeda found this jar of ink in the senior Observer's desk in a locked drawer."

"Ink?" Kor said, frowning. He extended his hand, drawing his mount alongside mine until our legs were almost bumping. I carefully handed it over and watched with no little awe as he undid the cap and smelled the inside without dropping the reins or losing control of his ride.

"It seemed a strange thing to have locked in a drawer," I offered. "I have pigments valuable enough to require protection, but I can't imagine what an observer would be doing with one of them, and it doesn't look like anything I have...."

"That's because you would not have it," Kor said, voice low. "And could not, without incurring serious punishment, Farren."

"Punish—but... what ink would..." I stopped, my fingers tightening on the reins and my eyes dropping to the figures on their backs. The figures drawn onto them...

...with ink that burned.

"The lord gave the chief observer a vial of the merethek ink?" I asked, shocked. "But that is never to be handled outside the rituals! And it is certainly not for those who are not lords to ever handle!"

"I know," Kor said, his voice still low.

"So what was it doing in the laboratory?" I asked, the fur on the back of my spine lifting.

"That," Kor said, "is what I believe we are about to discover."