So we went together into the private wing of the house, all the lights dimmed for the deep evening. At the door to the lady's apartments stood a pair of Guardians. One of them was Ajan's acquaintance; I felt a frisson of unease at the sight of him, and at how he did not acknowledge me by even flicking his eyes toward my face. He was not supposed to, but it felt like a warning, one I was too late to heed as the Servant announced me and then left me in the lady's receiving room.
She was seated there on one of the elegant chairs with its embroidered silk cushions, wearing a long dressing gown, dark blue at the floor fading up to soft rose at her shoulders, and stitched with reeds and birds flushed from their waving arcs toward the constellations pricked in silver thread over her breast and back. The sight of her in such near dishabille made me wonder what I thought I was doing here...
...and then I remembered. I bowed deeply, and waited for her to release me to words.
"Calligrapher," she said at last, her hands folded on her lap. "You are up past the hour."
"Lady," I murmured. "I had cause."
"And is it this cause that brings you to my door?" she asked.
"It is," I answered, allowing her to set the pace of the conversation; the more comfortable and in control she felt, the easier this would go for us both.
"So then," the lady said after a long pause, studying me. "Tell me what brings you here."
"Lady," I said. "The lord your brother has fled across the Gate."
"And what makes you think this?" she asked after another long, too long moment.
"I saw him," I said. "In fact, lady, I followed him. From Qenain's back gate all the way to the Gate itself, and I saw him pass through."
The silence that followed... was not precisely what I had been expecting. Those above the Wall of Birth are trained to maintain their calm, and some do so better than others, but most allow some touch of emotion to tint their demeanors, the better not to distress their subjects. There is such a thing as too much stoicism; it disturbs the mind, to see a blank face. But a blank face was exactly what the lady was wearing... all save her eyes, which were far too calm and far too assessing. As if I had done something wrong, not the lord.
And then I thought: Ancestors. She knew already.
Had I been intelligent, or calculating, or simply more wary, I would have said nothing more. I would have bowed, begged leave to go, and left the lady with my report like nothing more than a good Guardian or Servant.
But instead, I actually said—yes, I did—"You knew."
The lady sighed now. "Calligrapher, this is not your business."
"Forgive me, lady," I said, as Abased as I could speak without physically groveling... and yet dissenting all the same! "But we were sent—"
"You were asked for," the lady interrupted. "By my brother, the lord. Who wanted the help of an osulkedi in order to address an issue in his laboratory. But that issue has been rectified, if not in the way he planned; the observers are once again at their studies, and the work of Qenain continues unabated. You are no longer needed, osulkedi, and when your companion awakes I expect you both to go."
Stunned, I stared at her in rank discourtesy.
"That is my will," she finished, calm, her hands still folded in her lap. "I require your obedience."
"Lady," I said, the words winning free of me before I could trammel them, "this has grown beyond your brother's request. Thirukedi sent us to Qenain, and here we have found taint. It has felled two Ai-Naidar—"
"One," she said. "My brother is well enough as you yourself observed."
"Your brother the lord has created discord and unease in his house with his behavior," I said. "And now he is awake, and once again behaving erratically, and no one has stopped him! If you knew he had risen, lady, how could you allow him to remain without guard?"
"Perhaps I wanted him to reveal himself," she said.
"And he has!" I said. "All the more reason that Shame and I must abide! Until this mystery is solved..."
"There is no mystery, osulkedi," the lady said. "And we do not need your help." When I began to object she held up a hand. "And you, Calligrapher, are deeply remiss."
A great cold enveloped me at these words, and I knew it as fear.
The lady summoned a Servant then, and said, "Bring the Vines." Once the irimkedi had gone, she said to me, "You argue with me, Calligrapher. You question me. You hardly know my plans, but you presume that I have none, and that I have no right to make my own attempt at healing my brother's errors. But Correction first goes through the hierarchy of the household; so speaks the law of Kherishdar. You have forgotten this, but I have not. So I shall remind you."
"Lady," I whispered, trembling.
"Be silent," she said, without anger. There was pity in her voice. "Perhaps you have not felt the touch of a master in too long, and that is what has inspired your own wayward behavior. I shall amend this defect." At my expression, she added, "I shall be gentle."
The Servant and one of the Guardians returned with the Vines.
You do not know the Vines, aunera. So I have been told. We in Kherishdar believe that the body and the mind affect one another, and that posture can make the mind malleable. It is on this theory that the Vines are designed: a metal armature meant to enforce a certain posture on the body. The traditional set creates an arched back from tail to base of the skull, and holds the arms and knees wide, and then requires one to hold that pose with minimal support, and it is in this position that the mind is at its most vulnerable, because the body is as well.
Qenain's Vines were beautiful things, wrought iron with bronze accents, in shape evoking actual vines with occasional leaves. I stared at them, shaking, and saw them without understanding. I remembered the chief observer's body as I first espied him in the courtyard, shaped by them, and saw my own body superimposed, and felt faint.
The lady did not require me to strip, which was small enough mercy. The Guardians helped me kneel in the proper pose, and I barely remembered their touch, and how much I did not want it. But I was struggling with the lady's accusation. She was right about my impertinence, and having observed it she was duty-bound to Correct me. To allow my error to compound itself through time and inattention... that is not how we Ai-Naidar behave, how our society works. Since my elevation to osulkedi, my own lord was Thirukedi, but He was too far away to observe my behavior and Correct my faults... so as His representative, with the authority that devolved to her through the hierarchy of castes, the lady had to serve. Must serve: to let me continue, wayward, would have been wrong of her.
But I did not want her touch. I did not want her Correction. In that moment, I rejected her as my lady, and my authority and as Thirukedi's hand, and knew then that the taint had perhaps entered into me, as well.
The Guardians mounted me on the Vines, opening my robe over my chest but leaving me otherwise shrouded, and left me to the lady of Qenain, who was seated alongside me on her chair. And she did nothing more to me than to touch me lightly now and then, as the moments passed: my collar-bones, the line of my cheek, my heart. And occasionally, she murmured something soft and comforting, though what she said exactly I could not hear past the throb of my blood in my ears.
The Vines... they hurt. It hurts to hold oneself in such an unnatural pose for so long. After a while, one relies more and more on the support of the Vines, and they are not meant for great weight. The metal digs into one's skull, one's wrists. The pulse races, and breathing constricts. The world narrows to effort, to the feeling of being exposed.
Most Ai-Naidar are gagged when put on the Vines. I did not think it a kindness that the lady left my mouth free.
I am not sure how long she kept me. Long enough for me to feel the inevitability of my submission, for me to remember that Kherishdar is greater than one individual, and that everything I am belongs to it, and is nothing before it. There is no abasement like that of a spirit on the Vines.
