What confused me was that instead of lifting my spirit, I felt crushed by despair. Every beat of my heart bent me further beneath that burden, until at last I could no longer think or feel.
Cupping my chin in her hand, the lady murmured, "Now, I think you know your master. Do you not, Calligrapher."
Whatever she saw in my eyes must have reassured her... and saddened her also. She let my face go and said to the Guardians, "Release him."
They helped me off the Vines, and by then I could not have risen from them without that aid. And then I staggered to my knees before her, head bowed and shoulders slumped. I felt her regard without lifting my head.
"Are you once again Kherishdar's obedient servant?" she asked at last.
"Yes, lady," I whispered, Abased.
"Go, then. And remember your duty."
"Yes, lady," I whispered again, and the Guardians helped me up and out of the room.
I do not remember asking for their aid, but they escorted me all the way back to the suite and left me there, leaning against the door-frame. I don't remember opening the door either, but I must have, because I do remember falling as I tried to enter the room. My knees simply didn't work. I put my weight on them, and they crumpled.
I heard a cry, and words exchanged, and did not understand them. Hands on my arms, on my back, and then, startling, a dark arm around my chest, propping me up, and I found my head... on Shame's shoulder.
"Ajan," Shame said. "Start the bath, then go."
I swallowed, trying to find words, but my gorge rose. Had I had anything to vomit, I might have.
"No," Shame said... no, this was Kor. "Don't try to talk. Let it have time."
But how did he know...?
Against my ear, he murmured, "There is a divot on your skin beneath the sen and another at the base of your skull. And your robe is disarranged. You were on the Vines."
How could I do anything but trust him? How could I not feel safe in the face of such knowledge? I sagged against the high priest of Shame in Kherishdar, and wept.
There were so many things I had wanted to ask Shame when he woke at last from his fever: what was the lord's error? What had transpired between them that night? What had sent Shame into the rain-whipped night, alone, in madness? I had planned to ply him with these questions the moment he awoke... at last, to understand the mystery of Qenain! To have answers!
And here I had him at last, awake; not just awake but functional and no longer vulnerable, for asking difficult questions of someone fresh from sickness is unkind. And... the questions were gone. Wedged in my throat with all the other words that I could not speak. I had been crushed beneath the foot of the empire, and all my pieces were scattered; I had become the broken pot, and for all my life I could not remember any version of the story that promised me that I would be healed.
I knew that Shame held me, though I could not feel his hands. I could sense the scaffold of his body, divested now of some of its bulk by the fever; it felt too frail to hold me, and too imperishable to fail, and these two observations lived together without conflict in my mind. There was a smell in my nose, astringent and green and powerful, and it led me past tears; I breathed, and breathed, and breathed again.
And then I heard his voice.
He was saying my name.
"Farren Nai'Sheviet-osulkedi."
Over and over, slow and rhythmic and implacable, in his deep, clear voice.
"Farren Nai'Sheviet-osulkedi."
Do you have a word for it, aunera? A word for naming, for an act that defines something or someone, that circumscribes its limits and thus creates it and all its ideal conditions for growth, for what can grow without constraint? To be without a name is to be without potential, without identity, without surcease. It is why I struggle to teach you our language, so that you can see the things that we name, and know by that act that we see them, that the concepts are fully realized.
Everything that matters, once it is seen and understood, is named... as Shame was naming me now. With an infinite patience, with a broad and unending love, with quietude and certitude. Into my ear, softly, intimately, and yet brooking no denial.
"Farren Nai'Sheviet-osulkedi."
I closed my eyes and drew in a breath, shaking. And let the words become the prayer they were, a circle that never ended, until my spirit expanded and became diffuse. The discarded, scattered pieces no longer mattered: they weren't me. This... this was me. In the arms of Shame. This person who was named.
Farren Nai'Sheviet-osulkedi. A dream of pigment and the scent of linseed oil and wood spirits and tea. A pastiche of images, of loving Sejzena, of the evaluation that made me an artist, of hundreds of pages of calligraphy, of people coming into my studio and leaving it different, uplifted... not changed, but receptive to change. The feel of hundreds of thousands of heartbeats, of my daughter's weight in my arms as we chose her first doll. The smell of flowers, of so many honeyed springs... and so many winters.
This person who was named. Farren Nai'Sheviet-osulkedi. Public Servant, servant to empire, willing, so willing to be used, who had thrown himself at the feet of the god of Civilization for joy at the prospect. Who had taken on the sign of empire on his own hands, burnt into the follicles with poison, so that all might see him and know his devotion. Who had sweated out the consequence of that poison in the arms of Civilization Himself.
I knew my master and remembered myself, and wept anew. The lady had begun the Correction... but it was Shame who ended it.
In this reverie I was taken to the bath, though I do not recall it, nor the preparations that saw me naked and into the steaming waters. My first clear memories were of the lip of the bath against the tender flesh beneath my arm, the wet cling of the steam, and that smell again, stinging my nose and the roof of my mouth.
When at last I opened my eyes, I found Shame sitting at the bath's rim, hands on his knees. He looked drawn from too long abed; someone of his physique looks particularly poor after it. Without muscle to make sense of his frame, he was cadaverous. The sight should have been frightening... repellant. Instead, I felt a wave of tenderness. And then, astonishment. I lifted my eyes.
"No, Farren," Shame said gently. "You are not broken."
"And neither," I said in wonder, "are you."
He inclined his head.
I reached for him without thinking, and he, with great deliberation, took my hand in his, in an intimacy that neither of us had formally permitted and yet the permission existed. I felt his thumb caress the pad of flesh beneath mine, and the heat of the bath was nothing to that touch.
"Have you had your bath?" I asked. "You may share mine if it would help."
"I am washed," he said, allowing me to take my hand back. "I thank you for the offer. Ajan has taken good care of me in your absence, and told me all that has passed since I fell." He met my eyes and waited.
