The Guardian glanced at me, and I read in his eyes a moment's uncertainty.

"I know nothing of these matters," I said. "Speak, please, and educate me."

"Shame needs to stand apart from other Ai-Naidar," the Guardian said at last. "Staying in someone's home is an intimacy."

"I imagine he shall have trouble at Qenain, then, yes?"

"That's different," the youth said dismissively. "He will be on duty then. It's harder when he is passing through."

"Even for just a night?"

The Guardian smiled, ears flicking backward. "A heartbeat is long enough, for Shame." (That is a single word for us, aunera: tsan, one of our words for subjective measures of time.) And then, almost to himself, "Or at least, it used to be." Then he looked forward at something I could not spy through the carriage window and said, "I am wanted, osulkedi."

I nodded, though technically I had no ability to stay or release him; if as he said he truly was Guardian in particular to Shame, only his ward and Thirukedi could command him. And I had enough to ponder from what words he'd shared... and more importantly, for the concern he'd revealed over the change in his ward's behavior. Too, it was hard to conceive of what it meant to be an osulkedi who must not draw too close to the people he served.

Again, this theme of apartness. Yet if I painted the Exception's aloneness in washes of gray and blue, then to paint Shame's I would need black ink on bleached vellum, bordered in red.

You imagine I am being dramatic, aunera. Truly, I do not blame you. It is against my nature to be quite... so... sensational in my description. It is a measure of how aberrant Shame's presence was in my life... my ordered, gentle life which is poorly acquainted with urgency or violence. It is not that I have not known sorrow or pain or joy. But... how can I explain? Mine is a contemplative art. It requires and teaches patience. Deliberation. A... way of arranging the world in one's thoughts. I had become accustomed to it, and indeed it was expected of me: it was how I had been chosen to my caste and elevated to its final rank.

Shame is a page from a different book. No, to be honest, a book from a different library, as alien to me as I must be to you, and we two, we are not even the same species.

I struggle, thus, to do justice to him, without even the vocabulary to make the attempt. I am reduced to color and line, the language that does not desert me when I am otherwise mute. Accept my apology, please. I will make it again, for I fear that I will only become more emotional as I share these happenings with you. There will be no apology lengthy enough to cover my mental state... I will have to beg your indulgence, and your pity.

[ Excerpt from the Book of Castes: Public Servant volume.]

On the matter of apologies.

[This section of the book is organized by offense given, and subdivided into a Public Servant's proper apologetic behavior based on the caste-rank of the person they have offended. The relevant section is excerpted.]

For private disruption caused by emotional excessiveness, particularly expressed verbally, from osulkedi to Ai-Naidari of unknown rank (duinikedi): Three apologies of acceptable form accompanied by a single held bow, as if to an Ai-Naidari of rank below Thirukedi.

[There is no entry for the appropriate number of apologies for an osulkedi guilty of private disruption caused by emotional excessiveness, particularly expressed verbally, to an aunerai.]

It was my intention to leave the carriage swiftly enough to be the first to greet the Head of House Elikim... I thought perhaps Shame would prefer it, since I was more comfortable staying with strangers. But it was far quicker for him to dismount from an animal and stride to the door than it was for me to wait for the carriage to come to a halt and disembark. Both Shame and his Guardian had entered the Noble's manse before I could join them.

I was shown every courtesy I had come to expect from any Ai-Naidari while traveling... and all the additional courtesies that those above the Wall of Birth were expected to extend to those beneath it. And yet as exquisite as those courtesies were, there was an air of distraction to their application.

I could trace Shame's path through the manse by the silence that lingered in his wake.

So I followed it.

Yes, so quickly did he influence me. But at the time, I thought only that Thirukedi had given me a directive and I had some premonition that I could not fulfill it if I let the priest pass from my sight. So even though I was uncomfortable forcing the Servants to follow me, rather than allowing them to lead me to my accommodations, I trailed up the carpeted steps to the second floor. House Elikim’s manse followed the mulever format, so named for its resemblance to the mulever cut used on gemstones... the stairs opened onto a rectangular room that ran half the length of the building, studded with ornately wallpapered doors that led to individual rooms. One's guests entertained in this central room with its long hearth and elegant tables; it served as a parlor for each of the private suites that opened onto it.

I found the priest's Guardian first, having a polite conversation with a woman in the rich raiment of a Noble, which I caught only a part of: he was declining dinner.

"But surely you have been on the road and could use a meal," the Noble said as I drew nigh.

"It is that we have been on the road, ij Elikim, that the osulkedi proffers his regrets. He is weary."

"Of course," the woman said, but by the cant of her ears she was surprised. It was not that she would have tried to compel us to dine with her, though she could technically command us to it. But courtesy required her to see to our needs and custom made the offering of food one of those needs. It was... an unnecessarily awkward position to force her into, a subtle discourtesy of our own. I was appalled: it would have taken only half an hour to observe the formalities and then retire to the rooms we'd been assigned. Surely another osulkedi could manage that much.

She was turning to go when she espied me at the door and paused. "Forgiveness," she said, politely, "My brother was to see to you?"

...and I had left him behind by chasing after Shame. I blushed and bowed. "A moment's confusion," I said, slightly more Abased in my grammars by way of apology.

"Ah," she said, smiling hesitantly. The Guardian turning her away from her own guest suite had probably set her off-balance. "Have you been shown your room?"

"No, ij Elikim," I said, bowing again. "There would be gratitude for the courtesy."

The more I spoke, the more she relaxed, realizing I was not planning to sow disharmony. To my great pleasure, she even assayed a faint smile. "And may I interest you in my table, then, or do you also take your nourishment from star-light and veil-glow?"

Daring a less-Abased tone, I replied, "I fear I am not so sublime a creature as to forgo physical food. Your table would honor me, lady."

She beamed and beckoned me down the hall. "Your room first, then, osulkedi. Then you shall see what physical food you might find in House Elikim."

The Nobles of Elikim were charming and deft hosts; I wondered what Shame had feared to avoid dining with them, but he'd missed an exquisite repast. They did not forget him despite his rudeness, and I accompanied the Servant with the covered tray back up the stairs after the meal, parting ways with him to go into my own room. And there I stretched myself on the tender mattress and fell asleep without issue, and would have slept contentedly the entire night.

Except that I dreamed of a seeming never-ending procession of Ai-Naidar, urgent and confused, and it distressed me enough that I woke in the middle of the night and rose from the bed. I shrugged on a dressing robe provided by the House. There would be warm wine by the hearth in the parlor; a glass of that would be enough to settle me again. I let myself out of the suite—

—only to find the parlor occupied by several members of the Household, whispering amongst themselves. A tired Ajan stood before Shame's door.

"Penokedi?" I asked, edging closer to him. I nodded toward the Ai-Naidar in the parlor. “What is this?”

Ajan glanced at them, eyes flicking forward again. "They want to talk to him."

"Talk to him," I repeated.

Now the Guardian glanced at me and said, more slowly, "They have invoked their right to talk to him."

I stared at the people in the parlor, ears flattening. "All of them?"

"You missed the first four," the Guardian said. "There's another one in there now."

"Can they do that?" I asked, appalled, even though I knew the answer... and Ajan knew that I should know. He met my eyes just briefly enough to avoid insouciance.

"Does this happen every time you stop at a household?"

"There have been rare occasions where it has not," the Guardian said.

I grimaced. It would have been incorrect for the Noble to stop her household from descending on a visiting osulkedi; the purpose of our traveling so was to make ourselves available, even if in a limited capacity, while we were on errantry. For me that meant painting or sketching, an act I could do with company if I felt the need for other Ai-Naidar, or alone if I requested solitude.