"You should wear colors," I said sternly.
This stopped him entirely. "Pardon?"
"Colors," I repeated. "Black makes you look forbidding. And those few paltry white edges that show at the hems only make the contrasts more dizzying."
Kor said slowly, "The priests of Shame always wear black, white or gray."
"There's a colored stole," Ajan said helpfully.
Kor looked over his shoulder with a scowl.
"It's true," Ajan said to me, wearing his most innocent expression. "As a priest who can administer every Correction, he is entitled to wear the colored stole."
"And what color is it?" I asked, beginning to enjoy the look on Kor's face. He was due some exasperation of his own.
"It's crimson on the face," Ajan said. "And flesh-pink on the other side."
"That sounds perfect," I said, donning my most thoughtful look.
"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."
