The smell of him, like temple incense and tea... I found my nose in his hair and sighed, head dropping.
"Farren," he said, voice husky. "Trust me."
I breathed carefully, and knew he felt the tremor I tried to still. And then I let my pain go, for the moment at least.
"Incorrigible priest," I murmured.
"You would find me the less fascinating if I were elsewise," he answered, and I could hear the smile in his voice.
I snorted and drew back, just enough to look at him, and that made him chuckle, low.
"You can touch me with your fingers, you know," he said. "Not just your eyes. Though you touch with your eyes far more acutely than many people can with their hands."
"One day, Kor Nai'Nerillin-osulkedi," I said, mock-stern. "One day..."
"Soon, I hope," he said, with an insouciant grin.
We turned for the stairs and found the proprietor stopped still beside her counter, all her heart in her eyes and a fullness of spirit welling there.
"Ajzelin!" she whispered.
Kor pressed his free hand to his chest and bowed just enough to allow his ink-spill hair to fall over his shoulders, leaving her staring wide-eyed.
On the way up, on the step behind him, I said, "You must leave a trail of the swooned in your wake when you go out."
"That is why I rarely do," he said, resigned.
We found Ajan sitting in a chair facing the door, honing a dagger on a sharpening steel with an air of concentration that fooled no one; no doubt if anyone else had come through the door he would have been on his feet and barring them before they'd taken their first step over the threshold. As it was, he ignored us politely so we could focus on the climax of the room: the fathrikedi, who was perched on the bench beneath a window, framed by its arch above her and by a spray of white flowers from a vase alongside. It was a perfect piece of artistry, that placement. She had posed herself for greatest dramatic impact, and knowing that all fathriked were so trained did not make me resent it the less.
"So," she said, very bold. "You have caught me."
Shame set the painting aside and then folded his arms and rested against the back of Ajan's chair. The sharp sing-sing of the blade being aligned filled the silence as they studied one another, the woman with lifted chin and half-flattened ears, daring much with her lack of abasement on top of the outrageous act of fleeing her House.
Kor, of course, was inscrutable. As always.
I wondered if they would ever break their war of wills and ignored them to put my paints away in my trunk. When I straightened, the fathrikedi had risen and stalked to Shame, close, closer, so close now that too deep a breath would have broken a thousand rules of courtesy and dragged the entire front of her naked body against his.
"I," she said, "no less than you have sacred work to do here."
"And what is that? Winning back a master who has chosen the company of aliens over yours at every opportunity?" Ajan said unexpectedly, lifting his dagger to examine it.
Shocked, she whipped her gaze from Kor's to the back of Ajan's head, her lips drawn back from her perfect teeth. It was a magnificent expression; rage suited her, made her beauty incandescent and perilous. I would have painted it, if I had thought anyone would believe it possible for a Decoration to be prey to such normal Ai-Naidari emotions.
"Enough," Shame said. He guided her face back with one finger against her chin, and I saw the hair on her shoulders lift at the touch. "You knew he'd fled the house, rather than been transported away early. And you came across the Gate. Without a permit."
"The lord had arranged for me to come to him before," she said, haughty. "I told the Guardians that he had sent for me again. They don't know he was supposed to be somewhere else... the scandal in Qenain has not been bruited about for others to know he was supposedly lying tsekil in his bed." Again she lifted her chin. "Will you punish me now, Shame? Would you dare?"
"You go too far," I said, frightened by her defiance.
"I go where the path leads me," she said, but without looking at me. Her eyes were only for Shame. "I go where my lord has forced me. I am fathrikedi; that is my duty!"
"Your duty is not to summon yourself into your lord's presence without his permission!" I exclaimed.
"I go to save him," she said, voice a low growl. "Because I love him."
"You might," Shame said mildly, "have trusted Kherishdar to save him."
"Kherishdar!" she exclaimed. "Kherishdar dithered and whined over everyone else's reaction to my lord's choices, and then brought you to judge and send him away forever!"
"You misunderstand Correction," Shame said, though his words were beginning to grow cold.
"I understand whipping an elder until he bleeds!" she hissed. "I understand the bit and the gag, and the pedestal! I understand punishment!" She bared her teeth at him. "As you and your precious osulkedi-peer will punish me for daring to redeem a lord I love!"
"Fathriked are not supposed to love so passionately," Shame said. "It is a cruelty."
"Fathriked are not supposed to love so passionately!" she exclaimed. "Fathriked are not to have passions? What do you know of fathriked and what is cruel for us, and what is wonted? You do not even react to me, Kherishdar's Shame! Are you even functional?" Her body moved against his in a ripple, but even before she rubbed against him she had made a mistake and I didn't know what it was, only that it was bad, very bad. Ajan knew, for his ears flattened as he turned, rising from the chair.
But even he did not move as fast as his master. Kor caught her by the jaw, thumb and middle fingers digging into the muscle there so sharply that she froze, eyes watering.
"Enough," he said again, the word like a blow. She flinched.
"Enough," he said, more quietly. "I am Kherishdar's Shame, fathrikedi. I know."
She closed her eyes, wilting. And whispered. "Very well, then. Correct me of my many errors. But I do not repent."
He sighed and released her. She did not kneel... she should have, after the insult she'd given him. But though her knees shook, she remained standing.
