"We would be honored, glad to come," the female said.

"Pack bags," I said. "If your duties permit, I think he would prefer you to stay until he has to leave."

That is how I came to escort two aunera across the street to our side of the Gate-town, and unlike the aunerai side we were stopped and I explained that the gray-cloaked aliens were with me and that we were expected. Which was not a lie, aunera... for while the lord was not expecting them, and I doubted Ajan or Haraa were either, and most surely the tea house proprietor would be shocked at the very notion... Kor would be completely unsurprised to find the aunera there. I had faith in his preternatural understanding of the Ai-Naidari heart—this Ai-Naidari’s in particular.

As we approached the tea house, the two drew closer; the female seemed to notice what she was doing and tried to open the distance between us again, saying, "Apologies, osulkedi. We have never been here, and it is disquieting."

"Disquieting?" I asked.

She kept her eyes on the ground as she paced me. "We are only allowed in certain parts of the Ai-Naidari area, osulkedi. This tea house is not among them."

Of course, it made perfect sense. Except, "You find this disquieting? The aunera on your side of town seemed quite assured about being there."

"Ah, but we know we are here because we have done something wrong," she whispered. "That is very different, osulkedi."

I hesitated before answering quietly, "Loving another is not wrong, Shemena."

She looked up at the building as we entered its shadow. "It is in this case." She stopped in front of the door and added, "You call me 'maiden'."

"Yes," I said, wondering if she knew all the connotations of such a name, for the Maiden is both the sweetness of innocence, and its naïve hope that the rules will not apply to it. "You seem one to me."

"You honor me," she said softly. And bowed. "My name is Lenore. Lenore Serapis. Among us, the second name is the family name. The man with me is Andrew Clarke. He is my superior. Like a caste-peer, but above me in rank."

"Lenore Serapis," I said. It had almost an Ai-Naidari sound. And to the male. "Andrew Clarke. Come, the lord is waiting."

As I suspected, the proprietor of the tea house was stunned into silence by the arrival of two aunera. To her, I said, "They will be staying in the second guest room," and released her thus from the necessity of finding something appropriate to say in a situation in which there was nothing of the kind. I led the aunera up the stairs and knocked softly on the lord's door.

As before, Ajan opened it for me. "Osulkedi?" And seeing the alien faces past me, "What is this?"

"All the way, penokedi," I said, quiet but firm, and to that tone he inclined his head and let the aunera inside. I led them to the bed-chamber and said at the door, "My lord? You have visitors, come to stay until you are remanded to the Emperor."

He lifted dull eyes toward me… and then stumbled out of his chair, incredulous, his hands already lifting toward his beloveds, who were moving past me with the breathless urgency of a poem in the mouth.

I turned my back on their joyous reunion. I had finished this painting and now I had to live with it.

“Is this wise?” Ajan asked me as I passed him into the corridor.

“If there is a course in this that leads to wisdom, penokedi, I pray you tell me where it lies,” I said.

He shook his head and gently closed the door, leaving me in the corridor with my discomfort. And yet, for all my tension, I knew I could have done no different.

I ate a light lunch alone, mostly fruit and broth and tea; I found I still had no stomach for anything more. In the silence afterwards I fell to going through my materials, trying to decide if the day had yet produced a word or if I would be reduced to losing at Rivers and Bridges during the dareleni. But any thought I had to producing a new painting were dashed when I discovered Kor’s hiding place for the works he had secreted from my passions. I was hunched over them when he found me, naturally.

“So,” he said. “You finally uncovered the cache.”

“You hid them… in my own trunk!” I exclaimed, torn between laughter and indignation. “In my own trunk!”

“Where else would I store paintings that needed to be kept flat?” he said reasonably. “I put my journals on top of them, I thought that would be sufficient impediment to your finding them.”

“I began this enterprise while reading your journals,” I pointed out. “How were you to know I would not take up that habit again?”

“Because I knew you felt shame at doing so,” he said. “Particularly after we had come to know one another better. A man might reasonably contemplate the writing of a stranger, who might find it uncomfortable in an intimate.”

“You hid my paintings… from me… in my own trunk,” I murmured, shaking my head as I paged through them. “Because you knew I wouldn’t look.”

“Yes,” he said, with a hint of the amusement that I had not heard often enough lately.

“You are incorrigible,” I said with a sigh.

“Yes,” he agreed, and weathered my mock-glare rather well. Then, he added, “Will you destroy them now that you know where they are hidden?”

“No,” I said, slowly. “No, the art is yours. I will not retract a gift, no matter how poorly I gave it.”

“So you don’t believe, yet, that they are worth keeping,” he said.

To that, I said nothing, and of course my silence spoke more than eloquently enough for Kherishdar’s Shame.

“What you did,” he said, voice soft, and I knew he was no longer speaking of the art. “That was generous, Farren.”

I stared at the stack of hidden paintings, slowly brushing my thumb against the paint-stiffened surface of the topmost: agathe, that was. The light spilled down the bright scarlet letters as my touch shifted the parchment. "You approve, then."

“Of the situation? I can’t begin to say,” he answered. “But of you? Wholeheartedly.”

I looked over my shoulder at him in surprise.

“I didn’t think you would be capable of it,” he admitted.

Now I did look at him, fully, turning to do so. “Is Shame admitting to having been wrong about an Ai-Naidari’s probable actions?”

“Yes,” he said, with an ease I found remarkable. “I did not think you would be able to encompass both their difference… and their personhood. I thought you still too bound in your own mind; I thought it would be possible for you to eventually come to a new opinion, but that it would take longer. And I was wrong.”

“You almost weren’t,” I said, turning to put the paintings away again. “I still am not entirely sure of my reasons, and I am deeply discomfited by what I have done.”

“But you did it,” Kor said, joining me. He took me by the shoulders and turned me gently around. “You did do it. For that you are to be commended.”

“For changing in response to taint?” I said, meeting his eyes, wanting to know the answer.

“For being the tree that bends before the wind that would otherwise uproot it,” Kor said. “When the wind has passed, it remains whole.”

“But changed,” I murmured.

“A little, perhaps,” Kor said. “But the wind is brief, and trees live a very long time. And that is Kherishdar, Farren. Don’t doubt it.”

I murmured, “I could never doubt Civilization.”