"If only to be sure of your condition!" I exclaimed, struggling to sit up.
Haraa laughed, still husky. "Be at peace, Calligrapher. Shame never misjudges a blow. Does he?"
"Given the consequences if he does, he would be well not to," Kor said, and from his tone and his relaxation against me he was quite pleased with himself. Haraa was also, if the way she poured into the space near me was any sign. Indeed, I thought she was purring, just a little, under her breath.
"You are both mad," I said.
They both laughed, and I accepted it, and we slept... and that was the end of the awkwardness between Haraa once-Qenain's-sole-fathrikedi and the osulkedi who served Shame.
Some hours later we were awoken by the proprietor, whose light knock set off a shiver of bellsong. Kor went to answer her, and I did not hear their murmured conversation; but he returned with alacrity and set a hand on my shoulder. "The messenger is here."
"Already?" I said, struggling out from under the sheets and trying not to curse the weight of the foreign world. "How is that possible?"
"There is only one explanation," Kor said, dressing. "He knew to expect it."
I shivered and made haste to don my own robes. The bath could wait.
Downstairs, we found the courier standing in the center of the empty tea house; she had roused the proprietor from bed, no doubt, for the sun had not yet crested a horizon smudged in green near the promise of its curve. She was dressed in the expected formal livery, a short coat split for riding in courier gray, matching pants and boots. But her sash was not an unaffiliated black or someone's formal House colors, but the ivory and gold of Kherishdar, wrapped not only around her waist but from shoulder to hip on the diagonal. It was pinned in place at her breast with the sigil of empire, the same one Thirukedi had drawn on my hands. Her uniform had been piped in gold, and her message bag as well, and the sign repeated there.
When we joined her downstairs, she unlocked the bag with the key clipped to the inside of her coat and withdrew from it a single parchment envelope, which she offered to Shame. This envelope was marked as all such envelopes are, with the intended recipient and a mark for whether an immediate reply was requested. But it was not sealed with the courier service's impress, but with the Emperor's, in wax mixed with gold dust.
Shame accepted the envelope, broke the seal and removed from it a smaller envelope, also sealed. The larger one he signed and returned to her keeping, after which she bowed and left. To the proprietor, he said, "You may return to your rest."
She bowed and retired, leaving the two of us to look at one another. There in the silence of an empty tea house, in a cold, heavy hour before dawn, Shame broke the second seal on our fate and withdrew the note within. He read it, then handed it to me. I had cause to know this handwriting, for I had seen its elegance before.
Bring them to me. Ai-Naidar and aunera both.
In the envelope, gleaming: two passes allowing the Alien access to the capital. I stared at both note and passes, ears flat.
"It appears we should wake our guests," Kor said. "And pack."
Reck this: There once was a country Merchant, an aridkedi, who specialized in the creation of pots. So deft was she in their creation that she mended any of her pots that returned to her broken, or offered replacement if the break was irredeemable.
One day a Public Servant was browsing her wares, exclaiming over their fine quality, the subtlety of their glazes, the daintiness of their lips and the strength of their handles. This he continued to do as she worked patiently in the back of the shop, bringing forth new pots from the kiln and examining old ones.
The Public Servant had just chosen a new pot for himself when he heard a great crash. He rushed to the back of the shop and found the aridkedi surrounded in the shattered remains of one of her works.
'How now, aridkedi!' he cried. 'What has passed here?'
'I have dropped a pot,' said she.
'What a pity!' he exclaimed. 'What a terrible accident!'
'Oh,' said she. 'It was no accident. I dropped it on purpose.'
'But why?' he asked, bewildered.
'It is a new design,' said she. 'I had to know how it would break.'
As he watched, she began to sweep up the shards. When he did not go, she said, 'That pot would never have held. I will try a new design.'
This is the tale of the broken pot. Reck it well.
"You are serious?" the lord of Qenain said to us when we brought him the news. His aunera stood alongside him, the male on one side and the female on the other.
"It is not a thing we would joke about," I said when Shame didn't deign to reply to such a ridiculous statement. But I forgave ij Qenain, for it was irregular in the extreme. The lord we had guessed might stand before Thirukedi. But his lovers also? "As soon as your aunera can make arrangements, we must go through the Gate."
The male stammered something in his own language, drawing the attention of the female... Lenore Serapis, I thought, remembering. "Osulkedi," she said, "My caste-peer is the administrator of the human presence here. He asks how long we might expect to be gone, so he may prepare his subordinates for his absence."
Sensible, I thought, if naive. "He may not return at all," I said.
Once one grew accustomed to the nakedness of aunerai skin, one could grow attached to its subtle range of browns and pinks. I thought the female looked very poor indeed when her warm golden skin turned so terribly bloodless. "You... don't mean we will be detained?" she whispered.
"I don't know what the Emperor will do with you," I said. "I cannot imagine what He has in mind. But I do not know when you will be back, aunerai—Lenore Serapis—so I cannot give your caste-peer any date. He may be back within days. He may not return at all." I met her eyes, so like our own. "This is perhaps the choice you have made by loving an Ai-Naidari."
Her pupils dilated, as if I had hit her. I felt some remorse over it, but not as much as perhaps I should have.
Turning to the lord, she said, "We will need a few hours to pack but we should be ready by lunch."
He nodded to them both. "Go then." Looking up at me and Shame, "If that is acceptable?"
"Don't tarry," is all Shame said to the female, who met his eyes and shuddered before pulling her superior away. Once they had gone, Shame said to the lord, "You will give us no trouble."
"No," the lord said, ears dark and folded back against his head. "This I have earned many times over. I will answer to Him as I must. I only wish... it had not involved my lovers."
"It involved your lovers because you involved them," Shame said. He could be pitiless when the situation demanded.
"They are not Thirukedi's to dispose of," the lord said, somewhere between plea and protest.
"They wanted to be," Shame said. "Now, we will see if they meant it."
In the antechamber, we joined Ajan, who looked none the worse for his vigil physically. His emotional well-being I could not speak for, but I would have been hard-pressed to know how to react myself: relief that the lord was no longer despondent? Pleased that he had been rejoined with those he loved? Revulsion that he was copulating with aliens? Come to that, how did Guardians manage, witnessing the private lives of those they protected? I never learned, and yet there is some kinship there between the work of the sons of Saresh and the work of Shame. They are both privy to things too intimate to be borne, and yet they learn to bear them.
"Shall I pack your things?" Kor said, resting his hands on Ajan's arms—loosely, I saw, so that he could move at need.
"Please," Ajan answered. "It's not much anyway. I'll keep watch on the lord until you have everything else ready to go. Did Haraa stay with you?"
"She did," Kor said, and surprising me, finished, "I think she'll be fine."
"That would be good, very good," Ajan said. And smiled. "Please, don't let me keep you. The quicker we're away from here, the happier we'll all be."
"Truer words were rarely spoken," I said, and we crossed to our room. As Kor opened the door for me, I said, "He knew. He knows. How did He know?"
