"I have sent word of my return," he said. "You have not spoken to Him?"

"I await His summons," I said. "I have come to believe He is waiting on your arrival."

"Then it won't be long," he said, and turned in place, studying the room. "So," he said. "This is your studio."

"This is my studio," I agreed, quiet. "Shall I show it to you? Or do you wish to investigate on your own?"

He glanced at me with a quirk of a smile, and I remembered anew his complexity of expression, and loved it anew. "You ask such questions, Farren."

"Only to learn the answers," I answered, affecting innocence.

He chuffed a low laugh, then said, more seriously, "I think... I would like you to show me."

So I did. It is not a large place, my studio. But I showed him my work table—much larger than the shabati I had used in Qenain—and the flat table on which I spread designs before clients. We toured the area near the window-seat and the back room where I made my bed and performed my ablutions. I showed him the storage for all the scrolls and paintings, and the cabinet where I kept the pigments too expensive or dangerous to be left untended—you wonder perhaps at crime, but I bid you think instead that ours is a society rife with children one might not want playing with pigments made of ground gemstones. I led him past the samples hung on the walls, where so many others had browsed; in keeping with his habit, he truly looked at them, each one with separate attention, in a way that no Ai-Naidari had before and none have since. Finally I made him tea at my little dinner table, where I once entertained other callers—the historian, the physician, the Merchant who made masks—and there he considered the final paintings I had made for the darelen in his absence: yan, which he hadn't seen; paisath; and the absence crowned in flowers. On these things he made no comment, but I found I did not need them. I was glad merely to have him near.

After this tour, he returned to the window-seat. I had left one of his journals there; he picked it up and thumbed through it, then looked at me.

So I sat in the window-seat, and instead of the book, Shame joined me there. It took some arranging of our feet and clothes and tails, but we fit. And then, comfortable in our shared silence, we looked out into the gloaming. When no more Ai-Naidar walked past the window and the lamps outside had dimmed, we retired by tacit consent to my bed. We settled easily, as if we had not been apart, though I had forgotten how heavy his arm was over my side.

It had never occurred to me to wonder at how he always began and always returned to this position, with all of a Guardian's trained instinct to ward my spine with his body and my chest with his hand. It was strange and wonderful to be so precious to someone; it was perfect that being thus gave my beloved the chance to be more fully what he was. Kor, Kherishdar's Shame. Whom I loved.

I remembered then that I had painted an absence before: shemailn, treasure. I knew I would never paint that absence again. Not because Kor had filled the emptiness, but because he now stood guard at the door. Keeping me safe... and holding it open.

The summons woke us the following morning. Still in my sleeping robe, I opened my studio door for the Emperor's courier. I signed and returned his envelope before accepting the smaller note within. The courier and I exchanged bows and then he was gone, leaving me to open the message as Kor arrived, tying on one of my extra robes. He lifted his brows and I handed it to him.

Come to me, my own.

Kor drew in a long breath through his nose, eyes closed and ears sagging; watching him, I thought that his relationship with our master was different from mine; more intimate, perhaps, in a way I might never understand, not having undergone the trials. I thought it beautiful and appropriate: a priest of Shame's significance should be passionately devoted to Civilization. It made me want to paint him just as he looked then, wearing my too-long robe in all the wrong colors, warm browns and honeyed golds that only made his black and white pelage all the more startling, with his long hair tousled from the bed. I thought such a painting would have made even Ereseya, author of such famed erotic poetry, look twice. Perhaps several times.

"Breakfast," I said. "And proper livery."

He nodded, looking more settled within himself. "I will return to the temple. Shall we meet at the gates?"

"Two hours," I said, and could not resist drawing him to me. I felt the tremor in his skin, anticipation made manifest.

"You adore Him," I murmured.

"Yes," he said with another sigh. "You don't?"

I laughed softly against his hair. "I wouldn't dare."

He laughed too, and we parted to see to our preparations.

Two hours later we met before the gates, where we were expected. A Servant of impeccable courtesy led us up the stairs and into the seat of Civilization, and together we advanced through wide and gracious halls. I remembered the awe and terror of being escorted to the room where I took tea with the Emperor so seemingly long ago, on my lowered seat at His table... but we were not brought there. Nor were we taken to the formal presentation chambers, with their careful observation of the distance between the Public Servant caste, highest below the Wall of Birth but nowhere near Thirukedi's rarified heights, and the Emperor Himself.

No, the Servant led us to a yuvrini: a small chamber to which one withdraws for private company or to be alone with one's thoughts in meditation. Such chambers usually have a vauni haale, an object upon which one fixes one's mind in order to calm it. This particular yuvrini was round and tall, pierced with windows in a star-shaped pattern at its domed apex, faced in blond panels that smelled fragrantly of hardwood and the light oil used to polish it. There was no carpet, for it had a philosophy floor: someone had inscribed countless virtues on its surface in sepia ink, starting at the room's edges and spiraling toward the center. I admired the calligraphy for its grace and confidence... and recognized the hand, with all the inevitability of my beating heart.

"Yes," said He. "I wrote it."

There was a curved bench along the wall, and it was before this that the Emperor was awaiting us, hands folded in His sleeves and all the weight of His heavy robes falling in perfect lines from shoulder to floor: willow green, watered gold, midnight blue, scintillant and so, so close...! It was like turning and finding the vastness of the sun in arm's reach. We fell to our knees, and then further, hands outstretched before us and faces touching the smooth wooden floor. Beneath my nose I saw the word ashil, "beauty," the kind of beauty that wells up from the spirit and transforms its shell.

"That was long ago," Thirukedi continued, His voice thoughtful. "In one of my first incarnations. When I was younger, and more inclined to bend my spine for hours at a time."

Humor? From a god! I dared not look up, but this was an openness I never expected.

"Come, my servants," He said, and I heard the rustle of a cushion as He sat on the bench. "I have had pillows set out for you. Sit up, that I might see your faces."

There were indeed pillows—gods and ancestors!—two on either side of His feet, one gold and the other black. I knelt on the former, and this act brought me so close to His leg that I brushed the silk before I could stop myself. When I gasped in, He touched me, and I thought I would faint. He knew, somehow, and left His hand on my head until I could compose myself again.

On the other side of Him, Kor had come to kneel without my reticence, and bore the touch of that hand with nothing more than closed eyes and an expression of sublime gladness.

"My good servants," Thirukedi said, "I grieve that the journey was so difficult, but you have acquitted yourselves in every particular."

I swayed at the generosity of this praise, my heart racing for the joy of it. To have served Civilization... to have served well!

Surely He felt my tremor, for the Emperor said, "You may rest against my leg, Calligrapher."

"Thirukedi!" I whispered. "I would not presume...!"

"You would not presume to lean on Civilization?" He asked, gentle. "Is that not what Civilization is for?" His fingers guided my head until my cheek came to rest against His knee; I shuddered and could not speak. The silk of his robes was heavily embroidered but even the thread was smooth to the touch, and the fabric smelled of temple incense and fresh sovereign blossoms. His fingers in my hair reminded me of a breeze off a fountain in spring, so sublime. I did not want Him to ever stop touching me.

"And you, menuredi?" Thirukedi said, still cradling me but speaking now to my ajzelin.

"Masuredi," Kor answered. "To be in your presence is to be complete."

...and the Emperor... chuckled. It shocked me to hear such a thing from Him, but it sounded completely natural somehow. "And I would not do without you, Kor Nai'Nerillin-osulkedi. But tell me what your ajzelin will not. Tell me how it went."

Kor considered his words, then began to speak. Of the maien in Qenain's Gate-house. Of ij Qenain's sin; of his discovery of it. He did not omit his mad flight through the rain, nor his fever; he spoke of the lord's sister and her attempts to Correct the household, and her ultimate Correction which he had completed in our bath. He spoke candidly but with respect for our privacy of our discovery of one another... of Haraa's pain... of our crossing over to the colony world, and what we found there. The aunera who were not animals, lovers of the lord of Qenain. The terrible accident that had delayed his return... his impressions of the lord, the aunera, Haraa, the Ai-Naidar of the Gate-house... even the Gate Guardians responsible for Ajan's injuries. All of it he had observed with his customary attention to detail and uncanny understanding of the Ai-Naidari heart, and even though he spoke concisely the telling took long enough that I began to feel comfortable breathing again, even with the god of Civilization stroking my hair from my brow, now and then.

"Does this account accord with yours?" He asked me at last.

"It does," I said. "Though I saw things Shame did not."

"Tell me," He said. And so I did, striving for Kor's level of completeness and honesty, speaking of my personal efforts in the Gate-house and my impressions of the aunera, particularly in the wake of Ajan's injury and on their journey to the capital.

By then our audience had grown long enough to merit the arrival of a Servant with food and drink, left alongside the Emperor at a small folding table. After the Servant withdrew, Thirukedi poured tea into a bowl, somewhat larger than I would have expected for one person. This He sipped from, then gathered us with His eyes, though to look upon Him was more than I would ever have dared without this implied permission.

Kor lifted his chin for the touch that cupped it. With his long throat exposed, he parted his lips and drank from the bowl as it was offered, and in his expression I saw, briefly and powerfully, what he must have been like at the trials: that surrender, given so readily in response to a master worthy of it. Perhaps among aunera there is confusion about the gift of surrender, that it suggests the master is the one of worth and the servant the lesser of the two. But what good is the service of an unworthy soul? Even more importantly, what reflection it is on the master, when a worthy man kneels to him?

They were beautiful, Civilization and Shame. They completed one another. I could not be ashamed of the tears that gathered on my lashes, and I was grateful for the gift they made me in permitting me to witness the trust between them.

You imagine my shock when Thirukedi wiped the bowl's lip and then proffered it to me. I met His eyes, those pale green eyes gentled by centuries of compassion, so infinitely patient and yet so knowing. I had thought Kor's knowledge of the Ai-Naidari heart uncanny, and it was, because all that he knew he had learned through concentrated and constant study. But Thirukedi's knowledge? Had accumulated throughout lifetimes of living and loving us.

I had spoken so blithely of the role of the sacred witness in Ai-Naidari society... and overlooked the most singular exemplar.