"Thirukedi did not give me a schedule," I said, hesitant. "Though I would not tarry on any mission He gave."

"Perhaps," Ajan said with another sigh. "But it would have been good to stop somewhere familiar and see the others."

"There are others?" I asked, surprised.

The youth laughed. "Ah, Calligrapher. Yes, there are several of us, and there is enough to keep us all busy. More than us, really, but Shame takes most of it on his own shoulders."

"You… do the work of Shame?" I asked carefully, for this skirted perilously close to impropriety.

From his glance, he knew my concern. Just as the old have an instinct for what the young do not say, the young have an instinct for what their elders fear. "We do not make Corrections, osulkedi. But we care for his equipment, and we collect information, so that Shame may make the proper judgments and have good tools to hand to effect them." He chuckled. "Had you told me that my duty as a Guardian would involve having my nose in a book so much, I would have laughed."

"I can imagine," I murmured. "So… these compatriots of yours are also Guardians?"

"And a fathrikedi," said Ajan, "who insists on doing the duties of a Servant, and does them, as one might expect, with indescribable grace."

"No doubt!" I exclaimed. Somehow the notion that Shame might have a Decoration seemed incredible. He did not seem the type to indulge himself in the contemplation of beauty.

"It is perhaps for the fathrikedi that I am most concerned," Ajan said. "For since The Day the osulkedi has not made use of him."

"The Day?" I asked.

Ajan looked at me, direct, and I knew then that this was no slip of the tongue. He had chosen, for whatever reason, to confide in me. "You heard about the execution."

My heart stilled in my breast, just a little hiccup between beats. "Of course," I said.

"Did you attend?" the Guardian asked.

"No," I said, looking away. My ears flattened. "I would give excuses, penokedi. But the truth is that I had no desire to see it. I spent the day in my studio, working. Or trying to."

"It was the Emperor's hand that struck the final blow, as it had to be," Ajan said, low. "But it was my master who struck all the ones before it. He has refused himself any indulgence since, no matter how healthsome, and went to the Bleak not long after. Since his arrival there he has rehabilitated many souls, Calligrapher, but none of them have seemed sufficient payment for the one he failed to save."

"I had heard that the Ai-Naidari who went to the execution vines was beyond any aid," I said, feeling cold in my joints despite the sun on my head. "That not even Civilization could have succored him."

"And yet, there is guilt," Ajan said.

I thought of the stark entry I'd read, the first in Shame's personal journals that had mentioned violence. The image of the words rose to mind immediately, crisp black letters rendered in Shame's austere penmanship. Needed to make blood payment for guilt.

Was that what drove him? Did he seek to bleed himself as penance? To do so was to skirt too dangerously near to self-Correction, unspeakable, unthinkable. He must be prevented, no matter the cost. But did the Emperor expect me to know how to put needle to the soul of a man like this?

Ancestors! What if he needed actual blood? I thought of my pen trailing across parchment, spilling incarnadine ink, and shuddered.

Watching me, Ajan said, "You were sent to help him, weren't you, osulkedi."

"I… was it so obvious?" I asked, taken aback.

"It is to those accustomed to assessing such things," Ajan said. "So it is true?"

"It is," I said.

"Then I will help you," he said. At my look, he finished, "He is my master, osulkedi, and I love him."

The word he used, masuredi, was a telling one. Usually one serves out of duty; perhaps with pleasure, and perhaps with frustration and most often without any thought at all, good or bad. Only when love is married to duty does one speak of one's master as masuredi. It is not a common thing, any more than deep and abiding relationships seem to be among you, aunera.

That love had given me my first ally, and my first real seed of hope. A man who could inspire even one man to the devotion of a menuredi, a servant-who-loves, is not beyond aid.

"We will make this right," I said to him, with the same weight of promise I would have made to my daughter… because he reminded me so much of being a father, with his youth and dedication. I could do no less.

Climbing back into the carriage, I reflected that now I was well and truly committed. To disappoint Thirukedi would have been unspeakable… but He would have forgiven me.

Ajan… Ajan would never forgive me. If I failed, he would go to the fires hating me. So it is, with children.

A small piece of paper, clipped to the manuscript:

nejzen [ ne JZEHN ], (noun) –Wall of Birth; the line separating those of Noble or Regal birth from those beneath it.

renainen [ re NYE nehn ], (noun) –city walls; these are the walls that separate districts of the city from one another so that the Nobles and Regals who administrate them know the boundaries of their responsibilities. They are invariably low, usually hip-height: low enough for adults to easily converse, high enough to keep small children from wandering.

As many of you have yourselves surmised, I too thought that if Ajan knew my purpose, Shame himself must have guessed it… unless, of course, he suffered from that blindness that sometimes afflicts the mind when something affects us personally. I thought it unwise to rely on that possibility, however. It would be my luck to make that assumption, only to have my subsequent behavior poison me in Shame's eyes.

So I knocked on the carriage pass-through and had a word with the driver.

And that, aunera, is how I came to find myself on a beast. I have not ridden often, as my tools can be cumbersome and my joints even more so. When Thirukedi first elevated me, I made some number of journeys on the back of a steed and within a year I'd given it up in favor of a carriage… no doubt why He had sent one to me in the first place. But if Shame would not ride with me in the carriage, then I would have to ride with him on beast-back. We had only the short time before we reached Qenain to begin this nourishment of our acquaintance… for when we arrived, my instinct said I would be hindered by the mask he wore to do his duty.

This too distressed me, aunera. A Public Servant should not have to be someone else to do what his hhaza, his caste-rank, demands. That is part of the point of being placed properly: that you need never be anyone other than who you are. The flamboyant dancer may dance, the studious Observer huddle with books; the Guardian may lose his aggression in fighting and the Farmer nourish his need for solitude in the fields or the forests. (Yes, aunera… even we know that solitude is a need, and more for some than others.)

Perhaps the priest who serves Shame has always been different. Perhaps the needs of the empire are so great that he cannot help but suffer. But it is counter to everything we aspire to and work toward, that someone might be unhappy in his work.

"Calligrapher," Shame said as I reined in alongside and a little behind him. Our streets are broad but they are meant for pedestrians, and riders are limited to a narrow corridor in the center. "You have lost your carriage."

"I grew tired of my own company," I said. "And thought it better to seek your society instead. It is rare that I have the opportunity to talk with another osulkedi. We are not so many."

"No," Shame agreed.

"What do you suppose we shall find at Qenain?" I asked. "Have you been there before?"

"To the Gate-house?" Shame said. The sun off his black hair was so bright it made my eyes water. I thought he would look ill-suited to light and the warm colors of the city around us, but he did not. "No… that I have not. Nor any Gate-house, come to that."

"But you have been called to Houses before," I said. I flicked my ears back, trying to find delicate words. "Is it… usually like our stay with House Elikim?"

Shame shook his head. "No. Ordinarily it is to one individual I go. The matter usually takes time and study."

"And yet we have not made a study yet of House Qenain," I said. "Your Guardian says such studies are usually abetted by him and his fellows. Should we not stop at your temple to collect them, then?"

He glanced at me then with too-pale eyes; in sunlight, even paler, so that I saw only pupils. "You have made a friend of Ajan, have you."