"Osulked," he said at last, though he addressed me only. "The Guardians have been excused, and are in the hands of those who might heal them. The lady and I, and the administrator of the human colony, have come to an agreement on the matter."
"Was it explained, then, what the stranger intended?" I asked, my speech formal and Abased.
"It was," he said. "The stranger is Lenore Serapis's brother, and does not approve of her... obsession... for Kherishdar and the Ai-Naidar. He had not known she was leaving—she chose not to tell him—but he discovered it and came to stop her from making the journey. She explained that it was not her choice to make, that we had compelled it of her and of Administrator Clarke. This incensed her brother, who considers her his to protect, and he accused me of tainting her with our ideas, and filling her with inappropriate desires."
The lord recounted this with a mask of a face, but I knew better; his straight recitation was a rebuke to us, leaving us with no distraction from the realization that the aunera no less than the Ai-Naidar consider aliens capable of spreading taint to their kind.
"Was he attacking you, then?" I asked.
"It was not his intention," the lord said. "He was simply... over-excited."
"And this you and the lady of the colony atani have decided to accept?" I said.
"To do otherwise would require us to bring yet another aunerai to Kherishdar," the lord said. "Shall we try the aunera for crimes committed against us, and admit that they are people who can do so?"
I flicked my ears back, stung by the criticism, and said, "One does not try an animal for crimes committed against people, nanaukedi."
"No," the lord said. "One has them slain. Do you suppose that would be acceptable to the humans here?"
"Perhaps they should not assault the Ai-Naidar, did they not wish to be shot," I said.
"Perhaps we should not be so quick to assume they deserve shooting," the lord said. He sighed and covered his face with his hands a moment. "Osulkedi," he said, and then more intimately as he looked at me again, "Calligrapher. You know the word avjz, do you not?"
Shocked, I could not respond. Then I answered, "From stories."
"It is a real word to them, Calligrapher," the lord said. "A modern word. They use it often. They have committed it frequently, and there are several still on-going on their home world. Do you understand? What for us is ancient and unspeakable history is no such thing for them. It is a valid answer to a problem."
"They would not dare," I whispered. "We would crush them."
"I believe we would, for that they would underestimate us, hiding so much of what we are capable of," he said. "But many of us would die to prove that supremacy. To dismiss humans as animals is cruel to them as individuals, osulkedi... it is also dangerous to us as a civilization."
"And you have loved them," I said, quiet, torn between revulsion and grief.
"I do love them," the lord said. "But they are not like us." He inclined his head and said, "I will go to my rooms to await word of our departure."
As he left, I did the unthinkable and interrupted him after he had dismissed me. "Nanaukedi... you call them human."
"It is what they call themselves," he said, and was engulfed by the shadowed stairwell. That in itself was a sort of poem, one my fingers longed to commit to paper: the withdrawal of the lord of Qenain from the presence of other Ai-Naidar, and from any hope of remaining.
It was as if Kor read my mind. "He will never go home again."
I started, for I had forgotten him, so still had he been, and so silent.
"His transformation is complete; he no longer has a place," Kor continued. "The Emperor will find a use for him, but he will never call Kherishdar home again. He has taken too much of the alien into his heart." He leaned back, then slowly, painfully rose from his knees and took the seat across from me. Pushing his hair from his face, he took a sip of my stone-cold tea and said, "But perhaps that will save us from precipitating a regrettable event."
"Thirukedi," I began. "Surely He already knows..."
"Surely He does," Kor said. "But He must have His information from someone, Farren."
"I cannot imagine He does not already have eyes here," I said, perturbed.
"I know that He must," Kor said. "But now He has access to someone who is part-alien in his heart. And if I don't miss my guess... now He also has at least one alien who is part Ai-Naidari in hers."
"Lenore," I murmured.
"You should draw her," he said. "And the male also."
"I have never drawn aliens," I murmured, turning the saucer with nervous fingers.
"You have drawn animals," Kor said.
When I lifted my eyes, I saw no humor in his. Nor, I realized, did I expect to. They had learned our tongue; they had fallen in love with one of us. And now they had saved Ajan's life. Aunera—humanity—would never again be animals to the two of us. That has changed us... you have seen it, I am sure. My association with you, with the scribe who has set down this tale for me, and my other encounters with aunera in the future that was yet to come... all those things were difficult for me, and painful. But I have not regretted them. And for the years that you gave Kor with Ajan, and the family that was built on that foundation, I will always thank you. It is why I am here now, telling you how it began, why I reveal anything of Kherishdar at all.
To make the gift of your heart is one thing. But it is entirely another to make the gift of another's heart, to beat on for the decades that would otherwise have been denied it. To give that is to bow your head to the role of witness, and know that for all that you might love an Ai-Naidari with your alien heart, you will never be Ai-Naidari, to love an Ai-Naidari the way we do.
This is the understanding with which I looked upon Lenore Serapis when she entered again with an exhausted Haraa trailing her. To know that she not only had accepted that she would always be an outsider, but that she could no more think of depriving us of one of our own than she could turn from a fellow aunerai. There was no room in her heart for bitterness when her choice might have selfishly taken that from someone else... and it had been her choice, for she had galvanized us all at a moment where moments were all that stood between Ajan's living and his dying.
"Shemena," I said when she entered. "You have made us a great gift."
"Osulkedi," she began, then halted, head hanging. Haraa paused also, looking at her with more concern than I would have thought her capable of, given all that Lenore had taken from her. Perhaps there was a pattern beginning here. At last, the aunerai finished, "Osulkedi, I could do nothing else."
"Yes," I said. "I begin to understand."
"Did... did my caste-peer make everything well and straight?" she asked, stumbling after the words. I thought that perhaps her language was not as formal, but she acquitted herself well. Only in her fatigue did she reveal the strain of it.
"He did," I said. "He explained your brother's role in the matter, and he and the lord and lady have come to an agreement."
"We will still go to the capital?" she said.
