"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.
What could I do? No matter what I thought of myself, my own worth, how could I ever deny Him?
Why would I ever wish to?
The tea was sublime, astringent, clear and bright on the tongue, and the lip of the bowl so delicate it was sharp as a blade... but the touch of His fingers on my face as I drank I remembered forever.
Afterwards, He poured the remainder of the bowl's tea into smaller cups, which He gave to us, along with a larger bowl of fruits and small rolls of delicate fish and vegetables. Kor accepted it on our behalf and picked one out for me. I likewise did the same for him, and we fed one another at the Emperor's feet and sensed His contentment. Just as we are nourished by our witness of the joy and love of others, so too our Emperor.
Eating thus brought forth a feeling of familial comfort; perhaps that is why afterward we both leaned on His legs with less awareness of His divinity and more a feeling of being held in His benevolent aura.
"Masuredi," Kor said at last, and I could not imagine what exception would allow him to speak first, but speak he did. "What will become of them?"
"ij Qenain, as you imagine, is no longer head of household," Thirukedi said at last as we listened. "And Qenain itself has been damaged by his conduct. The maien you observed at the Gate-house, osulked, has remained despite his sister's best attempts to remedy it. I have separated the Gate-house's Ai-Naidar from Qenain, and a good number of other members of that House have been sundered with it. For now, Qenain is too small to remain the capital's House of Flowers."
I drew in a sudden breath. Kor gave voice to our shock. "Was it so bad?"
"It was becoming so, yes," Thirukedi said. "And to prevent it from growing worse, I have done what was necessary. Qenain will restore itself in time, but for the healing to be accomplished the connection had to be severed. Alone, those who suffered from the maien can learn to stand upright again, where too close an association with those who would shun them would have created strife and drawn attention to the taint. As for the lord... he will be leaving soon, with the aunera."
"Back to the colony world, Thirukedi?" I dared ask.
