I looked at him, then again at the map, and the darkness between stars seemed too large for all that it hid.
We considered the page for a long time before I understood, from the rhythm of his breathing and the tension in his shoulders, that there was something left to be said.
I looked at him.
"Our master," Kor said, "has sent a lord of the Ai-Naidar... and a group of aunera... to an unformed world." He stroked the edge of the glittering map and murmured, "What do you suppose the fruit of that new colony will be? A world of aunera who have built something with an Ai-Naidari Noble as influence?"
I glanced at him, my heart whispering... what, I did not know. Trepidation. Hope. Wonder. Some awe-stricken combination of all those things. O God of Civilization, how careful your hand, and patient, to sow what will not be reaped for generations!
At my expression he nodded. Gently, he closed the book and handed it to me. "We have time before it must be returned to the Library."
"Thank you," I said. "I shall study it at length." Seeing him framed in the room I had designed for him, I smiled and finished, "Ajzelin... welcome home."
He cupped my face and shared the smile with me, and that night, for the first time since we'd been bequeathed our new property, we slept alongside one another.
The following day I opened the book again and looked at the work of Qevellen's last known artist. It would take me years, aunera... many many years... but in time, I painted a copy that pleased me. The reproduction of that map hangs beneath the aphorism in the family room, glittering lapis beneath the gold-leaf shimmer of the calligraphy. The dark space in the map abides, and betimes my eye is drawn to it, and the mystery of your life in the universe and on one small world in particular, and what it might mean to us all, one day.
I thought, perhaps, that all was complete—we had a new home, we had a family, we were settling into a routine—and yet I could not understand what was missing until one of the Servants appeared at the door to my studio on a morning bright with pale sunlight and scented with tenderblossoms. I looked up from my work table... and rose, setting my brush down.
Haraa stood in the door, her hands folded together before her. Almost I did not recognize her: her gracious curls had been pulled up behind her head, exposing the length of her neck, and she wore clothes: robes paler than her brume-gray pelt, embroidered in silver thread with clouds and soaring birds, edged in a creamy orange... and over this the stole of a Public Servant.
"Haraa?" I whispered.
"My ishas has been evaluated," she said. "And..." She spread her hands. "You see how it has fallen out. It seems my talent for the aunerai language has been judged useful; I am to spend myself learning it, and translating what books of theirs the Emperor deems meritorious, or revealing."
"And this work suits your soul?" I asked, astonished.
She looked down, threading her fingers back together. Then met my eyes with lifted chin. "They stole my love and my lord, and yet... I cannot stop thinking about them. About her. Her grief. How... broken she seemed." She looked away. "I hate her, and yet I can't bear my own hatred. And some part of me does not feel done with it, Calligrapher. Perhaps, if I understand them better, if I make something good come from all this... I will be able to let it go."
"Perhaps," I said, coming around my desk to stand before her, amazed at how the clothing transformed her. And then added, "It is Farren, Haraa."
"That... actually... is what I wanted to talk to you about," she said, and took a deep breath. "I wanted to ask you if I could keep my name. I like it better than the one I was born with."
"Of course you may!" I exclaimed.
"And I thought," she said, looking down, "you might allow me to complete it. My name. I hear Qevellen has been taking members...."
"Oh!" I whispered. "Oh, Haraa. Haraa! Of course." I held out my hands to her. "Yes. This is your home, if you so desire."
"I do," she said, and ignored my hands to step into my arms and embrace me, hiding her face against my chest. "I do."
I gathered her close, and with that knew that what had been missing was missing no longer.
Some of you have wondered about the relationships I fostered at the Gate-house, and what became of the Ai-Naidar who formed my Qenain council. The physician came to spend quite some time in the capital, overseeing the health of the chief overseer who had fallen tsekil; once Qevellen was established, he surprised me by calling, and we took tea in my new studio and spoke with great pleasure. We were later joined by Vekken, and that was very agreeable indeed! It was well into the evening before the physician took his leave from that gathering, for all of us were of a generation and had a great deal in common. Though he returned to the Gate-complex following the transfer of that case to another physician, he made time to visit whenever he came to the capital, and the three of us maintained that association for the balance of our lives.
Seraeda... oh, Seraeda. She was separated from Qenain with the others who had fallen to the taint, and went with them to new assignment. When I learned of her whereabouts, I sent her a letter in the hopes of renewing our acquaintance... but she never wrote me back. After several months passed without response, I knew that for whatever reason she did not wish to foster our relationship. Perhaps I reminded her too much of the events that saw Qenain broken; or perhaps my sin against the principles of logic she applied to her life offended her too greatly to forgive my trespass. I would never know why she did not choose to speak to me again. But alone in my studio, in the quietest hour of the night, I made her a piece of calligraphy on a small, narrow page: kevej, the passion, the daring, the quality of esar her lord had brought to Qenain that she had so admired. She too, had that passion, I thought.
I did not receive any thank-you in response to the gift... but it was not returned to me either. I later heard that she had been put to work among a very rarified rank of observers, whose function was to explore the ramifications of scientific advances. I never learned, but I imagined it was exactly where she belonged.
Finally, I had mentioned that I had become known for the work I did in Qenain, and you will perhaps wonder at how the Book of Truth and Flowers became so famous. I will tell you it was no doing of mine! It was Kor who collected the paintings and requested that I bind them, and since it seemed a harmless request I obliged him. Because it was for him, I left in all the paintings, the ugly ones as well as the beautiful, and did my best work with the stitching. I even embellished the leather cover—bleached a lovely cream color and soft as flower petals—with the black blossom, limning its dark stem with silver. I gave the result to him several weeks after his initial request, and this he received in silence, with rather more ceremony than I expected. He took to his desk and there as with all my work he examined it with all his formidable attention while I stood near the door and tried not to fidget.
"It is," he said at length, "remarkable." And I should have paid attention then to the tone in his voice; he knew long before I did how significant that book would become. To this day he remains a better judge of my work than I am.
"What shall you do with it?" I asked.
"I don't know." He turned his coronal eyes on me, reminding me fondly of our first conversations. "What shall I do with it?"
"You could keep it in your library," I said, glancing at the still mostly bare shelves.
"I could," he said. "Or I could give it to the Library proper."
It was not unheard of for the Library to show works of art now and then, and as an osulkedi calligrapher my work would have been accepted for exhibition there without question. But his suggestion caught me off-guard... I'd worked on it as a sort of belevani, another love-gift, and hadn't really thought of anyone else seeing it. "I can't imagine who would want to look at it," I said.
Yes, aunera, I'm afraid I was that oblivious.
"I think you would be surprised," he said.
I studied him, uncertain and looking for—and not finding—any hint as to what he was thinking in his body language. I should have known better; it would be the work of years before I could read him quite as easily as he did me, the first day he met me. Not finding that hint, I said at last, "Would it please you?"
He met my eyes and let me see the feeling there. "Yes."
"All right," I said. And more distinctly, "Yes. I said once that I'd given you the ugly paintings, and I would not retract the gift. Now I will hold to that, and make a gift of the entirety as well, not the ugly alone, but the beautiful also. I made them because of you, so you should have them." I met his eyes. "Do with it as pleases you, ajzelin, and I will count myself well contented."
