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Chapter 2, Part 2
My first impression of Shame, thus, was his voice... and the fact that he spoke stripped of any caste-markings, so that his speech was shocking, naked. "Is this urgent? I am in the middle of my duties."
I sat up and looked toward him, and it was as if I could not move my head and yet turning to him was inevitable. Hearing him made one want to see him, and not want to see him. I had experienced something similar only once before, when I met the Exception... but the Exception had been wistfulness and sorrow and distance, like a painting blurred and softened by water.
Kor Nai'Nerillin-osulkedi was an ink drawing, a few slashes cutting a vital, compact shape from the world around him. And black: ancestors! So rare a color among us, black entirely save for the shock of white on his face. His pupils were black pits surrounded in more white, with a thin gray ring to mark their borders— we call it arvarnari elet, coronal eyes, after the pale halo around the sun at its eclipse, and I had never seen such distinct and uncanny examples. There was nothing comfortable about him, not even the way he entered the room, his movements brusque and strangely precise. Nothing. I was not certain whether to be intimidated by him... or fascinated.
Because, oddest of all, he had a beauty. From his voice to the way he stood across from me to the manner in which he fixed his eyes on me, all of it was of one piece. My brows furrowed as I contemplated this unexpected harmony, and I didn't even realize I was staring until one of his white brows cocked.
"Osulkedi?"
"Ah!" I said, and despite his stripped speech I could not bear to reply in kind. I addressed him as a caste-equal, courteous. "I apologize. It was a long journey."
"To the purpose of...?"
His directness was almost appealing because it made sense of the rest of him. "Thirukedi sends me, osulkedi. We are to repair to House Qenain at the Gate, there to address their need."
"The Gate—" he murmured, his eyes losing their focus. Then, with no obvious change, they were again considering me. "And you?" His gaze took in the stole, but I wore simple robes beneath them, nothing like his unrelieved black and white. "You are not another priest."
"No, osulkedi," I said. "I am a calligrapher."
"A calligrapher," Shame repeated. "And Qenain has need of the both of us?"
"I admit it must seem rather irregular," I said, my hands clasped on my knees, trying to warm them where they ached.
"A bit," Shame said. Then shook his head. "I can't leave until I'm done with my duties."
Before he could continue, I cautiously interrupted. "Forgive me, osulkedi... but your duties here could be construed as eternal. The Emperor has sent for you. There is need elsewhere, not just here."
"Still," Shame said. "I will need the rest of the day. I was in the middle of the work." He rubbed the pad of his palm, and I dared not look closer; I did not want to see blood there, or calluses my mind would attempt to explain.
And then the words penetrated, and I tried to hide my dismay. "The rest of the day?"
He smiled faintly. "We won't have to spend the night. I assume you came by coach?" When I nodded, he said, "Then we can leave by sunset."
The notion of remaining in an enclosed space with such a powerful personality was daunting, but not quite as daunting as the thought of having to sleep in the Bleak. And I supposed, if we were trapped together thus, perhaps I might become more acquainted with him, maybe even find some insight into just how difficult my work would be. "Sunset, then." And then, though I had not planned on asking such an intimate and irregular question, I said, "You know to the moment when your duty will end?"
"The body can endure only so long," Shame said. "And the mind follows. I will return."
And then he was gone, leaving me with unwelcome thoughts and only myself to blame for inviting them.
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