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Chapter 3, Part 1
Several of you have asked about our riding beasts, a topic I am afraid I know little about. They are much like ourselves: tall, slender things with narrow tails and heads and long oveate ears: grazers and herd-beasts, more comfortable in a group than alone.
As I said, they are much like ourselves.
What you will perhaps find unusual is that we do not speak of beasts as we would a person. I am given to understand several strange things about you, aunera, first being that you have a multiplicity of languages (how do you understand one another? Must you learn them all?), and second that many of these languages do not provide for easy ways to distinguish between people and everything else. Our language does this: there is a manner of speech particular to Ai-Naidar, and a manner that refers to animals, plants and objects: the non-Ai-Naidar case, I would call that.
I have tried in vain to decide on a way to render these distinctions in your language. The closest the scribe and I can come is to call Ai-Naidar "he" and "she" and to use "it" for everything else, from animals to objects. But even this division is unclear, for the scribe has confided that many of you use the pronoun "it" for your own beasts if you cannot confidently determine the sex of the creature. I cannot impart to you, then, the absolute wall our language builds between Ai-Naidar and other things. Like the Wall of Birth in our caste system, there is no rising above it without divine intervention.
I fear now I must tell you that aunera also are referred to in this manner, as non-Ai-Naidar. The scribe tells me some of you will not be insulted to be lumped in the same category as beasts and flowers, and I hope it is so.
Whatever the case, this distinction has relevance to our tale... for the use of weapons is controlled by their targets. The weapons allowed against Ai-Naidar are few, but there is no weapon that cannot be used against anything else. You have wondered why you have seen no guns among us? Now you know. I have never gone where their use is legal, for they cannot be turned against an Ai-Naidari. They are only employed against beasts... and aliens.
Let us continue from this unpleasant digression.
If anything, the traffic on the roads grew denser as we set out the following day. I wondered at it: the last major holiday in the capital, the spring welcoming, was a month behind us, and most people would have already dispersed to their homes long since. The further we travelled, the more people we encountered, until at last I wondered if we would have the luxury of staying in a merchant's hall again.
Around dusk the carriage stopped. I peered out the window to find Shame, his Guardian and the carriage master conferring. I couldn't hear them, but from the twitch of Shame's ears and the rigidity of his back he was displeased. When we resumed moving, Shame rode ahead... and I called to the Guardian, using the caste-rank one would give the Guardian employed in public spaces.
"Basirkedi?"
The youth fell back to pace the carriage. "It's penokedi, osulkedi, if you would. I am Shame's Guardian in particular."
"I did not know osulked to require such service," I said, startled, for to be penokedi made this youth a Public Servant himself, and within my caste. No wonder he had so little habit of averting his eyes!
"His is a special case."
So many special cases, and this was only the beginning of my education in them.
He added, "My name is Ajan, also. If you prefer. I expect we will see much of one another, as I am not to be detached until Shame returns to the temple."
"Of course," I said; that at least, was customary, though he would not expect to call me by anything but my title. We shared a caste, but even so I occupied its topmost rank. "What did they decide?"
"Oh, we'll stay at Elikim's guest house tonight," the Guardian said. "You know Qenain's in Athurizin's district? And Athurizin's ascension day is approaching, so everyone is coming for the celebration. There's no other place to stay, not really, unless we want to crowd into some already over-burdened family's home. It's not likely that anyone without a Noble or Regal's size home is going to be able to keep us easily. It's just the one night, then we'll be at Qenain."
"Is it such a hardship, then?" I asked.
The Guardian glanced at me, and I read in his eyes a moment's uncertainty.
"I know nothing of these matters," I said. "Speak, please, and educate me."
"Shame needs to stand apart from other Ai-Naidar," the Guardian said at last. "Staying in someone's home is an intimacy."
"I imagine he shall have trouble at Qenain, then, yes?"
"That's different," the youth said dismissively. "He will be on duty then. It's harder when he is passing through."
"Even for just a night?"
The Guardian smiled, ears flicking backward. "A heartbeat is long enough, for Shame." (That is a single word for us, aunera: tsan, one of our words for subjective measures of time.) And then, almost to himself, "Or at least, it used to be." Then he looked forward at something I could not spy through the carriage window and said, "I am wanted, osulkedi."
I nodded, though technically I had no ability to stay or release him; if as he said he truly was Guardian in particular to Shame, only his ward and Thirukedi could command him. And I had enough to ponder from what words he'd shared... and more importantly, for the concern he'd revealed over the change in his ward's behavior. Too, it was hard to conceive of what it meant to be an osulkedi who must not draw too close to the people he served.
Again, this theme of apartness. Yet if I painted the Exception's aloneness in washes of gray and blue, then to paint Shame's I would need black ink on bleached vellum, bordered in red.
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