Post by rainstormamaya on Mar 29, 2013 8:22:39 GMT 10
Title: The Sun From Both Sides
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: uh, ambiguous feelings about arranged marriage? Super awkward limited displays of affection? Kaddar has a Thing for giving his wife stuff? None, really.
Summary: Five gifts Kalasin Iliniat received from her husband, and one she gave him.
A/N: Belatedly for Rosie. *squishes* Could be considered a loose companion to Words Become Superfluous. With thanks to Cass for the beta. <3
To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides. David Viscott.
i. The key to her rooms.
Kalasin looked around the chambers that would be her rooms for, quite possibly, the rest of her life. They were beautiful, she conceded, well-appointed, and with an eye to Tortallan traditions – perhaps the ambassador had advised the emperor’s architects. There was a garden featuring northern plants, an enclosed courtyard open to the sky; she would like that, she knew. It would be a pleasant place to sit. Perhaps some of the heavy curtains that blanketed the chamber windows would need to be replaced with something lighter that let in the air. There were things she had brought with her, her childhood quilt, drawings, miniatures of her family, that she would want to distribute around them, to make the place feel like it was hers. There was also a small door set discreetly into one wall, ornate but understated in comparison to most of the Carthaki palace, and Kalasin was trying not to look at that. It led to her fiancé’s chambers.
There was a soft cough from just behind her, and Kalasin turned, finding a practised diplomatic smile to slip onto her face. “This is very lovely, your Imperial Majesty. Thank you – there are so many thoughtful details.”
Kaddar almost blushed and shuffled his feet. “Please, your Highness. Kaddar.”
“Kaddar,” Kalasin repeated.
“And may I…” His voice trailed off hopefully.
It was a small thing, compared to marrying him. “Yes.”
“Kalasin,” he said, as if trying her name out, and then held something out on his open palm.
Temporarily lost for words, Kalasin stared mutely at him, and then at the object in his hand. “What…?”
“The, er, key,” Kaddar said. “To that… door. Which locks, you may be interested to know, from this side. I thought you might prefer to have it in your possession. The key, that is. Not the door.”
He was distinctly pink about the ears. Kalasin honestly wondered how he had survived the Carthaki court, which was, from her limited experience, a hotbed of vipers, poison and politics that made her parents’ court look like a set of toy soldiers. She was also mildly stunned both that the door under discussion locked, and that her fiancé meant to give her the key.
“It is the only key,” Kaddar added, looking worried.
Her smile this time was genuine. She knew her fiancé was a clever man; she had not realised he was considerate. She thought that you could probably build a marriage on that. Even a political one.
She reached out and took the key from him, sliding it into the pocket concealed in one of her wide sleeves. “Thank you,” she said.
He looked hopeful.
“Kaddar,” she added.
He beamed.
ii. Her bodyguard, Channary.
Kalasin Iliniat was settling into married life more easily than she had expected to. Her days largely consisted of meeting yet more Carthaki lords and ladies of the court, drawing on all her patience to deal with her mother-in-law, who already hated her, and making polite enquiries about the possibility of riding expeditions. She declined absolutely to spend the rest of her life immured indoors.
She wasn’t sure how she would feel when the Tortallan delegates left. They had only four more days to go, and Kalasin had only two ladies-in-waiting to remain with her. Lynet of Seabeth and Seajen had already struck up a mild flirtation with an Imperial naval officer, and Froniga haMinch had taken violently against the weather and was lying down on her bed with a migraine. For lack of anything else to do, Kalasin sat by her bedside, meditating, and occasionally applying cold compresses and sparks of Gift when the situation seemed to call for it.
Lynet knocked timidly. Rather than wake Froniga, Kalasin got up and went out. “What is it, Lyn?”
“Er – his Imperial Majesty formally requests leave to enter your chambers; he has a wedding gift to present you with.”
All three of Kalasin’s brothers were soldiers, and her sister Lianne practically lived in a military infirmary; the general tone of the Conté mind had been considerably dragged down by years of exposure to the military sense of humour. Her eyebrow twitched involuntarily.
Lynet giggled. “No, empress, I think it actually is a present.”
“I shall receive him in the morning-room momentarily,” Kalasin said, already heading for her dressing-room to tidy her hair, rearrange her dress and put on jewellery. “And Lyn, if you and Froniga don’t call me Kalasin, I’ll lose my mind.”
Several minutes later, Kalasin was seated decorously on one of the low, comfortable couches in her morning-room, geometric pockets of light filtering through the screens, and a small collection of people stood before her. Among them was her new husband, looking nervous again, even though he had seemed perfectly certain when they’d said their vows, and at the banquet afterwards, and on every remotely public occasion she’d seen him at.
(He had not been certain on her wedding night; he’d been quiet and unsure and very, very gentle, and Kalasin had been dimly grateful and slightly uncomfortable. But she preferred not to think about that.)
Kalasin let her eyes roam over the others, as Kaddar spoke a little haltingly about his regard for her and care for her safety. She recognised none of them; there were three of the Imperial Guard, who were to be expected given the way they followed Kaddar about the place, and then a woman who was – well, very odd for Carthak. Her skin was a dark tan colour, her cheekbones high and her small dark eyes fierce; her hair was black and braided, the ends tied off with silver beads. She was dressed like a man of the coast, with some odd touches. So bright a green was not a favoured colour in Carthak, not to Kalasin’s knowledge, and to see a woman in even loose trousers was an event, especially an armed woman. Whoever she was, she looked oddly familiar.
“I present to you your new bodyguard – subject to your approval,” Kaddar said. “Mistress Channary Soun.”
Kalasin couldn’t stop herself twitching. That was most definitely a K’miri name, and now she knew why the woman looked so familiar – there was something about her cast of features that looked like the Riders’ horsemistress and her mother’s friend, Onua Chamtong. The cheekbones, she decided, before a wave of outrage swept over her. She knew exactly how likely it was that a woman not a slave would be appointed as the empress’ bodyguard, and she suspected that however much she’d learnt at King’s Reach her fury showed on her face. That a K’mir should be brought to her as a slave, a gift -
“Leave us,” Kaddar said firmly to the Imperial Guard and to Lynet, all of whom departed post-haste. Kalasin would say this for him, she thought as her hands curled into tight fists where they lay folded in her lap. He had a very authoritative tone of voice when he chose.
“Kalasin,” Kaddar said, rather wearily. “Did you honestly think I would give you a slave?”
“You called her a wedding gift,” Kalasin said tightly, and Kaddar looked embarrassed.
“Well, as it happens,” he said, “Mistress Soun is a slave at present. It was – a requirement. All my bodyguard are, or were, enslaved – the idea is that their loyalty should be complete and perfect… But there is nothing that says that you cannot free her,” he added hastily, “and thinking that you would wish to do so, I had the clerks draw up the necessary papers.” He laid a slim leather folder on the low table in front of her, and she picked it up, her fingers trembling with the force of receding anger and relief. She looked through them slowly, and to her untrained eye they looked comprehensive.
She caught Kaddar’s eye and dipped her head in thanks, then laid the folder down gently and addressed the K’miri woman in halting K’miri. Her mother had taught it to her as a child, but Lianne and Vania spoke it so much better, and oh, she missed them and their instinctive grasp of its complex grammar. Her lessons had focussed on Carthaki. “You are welcome here. What is your clan?”
“My father’s family is Churi, empress,” Channary Soun said in the same language, and a smile appeared like a crack in the granite façade of her face. “You are Kalasin Thayet’s daughter?”
Kalasin just nodded, and concentrated on not crying. Channary’s voice, when she spoke K’miri, had no Carthaki accent, and bore a strong resemblance to Kalasin’s aunt Buri’s.
Channary dropped gracefully to one knee. “It is an honour to serve one such.”
“It is an honour to receive your service,” Kalasin said formally, reeling slightly. “How do you come to Carthak?”
“My father is a trader; he lived in Port Udayapur in the Year of Sorrows,” Channary said. It took Kalasin a moment to remember that when the K’mir spoke of the Year of Sorrows, they meant the year her grandmother killed herself and her mother fled Sarain. “He had a Carthaki wife, the daughter of another trader. They went south to her home rather than flee west, and did not trade with Sarain for many long years.”
Kalasin nodded again, and clasped her hands in her lap. Then she looked at Kaddar. “I… Kaddar.”
“I wanted you to have company,” Kaddar said. His eyes were full of an emotion Kalasin didn’t care to decipher. “Someone to speak your mother’s language to you. And she was by far the best of the candidates I interviewed. Do you think you can… like her?”
Froniga had asked Kalasin something very similar after her first meeting with Kaddar, and Kalasin answered with more certainty now than she had done then. “I think we will get along very well, yes.”
“Shall I call for a clerk to witness the manumission papers?” Kaddar said, looking much brighter.
Kalasin hesitated. “Is there anything in law that says you may not witness them?”
Kaddar paused, then nodded regretfully.
“May Lynet do so?”
“I see no reason why not.”
Kalasin called for Lynet, who came quickly, and went just as quickly to fetch ink and a pen, and Kalasin signed the papers, then passed the pen to Channary and Lynet to sign.
“What would you have done,” she asked, as Lynet scrawled her name, “if I hadn’t liked her?”
Kaddar looked surprised. “Freed her myself, of course,” he said.
Kalasin smiled.
iii. A tour of the University Library.
Kalasin laid down her book with a slightly disconsolate sigh. She was still trying to carve out her own niche in the court; this wasn’t Tortall, where she had had work any time she cared to call on Uncle Gary. She had managed to win regular access to the imperial stables, and Channary had helped her towards a few stolen hours of archery practice, and of course she was working on consolidating her social position. She still had quite a lot of empty time to fill, even when keeping an eye on Lynet’s sweetheart was factored in, and she spent a lot of it reading.
The one thing she had not considered, when coming to Carthak, was reading material. She had been accustomed to the small personal library kept in the Conté rooms, and access to the larger Royal Library at any time of day or night. It had not occurred to her that acquiring books in Carthak, the home of the University Library, would be a major undertaking. But she had yet to successfully cross the threshold of the bloody place, let alone take out a book. And this was a problem, because she was running out of the books she had brought with her, and one of the few comfortable ways to spend time with Kaddar was while they were both reading – or he was gardening and she was reading, or he was working and she was reading.
“Is something the matter?” Kaddar asked, ripping a persistent weed out by the roots. Kalasin couldn’t fault his attentiveness.
She watched him working. “I have just finished the last of my books.”
“Oh. You… you like to read, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Kalasin said, keeping any tones of ‘of course’ out of her voice. Kaddar was a fairly delicate flower where her opinion was concerned. She wasn’t sure he’d recovered from the incident where she thought he was trying to give her a slave.
“Would you like to visit the University Library? Unofficially, if you prefer.”
Kalasin simply blinked at him, her jaw dropped un-imperially.
He gave her a shy smile. “I am, of course, an alumnus. And I take an interest. And, of course –”
“-you are the emperor,” Kalasin filled in, recovering herself. “Yes.”
Kaddar frowned slightly. “You should be able to visit yourself, if you liked…”
A few months ago, Kalasin would have firmed her lips and ducked her head and said nothing. She let her lips twist and her eyebrows arch now. “Do they know that?”
Kaddar stared at her, and then his jaw set. “Oh.”
“Mm,” Kalasin said, folding her hands neatly in her lap.
“Does tomorrow suit you?” Kaddar said. “For a tour?”
Kalasin had to fight to prevent her jaw from dropping again. “You have that meeting with the lords from the eastern coast. And offerings to the Hag. You can’t miss those, not if-”
Kaddar shook his head, a quick jerk. “I don’t have a meeting. I will be touring the university where I spent my youth, with my wife. Who will doubtless take a particular interest in the library, especially, perhaps, the books on healing…?”
“I… prefer scrying, actually,” Kalasin said slowly. “I mean, I studied healing – but for interest, I prefer scrying. It was not thought… appropriate.”
Which was a nice way of saying, Kalasin thought bitterly, that her father couldn’t even let her have one dream. But her thoughts weren’t as bitter as usual, and the flinch of sympathy in Kaddar’s dark eyes and the way his hand hovered shyly close to hers put an unwilling smile on her face. She reached out and clasped his fingers. “What’s done is done. And I don’t scry very often. I prefer – not to know.”
Kaddar returned her grip – gently, so gently. “We’ll build a library,” he said. “Full of books on scrying and gardening. But in the meantime, the University Library will do.”
“Yes,” Kalasin said. “Yes. It will.”
The next day they stopped on the way back from the library at the Graveyard Hag’s shrine, as this was an appointment that genuinely could not be missed. It was clean, recently-decorated, and rich with incense and flowers. Kaddar made the Imperial Guards stay outside with his and Kalasin’s haul of books, and allowed only Channary and his own favourite guard, a grizzled former trooper from his father’s old regiment, to follow them inside. Kalasin noticed how carefully and professionally Channary did not smirk.
She touched the small pouch at her waist that held her offering. Daine had told her about this; Fazia had summoned her at an unholy hour to repeat the warnings. It had given Kalasin great pleasure to smile and nod and inform her that her offering for the goddess was already prepared.
Kaddar approached the altar on quiet feet, laid a wreath of fresh flowers on it, and knelt for a second; then he stood, bowed deeply and retreated. Kalasin stepped forward, and pulled out a pair of ebony dice with ruby-chip dots, which she placed in the centre of Kaddar’s wreath, on top of the red silk pouch that had held them. She knelt, and closed her eyes –
“Pretty gift, lassie,” chuckled a croaking voice, crows’ calls and rats’ squeaking and the laughter of a man who’s lost all he had at cards, and the Graveyard Hag’s cool, stick-thin fingers lifted her face by the chin.
“Thank you,” Kalasin said, folding her hands, a prayer coming unbidden to her mind. Goddess, stand by me; I am your daughter… “A friend of mine told me you would like them.”
The Graveyard Hag cackled. “Daine! Lovely girl, Daine. Clever little thing. And here you are, a clever little thing too. Be good to my boy. He loves you, you know.”
“He -?” Kalasin spluttered, flushing red in a way she’d been able to control since she was a little girl.
The Graveyard Hag’s laughter hit her like a wave of salt water to the face, and she doubled over, coughing. Kaddar caught her, Channary not far behind.
“Are you all right?” Kaddar said urgently.
“Yes,” Kalasin said, gasping for breath and grasping instinctively at him, and read the truth of the Graveyard Hag’s words in his eyes. “Yes. She spoke to me.”
“What did she say?” Kaddar asked, alarm flashing on his face.
“I think – she just wanted to say hello,” Kalasin said, and allowed Kaddar to lift her to her feet, holding onto him for balance a little longer than she needed to. Channary gave her a very knowing look over Kaddar’s shoulder, and Kalasin, whose K’miri vocabulary was improving in leaps and bounds, told her to hold her impertinent tongue.
The Graveyard Hag’s laughter echoed around the temple, and even Kaddar’s stoic guard winced.
“I am sorry,” Kaddar said, when they were safely outside, “I didn’t expect…”
Kalasin shushed him with a hand on his arm. “Let’s just… go home. We have a small library to get through.”
iv. A Tortallan wolfhound called Smoke.
Kalasin blinked awake to the sound of a very odd squeaking and whimpering – neither of which noise her husband was accustomed to make. She frowned and stirred in her sheets. It was her birthday; she wasn’t supposed to be woken early. Usually, she liked to go out for a ride in the mornings, and Kaddar had promised to go with her today, but first they had meant to lie in.
“Sssh,” Kaddar said, sounding frustrated. “Hush.”
A door shut delicately. Kalasin recognised Froniga’s hand. Channary would have banged it shut, and Lynet was married to her naval officer now; Kalasin had danced at her wedding and given her a handsome present. A small group of Tortallans had come to see Lynet married, bearing gifts and letters for Kalasin, and she’d been briefly terribly homesick, although an amusing linguistic misunderstanding between a young lord of the Carthaki court and Lynet’s cousin Lachren of Mindelan had dragged her out of the temporary fit. And when it had struck her again later, Kaddar had been there to put his arms around her quite tentatively, and unconsciously, she had leant into the contact.
It had felt good. He still punctiliously avoided contact with her, by and large, and she had been very glad of that in the first months of their marriage. So she hadn’t realised he was good at hugs, but he was – warm and strong and comforting, gentle hands with their gardening marks stroking her hair. She had asked him to stay with her that night, and she’d fallen asleep in his arms.
And now he had apparently climbed out of bed and wandered off to pick up something that squeaked and whimpered. Kalasin was not sure she approved.
Kalasin sat up. Kaddar was struggling with something, and addressing it with muttered admonitions she didn’t understand, but was sure were particularly coarse specimens of Carthaki foul language. “Kaddar,” she said, “what in the name of Mithros are you doing?”
Kaddar gave a muffled exclamation. “Close your eyes, Kalasin.”
Annoyed but intrigued, Kalasin shut her eyes, and heard Kaddar’s heavy footsteps over to the bed, whereupon something warm and wriggling was dropped into her lap. She opened her eyes and gasped in delight and shock.
A puppy was scrabbling around in her lap – a big dog for its age, a grey, shaggy-furred Tortallan wolfhound, wearing a jewelled collar. It was just the kind of dog she had had when she was a girl, as much to be her protector as to hunt with her, and she had missed her hounds when she left Corus, although Jasson had promised faithfully to care for them and he was good with dogs.
“He’s yours,” Kaddar said. “I thought you might like the companionship, and your brother told me you liked this kind of dog.”
“Roald told you? You wrote to him?”
“We correspond frequently. And he said to tell you that this boy was trained by your brother Jasson, and his sire is Roy from Lord Wyldon of Cavall’s kennels, and his dam is your brother Liam’s hound Lucky. Apparently his name is Smoke, but he shouldn’t be too hard to train to a new name if you’d like. The hapless Sir Lachren brought him over.”
“Yes,” Kalasin said, trying very hard not to cry. “Of course. Of course. Lianne said Jasson was friends with the Mindelan boy.” She bent her head and buried her face in the puppy’s fur, and got licked for her pains.
Kaddar hesitated. “Do you like him?”
“Kaddar, are you stupid? He’s gorgeous!” Kalasin said, before she could think better of it and be polite. She looked up hurriedly. “I mean –”
Kaddar was beaming. Her apology died on her lips.
v. A Carthaki/Bazhir cross mare named Fire.
“Where is Lord Ismail?” Kalasin enquired of the nearest slave, who was fortunately used to her and her funny northern ways and therefore didn’t flatten himself to the floor more than absolutely necessary.
“He is within, your Imperial Majesty. Is it your Imperial Majesty’s will that I fetch him to you?”
“Certainly,” Kalasin said, thinking a variety of very rude things about the noble who had charge of Kaddar’s personal stable. He’d had his place since Ozorne’s time, and Kalasin suspected him of having paid for it. He disapproved very much of Kaddar’s northern empress, and even more of her indecorous love of riding, in which he was joined by Kalasin’s mother-in-law. Unfortunately, unlike Fazia, he had nominal control over which horses left the stables – and while Kalasin could overrule him, it would be impolitic to do so. Similarly, while he could overrule her choice of horse, it would be extremely dangerous for him to do so – so he had developed a habit of disappearing when Kalasin wanted to ride out, or of politely saying that such and such a horse was lame, or already out. She still had no horses of her own, and unlike in Tortall, Kalasin didn’t know where the best horses could be bought. She had no equivalent of Onua Chamtong or Lord Wyldon to advise her. Even Channary didn’t know the breeders around Carthak City, brought up as she was in the east.
Perhaps if Kaddar was thinking of a Midwinter gift…
“Who’s this beauty?” Channary said with whole-hearted approbation in her voice, jerking Kalasin out of her reverie. Froniga, whose love of horses had overcome her early training so that she had wandered from Kalasin’s side, offered the horse Channary was inspecting her palm.
“I haven’t seen her before,” Kalasin said, joining her erstwhile bodyguard and lady-in-waiting. She spared an appreciative look for the horse herself – a lovely mare, fine-boned, bright bay-coloured and with an intelligent look in her bright eyes, just the kind of horse Kalasin would have loved to take out herself – and then checked the front of the stall. “No name yet.” She glanced round, and spotted a groom. “A moment, if you please?”
It wasn’t really a request. The groom bowed low. “What is your Imperial Majesty’s desire?”
She really had to train them into calling her Empress Kalasin. Maybe some time in the next forty years, she’d manage it. “Whose horse is this, and what is her name?”
“Your Imperial Majesty, the horse has no name as yet. I believe she is yours.”
“Mine?” Kalasin controlled her look of surprise with relative ease.
“It is possible,” Channary said blandly, watching Froniga go in search of tack – you could take the lady out of the Minchi mountains, but you couldn’t take the Minchi mountains out of the lady – “that a certain person had cause to complain to her colleagues that Lord Ismail is a self-important wretch who hates ladies who ride seriously. And it is possible that those colleagues may have mentioned this to Emperor Kaddar. It is even possible that Emperor Kaddar did not realise you had not acquired a horse of your own yet. Or that Lord Ismail was such a waste of air.”
Kalasin eyeballed Channary, who ignored her with the grace of one who had long learnt that Kalasin might be a daughter of fearsome mothers, but she was also human. “Is that so?”
“It could even be,” Froniga said, returning with a saddle and other tack in her arms – Kalasin hoped she had not upset the slaves again – “that Emperor Kaddar asked your humble ladies-in-waiting for advice. We just mention these as possibilities, you understand.”
Kalasin was beginning to think that Froniga, Channary and Lynet got on far too well.
“I might also mention,” Froniga added, heaving the saddle onto a convenient bench and draping it with the other accoutrements, “that the lady Saraiyu loves riding.”
And Froniga knows far too much of my business, Kalasin thought to herself, but then, that was why she’d asked Froniga to come with her to Carthak. It wasn’t just that she knew Froniga reasonably well, it was that the woman was very shrewd indeed, clever with numbers and rumour and politics. If she hadn’t been a woman, and of Kalasin’s generation rather than the famous Lady Knight Keladry’s, Froniga could have been Prime Minister. Of course she had worked out that Kalasin was still trying to puzzle her way to welcoming Zaimid’s runaway Copper Islander wife without either causing offence in the Copper Isles or upsetting Zaimid, who she liked very much.
“What will you call her?” Channary said, finishing her inspection and producing a scrap of sugar from nowhere to feed the mare.
Kalasin thought, taking the scrap of sugar from Channary and feeding it to the horse, and then she remembered Smoke – Smoke, with his paws still too large for the rest of him, slipping and sliding and rough-housing with Kaddar and Kalasin and Channary and Froniga and Lynet and even Zaimid, because nobody could resist Smoke’s puppy eyes. “Fire, of course. No Smoke without Fire, isn’t that right, girl?”
Channary very nearly laughed.
“Do you wish me to prepare the horse for a ride, your Imperial Majesty?” the groom said, deferentially.
“No, I’ll do it,” Kalasin said. The groom looked appalled; she nodded at Channary, who fished a coin or two from her purse and passed it to the groom. “I want you to take a message to Lady Saraiyu, the Lord Zaimid’s wife. Say to her that I wish to ride out, and that if convenient to her, I should like it very much if she would join me.”
The groom bowed and left in slightly scandalised silence, and Kalasin lifted the saddle onto Fire’s back.
Kaddar came in late from a council meeting, but Saraiyu – Sarai – had only just gone. Kalasin was curled up on a sofa, reading; Froniga, taking advantage of the blue witchlights floating about the sitting-room, was doing likewise. Channary seemed to be sharpening her extensive collection of knives. Neither stood or bowed when Kaddar walked in; it had taken him months to get across the point that he preferred relative informality in small family parties, but he had eventually succeeded.
“How was your ride?” Kaddar said, taking Kalasin’s hand in his. “Zaimid said you had gone out and taken Saraiyu with you.”
“We did.” Kalasin squeezed his fingers gently. “I like Sarai. I like the horse you bought me even more. Thank you.”
Kalasin admitted to herself that Kaddar’s smile was probably the warmest she’d ever seen.
&i. A glass bowl containing live Tortallan periwinkle flowers.
Dear Kaddar,
I expect when you get this you will be in the middle of yet another day of talks. It can’t be helped, though I wish I could be there with you. Be assured matters are well in hand here. The council are getting used to me, and Fazia - although she has not given up on telling me not to ride for the Sake of the Heir – is largely quiescent. I take Zaimid’s advice regularly, and he says the baby is fine and healthy. (And your mother is wrong about the riding, but Zaimid was very earnest in his requests that I not tell her he said so. Zaimid is, as my brothers and sisters used to put it, a scaredy-cat.) Lynet has given birth to her daughter, who she has named Keladry. Since she declared her intention to do so the moment she realised she was pregnant, nobody is quite as shocked as they pretend to be, and I am only grateful that the child was a girl after all. Imagine being a boy called Keladry.
You said in your last letter that Lord Samir’s palace is devoid of gardens, and I know how much you will hate that, so I send you some flowers to make up for it. They are Tortallan – periwinkles, they are called. The scholars at the university told me that provided the periwinkles are kept in this bowl and watered regularly, they will thrive, even in Lord Samir’s gloomy patch of sand. I hope you like their colour; I remember the first compliment you gave me was that my eyes were extraordinary, and when I was a girl I was always being told to sew samplers with periwinkles on ‘because they matched my eyes’. I am not quite mean-spirited enough to dislike them for it, but if you like them, I shall love them once more.
Happy birthday. Smoke, Channary, Froniga, Sarai and Zaimid send their regards.
I love you.
Kalasin.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: uh, ambiguous feelings about arranged marriage? Super awkward limited displays of affection? Kaddar has a Thing for giving his wife stuff? None, really.
Summary: Five gifts Kalasin Iliniat received from her husband, and one she gave him.
A/N: Belatedly for Rosie. *squishes* Could be considered a loose companion to Words Become Superfluous. With thanks to Cass for the beta. <3
***
To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides. David Viscott.
i. The key to her rooms.
Kalasin looked around the chambers that would be her rooms for, quite possibly, the rest of her life. They were beautiful, she conceded, well-appointed, and with an eye to Tortallan traditions – perhaps the ambassador had advised the emperor’s architects. There was a garden featuring northern plants, an enclosed courtyard open to the sky; she would like that, she knew. It would be a pleasant place to sit. Perhaps some of the heavy curtains that blanketed the chamber windows would need to be replaced with something lighter that let in the air. There were things she had brought with her, her childhood quilt, drawings, miniatures of her family, that she would want to distribute around them, to make the place feel like it was hers. There was also a small door set discreetly into one wall, ornate but understated in comparison to most of the Carthaki palace, and Kalasin was trying not to look at that. It led to her fiancé’s chambers.
There was a soft cough from just behind her, and Kalasin turned, finding a practised diplomatic smile to slip onto her face. “This is very lovely, your Imperial Majesty. Thank you – there are so many thoughtful details.”
Kaddar almost blushed and shuffled his feet. “Please, your Highness. Kaddar.”
“Kaddar,” Kalasin repeated.
“And may I…” His voice trailed off hopefully.
It was a small thing, compared to marrying him. “Yes.”
“Kalasin,” he said, as if trying her name out, and then held something out on his open palm.
Temporarily lost for words, Kalasin stared mutely at him, and then at the object in his hand. “What…?”
“The, er, key,” Kaddar said. “To that… door. Which locks, you may be interested to know, from this side. I thought you might prefer to have it in your possession. The key, that is. Not the door.”
He was distinctly pink about the ears. Kalasin honestly wondered how he had survived the Carthaki court, which was, from her limited experience, a hotbed of vipers, poison and politics that made her parents’ court look like a set of toy soldiers. She was also mildly stunned both that the door under discussion locked, and that her fiancé meant to give her the key.
“It is the only key,” Kaddar added, looking worried.
Her smile this time was genuine. She knew her fiancé was a clever man; she had not realised he was considerate. She thought that you could probably build a marriage on that. Even a political one.
She reached out and took the key from him, sliding it into the pocket concealed in one of her wide sleeves. “Thank you,” she said.
He looked hopeful.
“Kaddar,” she added.
He beamed.
ii. Her bodyguard, Channary.
Kalasin Iliniat was settling into married life more easily than she had expected to. Her days largely consisted of meeting yet more Carthaki lords and ladies of the court, drawing on all her patience to deal with her mother-in-law, who already hated her, and making polite enquiries about the possibility of riding expeditions. She declined absolutely to spend the rest of her life immured indoors.
She wasn’t sure how she would feel when the Tortallan delegates left. They had only four more days to go, and Kalasin had only two ladies-in-waiting to remain with her. Lynet of Seabeth and Seajen had already struck up a mild flirtation with an Imperial naval officer, and Froniga haMinch had taken violently against the weather and was lying down on her bed with a migraine. For lack of anything else to do, Kalasin sat by her bedside, meditating, and occasionally applying cold compresses and sparks of Gift when the situation seemed to call for it.
Lynet knocked timidly. Rather than wake Froniga, Kalasin got up and went out. “What is it, Lyn?”
“Er – his Imperial Majesty formally requests leave to enter your chambers; he has a wedding gift to present you with.”
All three of Kalasin’s brothers were soldiers, and her sister Lianne practically lived in a military infirmary; the general tone of the Conté mind had been considerably dragged down by years of exposure to the military sense of humour. Her eyebrow twitched involuntarily.
Lynet giggled. “No, empress, I think it actually is a present.”
“I shall receive him in the morning-room momentarily,” Kalasin said, already heading for her dressing-room to tidy her hair, rearrange her dress and put on jewellery. “And Lyn, if you and Froniga don’t call me Kalasin, I’ll lose my mind.”
Several minutes later, Kalasin was seated decorously on one of the low, comfortable couches in her morning-room, geometric pockets of light filtering through the screens, and a small collection of people stood before her. Among them was her new husband, looking nervous again, even though he had seemed perfectly certain when they’d said their vows, and at the banquet afterwards, and on every remotely public occasion she’d seen him at.
(He had not been certain on her wedding night; he’d been quiet and unsure and very, very gentle, and Kalasin had been dimly grateful and slightly uncomfortable. But she preferred not to think about that.)
Kalasin let her eyes roam over the others, as Kaddar spoke a little haltingly about his regard for her and care for her safety. She recognised none of them; there were three of the Imperial Guard, who were to be expected given the way they followed Kaddar about the place, and then a woman who was – well, very odd for Carthak. Her skin was a dark tan colour, her cheekbones high and her small dark eyes fierce; her hair was black and braided, the ends tied off with silver beads. She was dressed like a man of the coast, with some odd touches. So bright a green was not a favoured colour in Carthak, not to Kalasin’s knowledge, and to see a woman in even loose trousers was an event, especially an armed woman. Whoever she was, she looked oddly familiar.
“I present to you your new bodyguard – subject to your approval,” Kaddar said. “Mistress Channary Soun.”
Kalasin couldn’t stop herself twitching. That was most definitely a K’miri name, and now she knew why the woman looked so familiar – there was something about her cast of features that looked like the Riders’ horsemistress and her mother’s friend, Onua Chamtong. The cheekbones, she decided, before a wave of outrage swept over her. She knew exactly how likely it was that a woman not a slave would be appointed as the empress’ bodyguard, and she suspected that however much she’d learnt at King’s Reach her fury showed on her face. That a K’mir should be brought to her as a slave, a gift -
“Leave us,” Kaddar said firmly to the Imperial Guard and to Lynet, all of whom departed post-haste. Kalasin would say this for him, she thought as her hands curled into tight fists where they lay folded in her lap. He had a very authoritative tone of voice when he chose.
“Kalasin,” Kaddar said, rather wearily. “Did you honestly think I would give you a slave?”
“You called her a wedding gift,” Kalasin said tightly, and Kaddar looked embarrassed.
“Well, as it happens,” he said, “Mistress Soun is a slave at present. It was – a requirement. All my bodyguard are, or were, enslaved – the idea is that their loyalty should be complete and perfect… But there is nothing that says that you cannot free her,” he added hastily, “and thinking that you would wish to do so, I had the clerks draw up the necessary papers.” He laid a slim leather folder on the low table in front of her, and she picked it up, her fingers trembling with the force of receding anger and relief. She looked through them slowly, and to her untrained eye they looked comprehensive.
She caught Kaddar’s eye and dipped her head in thanks, then laid the folder down gently and addressed the K’miri woman in halting K’miri. Her mother had taught it to her as a child, but Lianne and Vania spoke it so much better, and oh, she missed them and their instinctive grasp of its complex grammar. Her lessons had focussed on Carthaki. “You are welcome here. What is your clan?”
“My father’s family is Churi, empress,” Channary Soun said in the same language, and a smile appeared like a crack in the granite façade of her face. “You are Kalasin Thayet’s daughter?”
Kalasin just nodded, and concentrated on not crying. Channary’s voice, when she spoke K’miri, had no Carthaki accent, and bore a strong resemblance to Kalasin’s aunt Buri’s.
Channary dropped gracefully to one knee. “It is an honour to serve one such.”
“It is an honour to receive your service,” Kalasin said formally, reeling slightly. “How do you come to Carthak?”
“My father is a trader; he lived in Port Udayapur in the Year of Sorrows,” Channary said. It took Kalasin a moment to remember that when the K’mir spoke of the Year of Sorrows, they meant the year her grandmother killed herself and her mother fled Sarain. “He had a Carthaki wife, the daughter of another trader. They went south to her home rather than flee west, and did not trade with Sarain for many long years.”
Kalasin nodded again, and clasped her hands in her lap. Then she looked at Kaddar. “I… Kaddar.”
“I wanted you to have company,” Kaddar said. His eyes were full of an emotion Kalasin didn’t care to decipher. “Someone to speak your mother’s language to you. And she was by far the best of the candidates I interviewed. Do you think you can… like her?”
Froniga had asked Kalasin something very similar after her first meeting with Kaddar, and Kalasin answered with more certainty now than she had done then. “I think we will get along very well, yes.”
“Shall I call for a clerk to witness the manumission papers?” Kaddar said, looking much brighter.
Kalasin hesitated. “Is there anything in law that says you may not witness them?”
Kaddar paused, then nodded regretfully.
“May Lynet do so?”
“I see no reason why not.”
Kalasin called for Lynet, who came quickly, and went just as quickly to fetch ink and a pen, and Kalasin signed the papers, then passed the pen to Channary and Lynet to sign.
“What would you have done,” she asked, as Lynet scrawled her name, “if I hadn’t liked her?”
Kaddar looked surprised. “Freed her myself, of course,” he said.
Kalasin smiled.
iii. A tour of the University Library.
Kalasin laid down her book with a slightly disconsolate sigh. She was still trying to carve out her own niche in the court; this wasn’t Tortall, where she had had work any time she cared to call on Uncle Gary. She had managed to win regular access to the imperial stables, and Channary had helped her towards a few stolen hours of archery practice, and of course she was working on consolidating her social position. She still had quite a lot of empty time to fill, even when keeping an eye on Lynet’s sweetheart was factored in, and she spent a lot of it reading.
The one thing she had not considered, when coming to Carthak, was reading material. She had been accustomed to the small personal library kept in the Conté rooms, and access to the larger Royal Library at any time of day or night. It had not occurred to her that acquiring books in Carthak, the home of the University Library, would be a major undertaking. But she had yet to successfully cross the threshold of the bloody place, let alone take out a book. And this was a problem, because she was running out of the books she had brought with her, and one of the few comfortable ways to spend time with Kaddar was while they were both reading – or he was gardening and she was reading, or he was working and she was reading.
“Is something the matter?” Kaddar asked, ripping a persistent weed out by the roots. Kalasin couldn’t fault his attentiveness.
She watched him working. “I have just finished the last of my books.”
“Oh. You… you like to read, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Kalasin said, keeping any tones of ‘of course’ out of her voice. Kaddar was a fairly delicate flower where her opinion was concerned. She wasn’t sure he’d recovered from the incident where she thought he was trying to give her a slave.
“Would you like to visit the University Library? Unofficially, if you prefer.”
Kalasin simply blinked at him, her jaw dropped un-imperially.
He gave her a shy smile. “I am, of course, an alumnus. And I take an interest. And, of course –”
“-you are the emperor,” Kalasin filled in, recovering herself. “Yes.”
Kaddar frowned slightly. “You should be able to visit yourself, if you liked…”
A few months ago, Kalasin would have firmed her lips and ducked her head and said nothing. She let her lips twist and her eyebrows arch now. “Do they know that?”
Kaddar stared at her, and then his jaw set. “Oh.”
“Mm,” Kalasin said, folding her hands neatly in her lap.
“Does tomorrow suit you?” Kaddar said. “For a tour?”
Kalasin had to fight to prevent her jaw from dropping again. “You have that meeting with the lords from the eastern coast. And offerings to the Hag. You can’t miss those, not if-”
Kaddar shook his head, a quick jerk. “I don’t have a meeting. I will be touring the university where I spent my youth, with my wife. Who will doubtless take a particular interest in the library, especially, perhaps, the books on healing…?”
“I… prefer scrying, actually,” Kalasin said slowly. “I mean, I studied healing – but for interest, I prefer scrying. It was not thought… appropriate.”
Which was a nice way of saying, Kalasin thought bitterly, that her father couldn’t even let her have one dream. But her thoughts weren’t as bitter as usual, and the flinch of sympathy in Kaddar’s dark eyes and the way his hand hovered shyly close to hers put an unwilling smile on her face. She reached out and clasped his fingers. “What’s done is done. And I don’t scry very often. I prefer – not to know.”
Kaddar returned her grip – gently, so gently. “We’ll build a library,” he said. “Full of books on scrying and gardening. But in the meantime, the University Library will do.”
“Yes,” Kalasin said. “Yes. It will.”
The next day they stopped on the way back from the library at the Graveyard Hag’s shrine, as this was an appointment that genuinely could not be missed. It was clean, recently-decorated, and rich with incense and flowers. Kaddar made the Imperial Guards stay outside with his and Kalasin’s haul of books, and allowed only Channary and his own favourite guard, a grizzled former trooper from his father’s old regiment, to follow them inside. Kalasin noticed how carefully and professionally Channary did not smirk.
She touched the small pouch at her waist that held her offering. Daine had told her about this; Fazia had summoned her at an unholy hour to repeat the warnings. It had given Kalasin great pleasure to smile and nod and inform her that her offering for the goddess was already prepared.
Kaddar approached the altar on quiet feet, laid a wreath of fresh flowers on it, and knelt for a second; then he stood, bowed deeply and retreated. Kalasin stepped forward, and pulled out a pair of ebony dice with ruby-chip dots, which she placed in the centre of Kaddar’s wreath, on top of the red silk pouch that had held them. She knelt, and closed her eyes –
“Pretty gift, lassie,” chuckled a croaking voice, crows’ calls and rats’ squeaking and the laughter of a man who’s lost all he had at cards, and the Graveyard Hag’s cool, stick-thin fingers lifted her face by the chin.
“Thank you,” Kalasin said, folding her hands, a prayer coming unbidden to her mind. Goddess, stand by me; I am your daughter… “A friend of mine told me you would like them.”
The Graveyard Hag cackled. “Daine! Lovely girl, Daine. Clever little thing. And here you are, a clever little thing too. Be good to my boy. He loves you, you know.”
“He -?” Kalasin spluttered, flushing red in a way she’d been able to control since she was a little girl.
The Graveyard Hag’s laughter hit her like a wave of salt water to the face, and she doubled over, coughing. Kaddar caught her, Channary not far behind.
“Are you all right?” Kaddar said urgently.
“Yes,” Kalasin said, gasping for breath and grasping instinctively at him, and read the truth of the Graveyard Hag’s words in his eyes. “Yes. She spoke to me.”
“What did she say?” Kaddar asked, alarm flashing on his face.
“I think – she just wanted to say hello,” Kalasin said, and allowed Kaddar to lift her to her feet, holding onto him for balance a little longer than she needed to. Channary gave her a very knowing look over Kaddar’s shoulder, and Kalasin, whose K’miri vocabulary was improving in leaps and bounds, told her to hold her impertinent tongue.
The Graveyard Hag’s laughter echoed around the temple, and even Kaddar’s stoic guard winced.
“I am sorry,” Kaddar said, when they were safely outside, “I didn’t expect…”
Kalasin shushed him with a hand on his arm. “Let’s just… go home. We have a small library to get through.”
iv. A Tortallan wolfhound called Smoke.
Kalasin blinked awake to the sound of a very odd squeaking and whimpering – neither of which noise her husband was accustomed to make. She frowned and stirred in her sheets. It was her birthday; she wasn’t supposed to be woken early. Usually, she liked to go out for a ride in the mornings, and Kaddar had promised to go with her today, but first they had meant to lie in.
“Sssh,” Kaddar said, sounding frustrated. “Hush.”
A door shut delicately. Kalasin recognised Froniga’s hand. Channary would have banged it shut, and Lynet was married to her naval officer now; Kalasin had danced at her wedding and given her a handsome present. A small group of Tortallans had come to see Lynet married, bearing gifts and letters for Kalasin, and she’d been briefly terribly homesick, although an amusing linguistic misunderstanding between a young lord of the Carthaki court and Lynet’s cousin Lachren of Mindelan had dragged her out of the temporary fit. And when it had struck her again later, Kaddar had been there to put his arms around her quite tentatively, and unconsciously, she had leant into the contact.
It had felt good. He still punctiliously avoided contact with her, by and large, and she had been very glad of that in the first months of their marriage. So she hadn’t realised he was good at hugs, but he was – warm and strong and comforting, gentle hands with their gardening marks stroking her hair. She had asked him to stay with her that night, and she’d fallen asleep in his arms.
And now he had apparently climbed out of bed and wandered off to pick up something that squeaked and whimpered. Kalasin was not sure she approved.
Kalasin sat up. Kaddar was struggling with something, and addressing it with muttered admonitions she didn’t understand, but was sure were particularly coarse specimens of Carthaki foul language. “Kaddar,” she said, “what in the name of Mithros are you doing?”
Kaddar gave a muffled exclamation. “Close your eyes, Kalasin.”
Annoyed but intrigued, Kalasin shut her eyes, and heard Kaddar’s heavy footsteps over to the bed, whereupon something warm and wriggling was dropped into her lap. She opened her eyes and gasped in delight and shock.
A puppy was scrabbling around in her lap – a big dog for its age, a grey, shaggy-furred Tortallan wolfhound, wearing a jewelled collar. It was just the kind of dog she had had when she was a girl, as much to be her protector as to hunt with her, and she had missed her hounds when she left Corus, although Jasson had promised faithfully to care for them and he was good with dogs.
“He’s yours,” Kaddar said. “I thought you might like the companionship, and your brother told me you liked this kind of dog.”
“Roald told you? You wrote to him?”
“We correspond frequently. And he said to tell you that this boy was trained by your brother Jasson, and his sire is Roy from Lord Wyldon of Cavall’s kennels, and his dam is your brother Liam’s hound Lucky. Apparently his name is Smoke, but he shouldn’t be too hard to train to a new name if you’d like. The hapless Sir Lachren brought him over.”
“Yes,” Kalasin said, trying very hard not to cry. “Of course. Of course. Lianne said Jasson was friends with the Mindelan boy.” She bent her head and buried her face in the puppy’s fur, and got licked for her pains.
Kaddar hesitated. “Do you like him?”
“Kaddar, are you stupid? He’s gorgeous!” Kalasin said, before she could think better of it and be polite. She looked up hurriedly. “I mean –”
Kaddar was beaming. Her apology died on her lips.
v. A Carthaki/Bazhir cross mare named Fire.
“Where is Lord Ismail?” Kalasin enquired of the nearest slave, who was fortunately used to her and her funny northern ways and therefore didn’t flatten himself to the floor more than absolutely necessary.
“He is within, your Imperial Majesty. Is it your Imperial Majesty’s will that I fetch him to you?”
“Certainly,” Kalasin said, thinking a variety of very rude things about the noble who had charge of Kaddar’s personal stable. He’d had his place since Ozorne’s time, and Kalasin suspected him of having paid for it. He disapproved very much of Kaddar’s northern empress, and even more of her indecorous love of riding, in which he was joined by Kalasin’s mother-in-law. Unfortunately, unlike Fazia, he had nominal control over which horses left the stables – and while Kalasin could overrule him, it would be impolitic to do so. Similarly, while he could overrule her choice of horse, it would be extremely dangerous for him to do so – so he had developed a habit of disappearing when Kalasin wanted to ride out, or of politely saying that such and such a horse was lame, or already out. She still had no horses of her own, and unlike in Tortall, Kalasin didn’t know where the best horses could be bought. She had no equivalent of Onua Chamtong or Lord Wyldon to advise her. Even Channary didn’t know the breeders around Carthak City, brought up as she was in the east.
Perhaps if Kaddar was thinking of a Midwinter gift…
“Who’s this beauty?” Channary said with whole-hearted approbation in her voice, jerking Kalasin out of her reverie. Froniga, whose love of horses had overcome her early training so that she had wandered from Kalasin’s side, offered the horse Channary was inspecting her palm.
“I haven’t seen her before,” Kalasin said, joining her erstwhile bodyguard and lady-in-waiting. She spared an appreciative look for the horse herself – a lovely mare, fine-boned, bright bay-coloured and with an intelligent look in her bright eyes, just the kind of horse Kalasin would have loved to take out herself – and then checked the front of the stall. “No name yet.” She glanced round, and spotted a groom. “A moment, if you please?”
It wasn’t really a request. The groom bowed low. “What is your Imperial Majesty’s desire?”
She really had to train them into calling her Empress Kalasin. Maybe some time in the next forty years, she’d manage it. “Whose horse is this, and what is her name?”
“Your Imperial Majesty, the horse has no name as yet. I believe she is yours.”
“Mine?” Kalasin controlled her look of surprise with relative ease.
“It is possible,” Channary said blandly, watching Froniga go in search of tack – you could take the lady out of the Minchi mountains, but you couldn’t take the Minchi mountains out of the lady – “that a certain person had cause to complain to her colleagues that Lord Ismail is a self-important wretch who hates ladies who ride seriously. And it is possible that those colleagues may have mentioned this to Emperor Kaddar. It is even possible that Emperor Kaddar did not realise you had not acquired a horse of your own yet. Or that Lord Ismail was such a waste of air.”
Kalasin eyeballed Channary, who ignored her with the grace of one who had long learnt that Kalasin might be a daughter of fearsome mothers, but she was also human. “Is that so?”
“It could even be,” Froniga said, returning with a saddle and other tack in her arms – Kalasin hoped she had not upset the slaves again – “that Emperor Kaddar asked your humble ladies-in-waiting for advice. We just mention these as possibilities, you understand.”
Kalasin was beginning to think that Froniga, Channary and Lynet got on far too well.
“I might also mention,” Froniga added, heaving the saddle onto a convenient bench and draping it with the other accoutrements, “that the lady Saraiyu loves riding.”
And Froniga knows far too much of my business, Kalasin thought to herself, but then, that was why she’d asked Froniga to come with her to Carthak. It wasn’t just that she knew Froniga reasonably well, it was that the woman was very shrewd indeed, clever with numbers and rumour and politics. If she hadn’t been a woman, and of Kalasin’s generation rather than the famous Lady Knight Keladry’s, Froniga could have been Prime Minister. Of course she had worked out that Kalasin was still trying to puzzle her way to welcoming Zaimid’s runaway Copper Islander wife without either causing offence in the Copper Isles or upsetting Zaimid, who she liked very much.
“What will you call her?” Channary said, finishing her inspection and producing a scrap of sugar from nowhere to feed the mare.
Kalasin thought, taking the scrap of sugar from Channary and feeding it to the horse, and then she remembered Smoke – Smoke, with his paws still too large for the rest of him, slipping and sliding and rough-housing with Kaddar and Kalasin and Channary and Froniga and Lynet and even Zaimid, because nobody could resist Smoke’s puppy eyes. “Fire, of course. No Smoke without Fire, isn’t that right, girl?”
Channary very nearly laughed.
“Do you wish me to prepare the horse for a ride, your Imperial Majesty?” the groom said, deferentially.
“No, I’ll do it,” Kalasin said. The groom looked appalled; she nodded at Channary, who fished a coin or two from her purse and passed it to the groom. “I want you to take a message to Lady Saraiyu, the Lord Zaimid’s wife. Say to her that I wish to ride out, and that if convenient to her, I should like it very much if she would join me.”
The groom bowed and left in slightly scandalised silence, and Kalasin lifted the saddle onto Fire’s back.
Kaddar came in late from a council meeting, but Saraiyu – Sarai – had only just gone. Kalasin was curled up on a sofa, reading; Froniga, taking advantage of the blue witchlights floating about the sitting-room, was doing likewise. Channary seemed to be sharpening her extensive collection of knives. Neither stood or bowed when Kaddar walked in; it had taken him months to get across the point that he preferred relative informality in small family parties, but he had eventually succeeded.
“How was your ride?” Kaddar said, taking Kalasin’s hand in his. “Zaimid said you had gone out and taken Saraiyu with you.”
“We did.” Kalasin squeezed his fingers gently. “I like Sarai. I like the horse you bought me even more. Thank you.”
Kalasin admitted to herself that Kaddar’s smile was probably the warmest she’d ever seen.
&i. A glass bowl containing live Tortallan periwinkle flowers.
Dear Kaddar,
I expect when you get this you will be in the middle of yet another day of talks. It can’t be helped, though I wish I could be there with you. Be assured matters are well in hand here. The council are getting used to me, and Fazia - although she has not given up on telling me not to ride for the Sake of the Heir – is largely quiescent. I take Zaimid’s advice regularly, and he says the baby is fine and healthy. (And your mother is wrong about the riding, but Zaimid was very earnest in his requests that I not tell her he said so. Zaimid is, as my brothers and sisters used to put it, a scaredy-cat.) Lynet has given birth to her daughter, who she has named Keladry. Since she declared her intention to do so the moment she realised she was pregnant, nobody is quite as shocked as they pretend to be, and I am only grateful that the child was a girl after all. Imagine being a boy called Keladry.
You said in your last letter that Lord Samir’s palace is devoid of gardens, and I know how much you will hate that, so I send you some flowers to make up for it. They are Tortallan – periwinkles, they are called. The scholars at the university told me that provided the periwinkles are kept in this bowl and watered regularly, they will thrive, even in Lord Samir’s gloomy patch of sand. I hope you like their colour; I remember the first compliment you gave me was that my eyes were extraordinary, and when I was a girl I was always being told to sew samplers with periwinkles on ‘because they matched my eyes’. I am not quite mean-spirited enough to dislike them for it, but if you like them, I shall love them once more.
Happy birthday. Smoke, Channary, Froniga, Sarai and Zaimid send their regards.
I love you.
Kalasin.
Maybe once we'd have seen it during Smackdown!