She reached out quickly and put her hand on his cheek, letting it rest there, as easily and naturally as though they were brother and sister or a husband and wife, long married.
"As you say, DeWar, our shame comes from the comparison. We know we might be generous and compassionate and good, and could behave so, yet something else in our nature makes us otherwise." She smiled a small, empty smile. "Yes, I feel something I recognise as love. Something I remember,something I may discuss and mull and theorise over." She shook her head. "But it is not something I know. I am like a blind woman talking about how a tree must look, or a cloud. Love is something I have a dim memory of, the way someone who went blind in their early childhood might recall the sun, or the face of their mother. I know affection from my fellow whorewives, DeWar, and I sense regard from you and feel some in return. I have a duty to the Protector, just as he feels he has a duty to me. As far as that goes, I am content. But love? That is for the living, and I am dead."
She stood, before he could say more. "Now, please, take me back to the harem."
21. THE DOCTOR
I do not believe the Doctor thought there was anything amiss. I know I did not suspect anything. The gaan Kuduhn seemed to have disappeared as quickly as he had arrived, taking ship for far Chuenruel the day after we'd met him, which left the Doctor a little sad. There had, when I thought about it later, been hints that the palace was preparing for a large contingent of new guests — a degree more activity in certain corridors than one might have expected, doors being used that were not normally open, rooms being aired — but none of it was particularly obvious, and the web of rumour that connected all the servants, assistants, apprentices and pages had not yet woken up to what was going on.
It was the second day of the second moon. My mistress was visiting the old Untouchable Quarter, where once the lowest classes, foreigners, bondagers and quarantiners were forced to dwell. It was still a far from salubrious area, but no longer walled and patrolled. It was there that the Master Chemicalist and Metaliciser (or so he styled himself) Chelgre had his workshop.
The Doctor had risen very late that morning and seemed much the worse for wear for about a bell or so. She sighed heavily and frequently, she said little to me but rather muttered to herself, she appeared a trifle unsteady on her feet and her face was pale. However, she shook off the effects of her hangover with astonishing rapidity, and while she remained subdued for the rest of the morning and the afternoon, she seemed otherwise back to normal after her late breakfast, just before we set off for the Untouchable Quarter.
Of what had been said the night before, not a further word was spoken. I think both of us were a little embarrassed at what we had admitted and implied to each other, and so achieved an unspoken but fully mutual agreement to keep our own counsel on the subject.
Master Chelgre was his usual strange and singular self. He was of course well known around the Court, both for his wild-haired and ragged appearance and his abilities with cannons and their dark powder. I need say no more for the purposes of this report. Besides, the Doctor and Chelgre talked of nothing that I could understand.
We returned by the fifth bell of the afternoon, on foot but escorted by a couple of barrow boys pushing a small cart loaded with straw-wrapped clays containing yet more chemicals and ingredients for what I was starting to suspect would be a long season of experiments and potions.
At the time, I recall feeling mildly resentful of this, for I did not doubt that I would be heavily involved in whatever the Doctor had in mind, and that my efforts would be in addition to those domestic tasks she had come to rely on me performing as a matter of course. To me, I strongly suspected, would fall most of the weighing and measuring and grinding and combining and diluting and washing and scouring and polishing and so on which this new batch of observations would require. There would be proportionately less time for me to spend with my fellows, playing cards and flirting with the kitchen girls, and, without being shy about it, that sort of thing had become relatively important to me in the past year.
Even so, I suppose, it could be said that in some cellar of my soul I was secretly pleased to be so relied upon by the Doctor and was looking forward to being crucially involved with her efforts. These would, after all, mean us being together, working as a team, working as equals, closeted in her study and workshop, passing many happily intense evenings and nights together, striving for a shared goal. Could I not hope that a greater regard might blossom in such intimate circumstances, now that she knew it was in my thoughts? The Doctor had been decisively rejected by the one she loved, or at least the one she believed she loved, while the manner in which she had declined the connotation of my interest in her seemed to me to be more to do with modesty than hostility or even indifference.
Yet I did feel a degree of petulance towards the ingredients being wheeled up the street in front of us that evening. How I regretted that feeling, so soon afterwards. How unsure that future I had envisaged for myself and her really was.
A warm wind seemed to blow us up the Market Square towards the Blister Gate, where long shadows advanced to meet us. We entered the palace. The Doctor paid the barrow boys off and a handful of servants were summoned to help me carry the clays, crates and boxes up to our apartments. I laboured under a rotund clay I knew was full of acid, chafing at the thought of having to share the same cramped set of rooms with it and its fellows. The Doctor was talking about having a workbench-level hearth and chimney constructed to allow the noxious fumes to escape better, but I suspected that even so. the next few moons would see me with running eyes and an aching nose, not to mention hands pimpled with tiny burns and clothes perforated with pin-head holes.
We achieved the Doctor's apartments just as Xamis was setting. The casks, clays and so on were distributed about the rooms, the servants were thanked and given a few coins, and the Doctor and I lit the lamps and set to unpacking all the inedible and poisonous provisions we had purchased from Master Chelgre.
A knock came at the door just after seventh bell. I answered it to find a servant I did not recognise. He was taller and a little older than me.
"Oelph?" he said, grinning. "Here. A note from the GC." He shoved a sealed piece of paper addressed to Doctor Vosill into my hand.
"The who?" I asked, but he had already turned and was sauntering off down the corridor. I shrugged.
The Doctor read the note. "I am to attend the Guard Commander and Duke Ormin in the Suitor's Wing," she said, sighing and pushing her fingers through her hair. She looked round the half-unpacked cases. "Would you mind doing the rest of this, Oelph?"
"Of course not, mistress."
"I think it's obvious where everything goes. Like with like. If there is anything unfamiliar, just leave it on the floor. I'll try not to be too long."
"Very well, mistress."
The Doctor buttoned her shirt up to the neck, sniffed at one of her armpits (just the sort of thing she did which I found unladylike and even distressing, but which I look back on now with an ache of longing), then shrugged, threw on a short jacket, and made for the door. She opened it, then came back, looked round the mess of straw, box-planks, twine and sacking that lay strewn across the floor, picked up her old dagger which she had been using to cut (or rather saw) the twine around the boxes and crates, and went off, whistling. The door closed.