Indeed. But there must have been something in her face despite her best efforts, because the smirk slipped a little, and the poet’s tone turned anxious.

You, uhm, you were not there yourself, milady? At the battle?

Oh no, she managed urbanely. But my father died on the expeditionary retreat, and two of my outlander friends led the final Gallows Gap charge.

He left her alone after that.

Home, in the courtyard, she handed Idrashan over to the night watchman and let herself in through a side entrance. The house was lit with lamps turned low, and it was quiet—she kept servant numbers to a minimum, and manumitted the slaves she occasionally bought as soon as custom and city regulations would permit. Kefanin, she guessed, would be dozing in his cubicle by the front door, waiting for her return. She saw no reason to wake him and went directly upstairs to her chambers.

In the dressing room, she hung up her knives, wrestled her boots off one after the other and tossed them into a corner, shucked the rest of her clothes like an old skin and stood there a minute luxuriating in the feel of the warm air on her body. Then, as she bent to scratch an itch on her calf, her own smell mugged her. She wrinkled her nose, glanced at the tapestried bellpull by the wall.

Ah, come on. Fucking Scaled Folk campaign veteran. You bathed under a waterfall in the upper Trell, winter of ’51. That so long ago?

It was ten years, truth be told, time that had crept up on her somehow; but the fading edge of the krin was a blessing, a twitching impatience under her skin, and she let that carry her. She left the bell unrung and went through to the bathing chamber, not relishing the thought of a cold-water scrub but unwilling to go through the rigmarole of calling down to the basement, getting the slaves to stoke up the furnace, fill the boiling pans, waiting the time it took while the water heated and they carried it upstairs and—

The water in the big alabaster bathing jugs was not cold.

She blinked, stirred a hand loosely through the water in one of the jugs again to make sure. No question, it was still lukewarm. Kefanin, proving himself once again worth his weight in precious gems, she supposed. She grinned and went through her ablutions with a small measure of relief, scrubbed the worst offending portions of her body, and rinsed herself off. She took a towel from the rack, wrapped herself in it, and wandered through to the bedchamber.

There was someone in her bed.

As she slammed to a halt in the doorway, the scent on the towel she wore caught up with her. She knew it from somewhere, but it was not her own.

“Hoy,” she snapped. “You’re supposed to be in the guest wi—”

But it was not Elith.

It took her a moment to place the candlewax-colored hair and the pale features, blurry with sleep, as the woman propped herself up in the bed. It was the scent that triggered the recall, the tight wet grip of Jhiral’s hand on her jaw five days ago, the salt-smelling damp of the slave girl’s juices drying on his fingers. Archeth felt her nostrils flare slightly at the memory, and abruptly she didn’t trust herself to say anything else.

“I—” The girl was clearly terrified. She pushed herself upright in the bed, slipping on the silk sheets. Babbling in Naomic. “I was commanded, milady. The Emperor himself, it was not my doing, I would not wish . . .”

And now Archeth remembered Jhiral’s smug face when she showed up in the throne room. I understand you had to go home before coming to see us. Did you find everything there to your satisfaction? His prurient, conspiratorial intimacy in the Chamber of Confidences five days earlier. She’s new. What do you think? Would you like me to send her to your bedchamber when I’m finished with her? And then, the throwaway decision, the whim. Come, I shall send the girl to you as soon as you return.

It didn’t do to underestimate Jhiral’s whims. They were all still learning that, up at the palace and across the city below. You’d think the lesson would have sunk in by now, but it seemed that—even for Archeth Indamaninarmal, most shrewd and pragmatic of imperial advisers—it hadn’t.

Archeth had a moment of retrospective sympathy for Kefanin. She recalled the mayor-domo’s face when she handed Elith over, his single, swiftly overridden attempt at a warning. Milady, there is already . . .

. . . an unexpected guest in your house.

. . . an unexpected young female slave awaiting your approval and command.

Tiny, trickling tingle in her belly at that particular thought.

Stop that.

. . . an unexpected and gracious gift of the Emperor, delivered and imposed with no possibility of demurral.

It explained what the girl was doing in her bedchamber. Jhiral liked his commands to be carried out to the letter, and didn’t mind detailing what would happen if they were not. The imperial messenger who brought the girl would have instructed Kefanin minutely, she supposed; and Kefanin, outlander by birth and slave from age five up, summarily castrated at fifteen, less than four years of manumission and citizenship to his name, mayor-domo or not, would have sprung to obey.

Archeth cleared her throat. Mumbled. “All right, fine. I see. You can—”

But the girl threw back the covers and came out of the bed anyway, naked, curve of hip and pale, bisected arse, soft, heavy swing of breasts, and crawled on her hands and knees across the rug to Archeth’s feet, and knelt there.

Archeth gritted her teeth.

“I was told to please you, milady.” Accent thick and intoxicatingly exotic as it softened and slithered on the Tethanne syllables. Her hair fell over her face. “In any way you see fit.”

It had been so long, so very, very long.

She let one hand fall toward the girl’s bowed head—

—she’s a slave, Archeth—

—snatched it back. Her heart felt abruptly like a panicked bird in a cage. She closed her eyes with the force of it. The blood thumped through her veins at jolting, krin-notched speed.

You are not human, Archidi. Tears in Grashgal’s eyes as he stood on the fireship’s gangway at the An-Monal dock. Never think, because we cannot take you with us, that you are human. You are Archeth, daughter of Flaradnam, of the Kiriath clan Indamaninarmal. Remember it in adversity. You are one of us, you always will be. You are not like them.

And then, of course, it was easy.

She swallowed and opened her eyes. Summoned a dry, self-possessed irony into her voice.

“The Emperor is generous beyond all bounds. It’s truly fortunate he is not here, for I am unsure what words I would find to thank him.”

She tucked the towel a little tighter around her. Self-possession or not, she did not trust herself to have the girl rise and stand facing her.

“I will no doubt be able to find work for you in my household, but for now I can think of nothing obvious. You should sleep until morning and then we will talk. What is your name?”

“Ishgrim.” It was barely a murmur.

“Good. Then go back to bed, Ishgrim. It’s late. I will summon you tomorrow.”

She turned and headed rapidly back into the dressing room, so she would not have to watch all that long-limbed, full-breasted flesh get up off the floor and move away from her.

SHE FLUNG ON A DRESSING GOWN, STABBED HER FEET INTO SLIPPERS. Faced herself in the mirror with a scowl, and then went loudly down the staircase. It woke Kefanin up and brought him hurrying out of the cubicle by the door.

“Oh, milady. You are already—”

“Yeah. Already home, already seen what’s in my bed. The Emperor is most pressing in his generosity, is he not.”

Kefanin inclined his head. “Just so, milady. I would have preferred—”