t," he murmured ruefully.
"Well you keep thinking about it till you figure it out," she said with a toss of her head. "In the meantime, that reminds me, the boy this morning was fine, except that the khav was very weak. Will you speak to him about how I like it?"
"I did. I told him to make it a little weak."
"You what? Scelto, I absolutely...”
"You always begin drinking more khav at the end of winter, when the weather begins to turn, and every spring you always have trouble sleeping at night. You know this is true, my lady. Either fewer cups or weaker khav. It is my duty to try to keep you rested and tranquil."
Dianora was speechless for a second. "Tranquil!" she finally managed to exclaim. "I might have frightened that poor child to the tips of his fingernails. I would have felt terrible!"
"I had told him what to say," Scelto said placidly. "He would have blamed it on me."
"Oh, really. And what if I'd reported it directly to Vencel, instead?" Dianora retorted. "Scelto, he would have had that boy starved and lashed."
Scelto's dignified little sniff conveyed quite clearly what he thought about the likelihood of her having done any such thing.
His expression was so wryly knowing that, against her will, Dianora found herself laughing again. "Very well," she said, surrendering. "Then let it be fewer cups, because I do like it strong, Scelto. It isn't worth the drinking otherwise. Besides, I don't think that's why I can't sleep at night. This season simply makes me restless."
"You were taken as Tribute in the spring," he murmured. "Everyone in the saishan is restless in the season they were taken." He hesitated. "I can't do anything about that, my lady. But I thought perhaps the khav might be making it worse." There was concern and affection in his brown eyes, almost as dark as her own.
"You worry too much about me," she said after a moment.
He smiled. "Who else should I worry about?" There was a little silence; Dianora could hear the noises from far below in the square.
"Speaking of worrying," said Scelto in a transparent effort to change the mood, "we may be concentrating too much on what Solores is doing. We may want to start keeping an eye on the young one with the green eyes."
"lassica?" Dianora said, surprised. "What ever for? Brandin hasn't even called her to him and she's been here a month already."
"Exactly," said Scelto. He paused, somewhat awkwardly, which piqued her curiosity.
"What are you saying, Scelto?"$$網$文$檔$下$載$與$在$線$閱$讀$
"I, um, have been told by Tesios who has been looking after her that he has never seen or heard of a woman in the saishan with such . . . control of her body or such . . . capacity for the climax of love."
He was blushing furiously, which made Dianora abruptly self-conscious too. It was a standard practice, with some quite unstandard variations, for the women of the saishan to use their castrates to give them physical release if too much time went by between summonses to the other wing.
Dianora had never asked Scelto for such a service. Something about the very idea disturbed her: it seemed an abuse, in a way she couldn't articulate. He had been a man, she reminded herself frequently, who had killed someone for love of a woman. Their relationship, close as it was, had never entered that dimension. It was strange, she thought, even amusing, how shy they could both become at the very mention of the subject, and Triad knew it came up often enough in the hothouse atmosphere of the saishan.
She turned back to the railing, looking down through the screen, to give him time to regain his composure. Thinking about what he'd said though, she found herself feeling a certain amusement after all. She was already working out how and when to tell Brandin about this.
"My friend," she said, "you may know me well, but in exactly the same way and for many of the same reasons I know Brandin very well."
She glanced back at her castrate. "He is older than you, Scelto, he is almost sixty-five, and for reasons I don't