ng, "She is far too unintelligent to divert him and too young to relax him as Solores does. I'm glad of your information though, I think we can use it. Tell me, is Tesios growing weary tending her? Should I speak to Vencel about assigning someone younger? Or perhaps more than one?"
She made him smile, even as he flushed again. It always seemed to go this way. If she could make them smile or laugh it would brush away the clouds like a wind, a springtime or an autumn wind, leaving behind the high clear blue of the sky.
Dianora wished, with an aching heart, that she'd known how to do that eighteen years ago. For her mother and her brother. For both of them so long ago. No laughter then. No laughter anywhere, and the blue skies a mockery, looking down upon ruin.
Vencel, more awesomely obese every time she saw him, approved Solores's gown, Nesaia's, Chylmoene's, and then her own. Only the four of them, experienced enough to know how to cope with the exigencies of a formal reception, were going down to the Audience Chamber. The envy in the saishan during the past week had been acute enough to produce a scent, Scelto had said wryly more than once. Dianora hadn't noticed; she was used to it.
Vencel's shrewd eyes widened from deep in the manifold creases of his dark face as he studied her. She had the gem on her brow, set in a band of white gold that held back her hair. Sprawled on his couch of pillows, the head of the saishan played with the billowing folds of his elephantine white robe. The sun shining through the arch of a window behind him glinted distractingly from his bald head.
"I do not recall that stone among our treasures," he murmured in his high, disconcerting voice. It was a voice so utterly inconsequential that it might lead one to underestimate the speaker. Which, as a good many people had discovered over the years, was a serious, sometimes a mortal mistake.
"It isn't," Dianora replied cheerfully. "Though after we return this afternoon may I ask you to guard it in my name among the other treasures?"
Scelto's suggestion, that. Vencel could be corrupt and venal about a great many things, but not when it came to the formal aspects of his office. He was too clever for that. Again, a truth some had paid the ultimate price to discover.
He nodded benignly now. "It seems a very fine stone from this distance." Obediently, Dianora stepped nearer and inclined her head graciously to let him see it more clearly. The scent of tainflowers that he always wore after winter's end enveloped her. It was too sweet, but not unpleasant.のの文の檔の共の享の與の在の線の閱の讀の
She had feared Vencel once, a fear mixed of physical revulsion at his grossness and rumors of the things he liked to do with the younger castrates and some of the women who were in the saishan for purely political reasons, with no hope of ever seeing the outside world or the west wing of the palace and Brandin's chambers. Long ago though she and the saishan head had reached their understanding. Solores had the same unspoken pact with Vencel, and out of the delicate balance achieved thereby the three of them controlled, as best they could, their enclosed, over-intense, incense-laden world of idle, frustrated women, and half-men.
With a surprisingly delicate finger Vencel touched the gem on her brow. He smiled. "A good stone," he said again, this time in judgment. His breath was fragrant. "I must talk to Scelto about it. I know about such things, you see. Vairstones come from the north, you see. From my own land. They are mined in Khardhun. For years and years I used to play with them as trinkets, a monarch's toys. In the days when I was more than I am now. For as you know, I have been a King in Khardhun."
Dianora nodded gravely. For this too was a part of the unspoken terms of her relationship with Vencel. That however many times he might speak this wild fabrication of a lie, and he said it many times a day, in one variant or another, she was to nod knowingly, reflectively, as if pondering the message