It took a moment for Qinnitan to understand. “Jeddin? Of the Leopards?”
“Yes, my dearest, we are invited to see handsome Jeddin. He wishes to speak with you, to hear stories of the old neighborhood. I am going along as chaperone, lucky girl that I am. I do so admire that young man.” “But… am I allowed to meet with any men at all?”
A look of annoyance creased Luian s powdered forehead. “He is not any man, he is chief of the Leopards, chosen by our autarch himself, praise to his name. Besides, I will be with you, child, I told you. If that is not respectable, what is?” But the Favored’s eyes darted briefly to the Tuani slave beside her, and Qinnitan could not help wondering if it was truly all as obvious and ordinary as Luian made it out to be.
When they were both ready, Favored Luian, rigged like a festival ship in a fringed-and-beaded robe, and Qinnitan in a less ostentatious and properly virginal white robe with a hood, different only in quality from something she might have worn in a Hive procession, they set out. Despite her misgivings, Qinnitan could not help being excited: it was the first time in three months she had been outside of the Seclusion’s walls, even if it was only to another part of the great Orchard Palace. Other than Duny, and Qinnitan’s mother, (who had spent most of her visit weeping over their family’s good fortune) this would be her first chance to see anyone from outside. And, needless to say, Jeddin would be the first natural man she had seen since he and his soldiers had brought her here, to this invincible prison of beautiful blossoms, splashing fountains, and cool stone arcades.
The Favored who guarded the Seclusion’s outer gate did not dress a bit like women. They were the largest people Qinnitan had ever seen, a half dozen hulking creatures with ceremonial swords whose flat, curved blades were almost wide enough to use as tea trays. They engaged in a long whispered discussion among themselves before Luian, Qinnitan, and the two silent Tuani servants were at last allowed to pass out of the Seclusion and into the greater palace, but only with one of the guards bringing up the rear of the small procession like an enormous dog guiding a herd of sheep. The little company continued on for a good portion of an hour, through lush but empty gardens and unused corridors and courtyards so opulent that they seemed to have been prepared for some royal princeling who had not yet moved into them.
At last they reached a small but prettily decorated courtyard that rang with the sounds of a fountain. At one edge of court, where the tiles gave way to a pocket garden with paths of pale sand, a muscular, sun-browned young man sat on mounds of cushions beneath a striped awning big enough for a dozen guests. As if he were the groom to Qinnitan s bride, he, too, wore a robe of flowing white. He stood as they approached, hesitated a moment between Qinnitan and Luian, between nominal rank and actual power, and then lowered himself to one knee before the girl.
“Mistress. So kind of you to come.” He rose and turned to Luian. “Respected cousin, you do me honor.” Luian produced a fan from her sleeve and snapped it open with a clack like an eagle taking wing. “Always a pleasure, Captain.”
Jeddin beckoned his visitors to join him beneath the awning, then sent his servant to fetch refreshments. After an appropriate time of small talk with Luian about her health and the health of various important residents of the Seclusion, he turned to Qinnitan.
“Luian says you remember me now.”
She blushed, since many of her chief memories were of him being humiliated by older boys. It was even harder to reconcile that with the present now that she saw him again. The Leopard captain’s muscles moved under his dark skin like those of a real leopard she had once seen in a cage in the Sun’s Progress marketplace, the most fearsome animal she had ever encountered. For all its strength, though, despite its dreadful teeth and claws, that leopard had seemed sad to her and not altogether present, as though it saw not the crowds of people around it but the shadow-splashed woodlands where it had once roamed—saw those places, but knew it could not reach them.
Oddly, she thought she saw something of this in Jeddin s eyes as well, but knew she must simply be romanticizing, muddling this handsome young man with the trapped beast. “Yes Yes, Captain, I do remember you. You knew my brothers.”
“I did.” Like an eminent man asked to recall the pivotal moments of his career, Jeddin began to reminisce at length about the days in Cat’s Eye Street, describing the adventures of a group of young scapegraces—of whom, he felt compelled to admit, he had not been the least mischievous. To hear him speak, he had been one among equals, and none of the miseries she recalled on his behalf had ever truly happened. It was strange, as though he had lived his childhood on the other side of an ornamental screen from the rest of them, making up his own mind what things meant, seeing only what he wished to see Several times Qinnitan had to bite her tongue when the urge to correct him became strong. There was something about Jeddin, the way he talked, that made her feel as though telling him now that even a small part of his memory was faulty would be no different than the way her brothers had sometimes pushed him from behind as he ran, making him go so much faster than his legs could carry him that he stumbled and fell.
The refreshments came, and as the servants poured tea and piled sweetmeats on plates, Qinnitan watched Luian watching Jeddin, which the Favored did with the sort of avidity she usually reserved for things like the rosewa-ter jelly being spooned into her bowl. It seemed unusual, not that Luian should find Jeddin attractive—he was more than that, his body as hard and wonderfully defined as a statue, his face befittingly serious and noble of cast, with nose straight and strong and eyes a surprisingly bright green under the heavy brows—but that someone like Luian, who in all other ways seemed to have settled into a kind of premature, matronly old age, and who, after all, had given up her original organs years ago, should still have such feelings at all.
“Well,” Luian said abruptly, ending a silence. “To think that after so many years we of the old neighborhood should have a reunion here!”
The captain’s emerald eyes now turned to Qinnitan. “You must be very happy, Mistress Of all of us, well as we have done, you have risen highest. A wife of the Golden One himself? He dropped his gaze. “An unmatched honor.”
“Yes, of course.”
“And he is blessed by.” He paused and to her amazement appeared to blush.
“And he, our autarch, is blessed by all the heavens, and especially by his heavenly father Nushash,” said Luian abruptly and loudly.
“Yes, of course. All praise to the Golden One,” said Jeddin. Qinnitan echoed the blessing, but could not help feeling something important had just happened and she had missed it.
“We should go now, Cousin.” Luian waved for the Tuam girls to help her to her feet, which they did, fighting the Favored’s great weight like nomads trying to put up a tent in a high wind. “Thank you for the refreshments and the courtesy of your company.” There was a new tone in Luian’s voice, faintly cold.
Jeddin scrambled to his feet. “Of course, respected cousin. You grace us with your presence.” He bowed to her, then to his other guest. He did it with some grace, but that didn’t surprise Qinnitan, she imagined that even for a soldier, bowing well must be almost as important in the autarch’s court as handling a sword or a gun. “I wish you could stay longer.”
“Propriety forbids it,” said Luian shortly, setting sad for the door with her servants and Qinnitan fluttering in her wake like gulls. The huge Favored guard fell in behind them in the corridor, mute and sleepy-eyed.
“Did I do something wrong, Luian?” Qinnitan asked after they had walked for some distance in silence and were nearing the gate to the Seclusion Luian only waved her hand, whether because of discretion or irritation was hard to say.
When they had left the immense guard behind and were back within the walls, Luian leaned toward her and said, in a harsh whisper that might or might not have been too quiet for the Tuani servants to hear, “You must be careful. And Jeddin must not be a fool.”
“What do you mean? Why are you angry with me?”
Luian frowned. The paint on her lips had begun to smear a little into her face powder, and for the first time she appeared grotesque to Qinnitan and even a little frightening. “I’m not angry with you, although I will remind you that you are no longer a low-caste girl in the alleys behind Feather Cape Row. You have been given great honors, but you hve in a dangerous world.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Oh? You couldn’t see what I could see as clearly as my own hand at the end of my arm? That man is in love
