“But are we not friends, Signum Kol?”
I did not answer.
Something went cold in her gaze then: she had made up her mind about something. She held up a finger and bent it, but the meaning of this gesture was baffling to me.
“You are Iyalet for the money, yes?” she asked.
I said nothing.
“You became a Sublime to support your family,” she said. “To move them farther into the Empire, surely. That’s why so many serve. Yet how many months has it been since you’ve seen them? How long since you’ve gotten a letter from them? Do they even know how you suffer so? What you’ve done? What you’ve become?”
I felt my pulse quicken in my ears. My breath was suddenly hot and quick. I wasn’t sure why, but everything felt chilly and tremulous, like I was suffering a fever.
I glanced at the Sublimes, who still watched me. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. Something was wrong. I wondered if I’d been poisoned, yet I knew I had not tasted of her table.
“There is a path for you,” Fayazi said, “that would allow you to walk home, free and unburdened, with all the fortune to save them. I could show you that path. And you would be free to walk it. But in the moment—right now—are you not owed a respite from all this?”
“A…a respite?” I said. My voice was barely a whisper.
“Yes,” said Fayazi. She smiled. Her face was so sympathetic, so understanding. “You who have suffered indignity after indignity…are you not owed the joys of the Empire, too? And there are joys, Kol. This I know.”
I felt a hot flush in my belly. I was gripping the sides of the table. Sweat was pouring down my temples. Then a throb in my loins, a deep, painful ache, and suddenly I was so aroused it pained me.
I tore my eyes away from Fayazi, ashamed and bewildered.
Then I noticed the shadow on the floor and realized someone stood behind me. I turned to look at them.
It was a girl—or so she seemed to my eyes—watching me with a sad gaze. She was about my age, well-kept and pretty, barefoot with dark eyes and short hair. She wore a silken red scarf about her neck and a red dress hanging from her shoulders; yet it was little more than two sheets of silk cloth, one covering her front and one covering her back, revealing the bare edge of her hip and her breast.
And I desired her. Inexplicably, suddenly, passionately. She was not as beautiful as Fayazi, not so carefully manicured, but there was something in her bearing, her gaze, in her mere presence that made her so alluring to me that I almost felt I might die.
Then I noticed something strange: a swelling at the girl’s armpit—a slight, purple-hued nodule from an alteration.
I looked into her face and saw the same violent tint at the corner of her jawline, just above her scarf.
I then knew what she was: a plaizaier, a court dancer. A being pheromonally altered for the delights of others. Ana had mentioned such a thing to me, but I had never thought I’d meet one in all my life.
My body ached for her. I wanted nothing more than to grab her, to taste her, to take her, to know every fold and bend of her. Yet my teeth bit down on the shootstraw pipe in my mouth, and I swallowed, flooding my throat with the hot tickle of tobacco; and then, as if I was pulling my head free of a spider’s web, I turned back to face Fayazi.
“I just,” I said quietly, “wish to go, ma’am.”
“Does she not please you?” asked Fayazi. “We have others. Male, if you wish.”
I said nothing. The whole of my body seemed to be boiling over with hot blood.
“What a world it is, Signum,” said Fayazi, “where you are forced to change yourself, break yourself, all for a little scrap of money.” She leaned forward once more. The smell of her was intoxicating. “Are you not owed respite from this?”
The shadow of the court dancer hung on my shoulder like a leaden weight.
“There can be no wrongdoing,” Fayazi said, “in an Empire so broken.”
“I just wish to go,” I said again.
Fayazi gestured to the plaizaier, who walked closer to me. I turned my face away.
“You were wrong, you know,” Fayazi said. “I am a friend to many, Dinios Kol. But never have I met someone so deserving of my friendship as you.”
The plaizaier began to use the front of her dress as a fan, raising it and rippling it toward me, washing me in her scent. A strangely sweet musk, I noticed, redolent of oranje-leaf and mulling spice. My heart was racing, and my loins ached so much I wished to scream.
“Have you found something?” demanded Fayazi suddenly. She stood. “Has Dolabra found something?”