"You found him," Sendari said, as he met the blue eyes of his young wife. It was a compliment.

She was not to be put off so easily, however. "Widan Sendari," she began, stopping as he lifted a hand.

"Come, Fiona. Join me. It has been many days since I have had the pleasure of your company."

"As you wish, Widan," she replied. Her movement was a study in stilted grace, but her face was lovely. She crossed the silk mats like an angry cat, stopping at last to kneel in the cushions by his feet, her back quite stiff.

He laughed, his eyes shining with genuine pleasure. Touching her bare shoulders with the flat of palms, he stroked her skin before unwinding the silk sari she wore in one quick and easy motion. She did not respond at all. "You are enough to quell a man's ardor, Fiona," he said.

"Not," she replied coolly, "the Widan Sendari's." She had to lift her chin ever so slightly as his nose and lips traced the underside of her ivory jaw.

Again he laughed-and this she found most infuriating-before he caught her tightly in his arms. Another man might strike her, dismiss her, force her-but not Sendari. No. His answer to her subtle defiance, her cool anger, was always this slightly indulgent amus.e.m.e.nt-the same, kind for kind, as he tendered his concubines' children. One day, one day, she thought, she would like to see him angered.

She was younger than he, and not terribly wise.

And if she chose to withhold the delights of a lady's pleasure, he chose to evoke them; it was an uneven battle from start to finish, for Widan Sendari did not enter into any game that he felt he

might lose.

Later, tangled in his arms, pearls from a broken strand rolling into the silken folds beneath her back, she was allowed to speak her mind. It was always this way with Sendari; the act of loving gentled him for moments at a time, and if one knew how, one could work around him then.

"It is the Serra Diora Maria di'Marano," she said softly, her chin against his chest. She felt his muscles stiffen beneath her face, and she stiffened in return.

"What of her?"

"You have placed her in the harem, Sendari."

Silence. Then his hands tickling the small of her back-and exposing it to the air. "So I have."

"She is not a concubine."

"1 believe I'm aware of that, Fiona."

"She is not your wife."

He laughed. She hated it. "No, she is certainly not my wife. And if she were not my daughter, I swear by the Lady's darkest night that I would not take her if she were offered to me." The laughter faded; she felt his beard brush her hair. "She is my child," he said quietly.

Children did belong in the harem of a powerful man; children, wives, and concubines. Fiona was very glad that he could not see her expression before she replied. "She is no child. Her place is not among us."

"Oh. And is it you, Serra, who will decide the place of my kin?"

She felt the edge in his voice as keenly as if it were a dagger held far enough from the skin that it

did not draw blood-but barely. "Sendari, please." Her voice was much meeker. "They do not listen to me while she is present. She is used to the harem of-"

"He is dead. It is finished. She has lost much," he added quietly.

"And I? Am I to be seraf to her desire?" In spite of herself, she pulled back from the comfort of

his chest and his chin. The breeze was cool; hours had pa.s.sed, and the serafs had left the sliders open.

"No," he replied, catching her by either arm. "You will be seraf to mine." He pulled her close again.

Serra Fiona was not to be moved.

"Very well. I will tell you something, but if I hear it repeated in any quarter of my house, I will have your lovely tongue removed." He caught her chin and forced her face up; her blue eyes- striking in their color in this land-met his dark ones, and she shivered slightly. "I am fond of you, Fiona, or I would not have taken you to wife. I am pleased with your talent and your wisdom in quelling the disputes among my women and their children."

She nodded, too nervous to be flattered.

"Serra Diora will no longer be part of the harem after the Festival of the Sun."

There was silence as she counted: Three weeks and two days. "Will you-will you send her away?"

"Women," he said, all anger gone from his voice. "She is not your rival, Fiona. But no. I will not send her away. She will be the Flower of the Dominion, and she will blossom at the Festival of the Sun. The Lord of the Festival will be the man who claims her, who plucks her from the Tor Leonne and takes her back to his Terrean."

"If I were General Alesso, I would keep her."

At that, his smile dimmed and cooled. "Then let us be glad that you are not Alesso. Come; I am not yet tired, and you are the reward for years of planning. I will enjoy you while I am able."

But she held back until he threw up his arms in mock frustration. "Very well! Very well! I will call Serra Teresa to the Tor Leonne."

"And Serra Diora?"

"Can live with her, under Adano's auspices. It will bring peace to an old man's house. Are you well-satisfied, my little cat?"

He was rewarded by the radiant confidence of the smile she showed him only when she was happy. It was odd, with Serra Fiona. In her happiness, she was most vulnerable.

And he, too, was pleased; Serra Teresa was already on the road from Mancorvo.

"I look forward to the Festival," Fiona said, as she curled into his chest, "especially this year. There has been no music, no dancing, no poetry; there has been no color since the-since the night. The Tyr'agnati will bring it with them. They will be coming?"

"Can they refuse? It fa the Festival."

"But there is no Tyr."

He kissed her fiercely. "Yes. But there will be, by Festival's end; and he will be a stronger Tyr than we have had for centuries."

Serra Teresa di'Marano came to the Tor Leonne with serafs enough to beggar a Tyr'agnate. She rode on a palanquin carried by cerdan who wore the Marano-marks, and although the palanquin's curtains were properly drawn against the eyes of the commoners who toiled in the streets of the Tor Leonne, there was something in their shimmering fabric, their jewel- and pearl-embroidered raw silk, that was unseemly for an unmarried woman.

It was said that Serra Teresa was a woman of cunning and intelligence-and as such, she was far too valuable to the Marano clan to be married out. It was said that there were offers for her hand from no less a clan than Leonne itself, and whispered further that it was on behalf of the Tyr'agar that those offers had been made. It was even said that the loneliness, the lack of male companionship, had driven her to the shadow of the Lady-but he who carried that rumor carried it at his own peril. The Marano clan was not without power.

And she was at the heart of the Marano clan, although she held no t.i.tle.

Merchants stopped a moment in the street, if they were coa.r.s.e enough, to gape at the procession- but while the unadorned circle upon the palanquin's height declared her to be a woman traveling without her lord, no one was bold enough to usurp the right of pa.s.sage from her train, although it was within their right to do so. Law was theory in the Tor Leonne; power ruled.

Up the winding road the cerdan walked, bending under the weight of the palanquin with an easy grace and a certainty of motion that spoke of long years of practice. The serafs, with their many chests and bags, toiled up the slopes at a respectful distance, and behind them came the riders.

They were only three, but even a witless child could see that their horses, stallions all, were worth as much as the rest of the procession combined. Only the Terrean of Mancorvo produced beasts of such a rich, deep brown, but even for Mancorvans, they were fine-for they came from the field runs of the Tyr'agnate Mareo kai di'Lamberto, and if Lamberto produced poor horses, they did not disgrace themselves by offering them for sale.

Whispers followed the hush, and in them, the name. Marano.

Upon the plateau of the winding road rested the palace of the Tor Leonne, and there was no palace in the whole of the five Terreans that was grander. Gold and copper caught the muted light of cloud-strewn sky and scattered it back through the boughs of trees laden with delicate blossoms and early fruit. By Tyrian decree, nothing grew, and nothing stood, which was taller than the residence of the Tyr, yet even so, the palace itself seemed deceptively small as the roadway curved toward the Tyrian gates.

The noise of the streets of the Tor below were muted by the hush of wind through leaves, the fall of windblown petals; here, the birds cried in a splendid isolation that was at once wild and contrived.

The Tyr'agar was a man who wanted the heart of nature to unfold in its season before his eyes. Where else could one wander in perfect safety without ever having to look upon another man? Nowhere but here. And it was said that the Tyr availed himself of the wonders of that privacy. Or he had.

The gates were open, as they always were at the morning's height, but there was only one procession that wended its way toward them. Cerdan stood at attention, wearing with pride the uniforms-line for line-that they wore in the service of the clan Leonne. The rising sun glittered at their left b.r.e.a.s.t.s as they came to stand, four abreast, between the ancient columns upon which the open gates were hinged. Beneath that sun, ivory, a blend of linens that fell heavily over red silk.

The cerdan that led the Marano procession stepped forward and bowed; the hems of their robes brushed the smooth, stone way as they held the crescent of their swords ground ward in the supplicant posture.

"Who seeks to pa.s.s?" The oldest man present spoke, his voice deceptively quiet.

"Serra Teresa di'Marano." The Marano cerdan did not rise; they stood upon the soil of the Tyr'agar-the man who ruled at the whim of the Lord-and here, of all places protocol ruled. "For what purpose?"

That Marano cerdan who had answered first glanced awkwardly over his shoulder, as if seeking counsel. At last, his voice muted, he said, "To visit the court of the Tyr'agar." It was not ritual. But what ritual was left when the Tyr'agar's clan no longer existed?

The older cerdan did not betray emotion; he was the perfect vessel for a Tyr's will. "Who will bear responsibility for her pa.s.sage?"

"Widan Sendari par di'Marano."

The older man bowed deeply and stepped to one side.

"Pa.s.s."

They met in the Pavilion of the Dawn.

Sera Diora left her attendants and the men that guarded her, and although she moved gracefully, even regally, with no sign of undue haste, she reached the side of her aunt in a moment.

She wore azure, and Serra Teresa silver and while, and as they embraced briefly, the colors of their two silk saris blended together in a perfect harmony that the Tor Leonne had not seen for almost ten days. Attendants and guards studiously turned their glances aside, but not before seeing the most beautiful woman in the world show a brief glimpse of the child she might once have been to the open skies.

Serra Teresa took her brother's daughter gently aside as the serafs made haste to arrange the firm mats and colored pillows that they were to sit among.

"Ramdan," she said quietly. "Bring the samisen." The seraf so addressed was the oldest of all men present; his hair was a white crown with hints of the gray that might once have been black. But his eyes were clear, and his back unbent; he moved slowly but as if age were a mantle of dignity, not a weakness.

"Sendari says that you will be my companion," the Serra told her niece, "until the Festival of the Sun."

Diora sat, folding her legs delicately beneath her and taking great care to spread the folds of the sari so that it might remain free of wrinkles. She nodded, wordless, and Serra Teresa rewarded her with a smile.

Ramdan placed the long, slender samisen into his Serra's hands and stepped aside, falling away like a shadow from the brilliance of the two women who sat in perfect repose on this warm summer day. Serra Teresa gazed a moment at the strings and then touched them gently, pulling a quiver, but not a full note, from the movement.

"Do you still play?" she asked her niece. They both knew the answer, but Diora smiled. "Yes, Ona Teresa."

"And would you play for me? The day has been quite long, and the week harsh, and I do not recall another's touch as sure as yours, or another's voice as pleasing."

Diora's blush was a pleasant fan of color. She was, in all things, Serra Teresa's most apt pupil. "Ser Artana sends his regards to his sister."

"And his sister," Diora replied quite coolly, "returns his regards." Her fingers brushed the strings beneath her hands.

"Na'dio," Serra Teresa said, using a voice that only her niece might hear, "you think that things will never change between you. But he is your family, and you are both young."

"Yes, Ona Teresa," Diora replied dutifully. But there was an edge to the words, fine and sharp, that only those with great familiarity might note. As if to acknowledge this, Diora spoke again. "He did not come to the Tor Leonne with my father."

"No."

"I should have known, then." Her voice was soft and pleasant, her face, quiet and placid. "How could the Widan Sendari travel to the Tor Leonne for the Festival of the Sun without his kai- unless he thought the risk to the family too great?"

"Diora."

Silence. The samisen answered for her.

But Serra Teresa frowned as she watched her niece's fingers in their play across the strings. "Diora, what do you wear?"

Music. The refrain to a hymn of a clan long dead in the Tyr'agnate wars.

"Diora." The word, sharper now, where Serra Teresa was never publicly sharp.

The Tyr'agnate wars replied; the clouds parted; the breeze carried the warmth of the summer day, the smell of lilac.

"Diora."

"Rings," the younger woman whispered, fighting the compulsion without any sign of the struggle. "Three."

Serra Teresa stared at her brother's daughter for a long moment, and then she smiled, but the smile was laden with sorrow. "You are your mother's daughter," she said softly. "Those rings- they are oath rings."

The strings stilled as Diora laid shaking hands against them. She turned to her aunt, her eyes unblinking, her face still delicately smooth in its lack of anger, its lack of sorrow.

Training, Serra Teresa thought, warred often with youth.

"They are oath rings," the younger woman said, straightening her shoulders and lifting her chin before she gave with dignity the information she knew Serra Teresa could compel. She touched the first ring, a plain band with intricate knotwork etched across its length. "This is Faida's." The next, silver, where the first had been gold, caught light as she lifted it; it was free of design, but set into the band, where they might not catch at cloth and hair, were two small stones, one sapphire and one night-heart. "This is Deirdre's." And the last, jade, a tiny ring with no marking and no stone. "This is Ruatha's."

"And the matching rings?"