Roh glanced at Abas. Abas gave him a trifling smile and held out his hand. Roh took it.

Abas led Roh up the purple carpet to the high table. He passed Wraisau and Driaa sitting at one of the lower tables. Wraisau stood as he passed and slapped his shoulder. Roh jumped, and they all laughed. Servants brought two extra chairs to the dais. Three women – wearing torques, and belts of silver loops – hung back behind the Patron. They held silver basins of water and wine. The feasting was over, so the drinking had begun. The women did not speak, but their kohl-ringed eyes took in Abas and Roh with something more than polite interest. Roh saw calculated study in those gazes, measuring the two dancers for what they were worth.

Roh met their gazes and noticed, with a start, that one of them had green eyes. She was dark-skinned as a Saiduan, yes, but there were the Talamynii eyes. If one measured the death of a people in blood, it was never complete. What the Dhai had eradicated was the Talamynii culture, their memories, their dreams. As Roh gazed at the Patron, he wondered what parts of his own people had been erased when the Saiduan murdered them in droves and exiled them from the continent.

The servants set the chairs just behind those at the Patron’s elbow. Roh gazed long at the sanisi at the high table. The sanisi sitting to the left of the Patron was not as tall as the others, even sitting down. He had a mass of inky, oiled hair knotted back in a braid like a rope. He did not look at Roh or Abas but continued to talk in a low voice to the sanisi at his right, whose beardless face and manner of sitting made her Shao Maralah Daonia, the woman he had watched spar in the courtyard. She had a lined, weathered face that put Roh in mind of the creased leather spines of old books. She looked far older than forty. He saw silver hairs in her mane of black.

The Patron motioned for Abas and Roh to sit. The Patron smelled heavily of aatai liquor and cloves and some sort of lavender oil that made Roh’s eyes water.

“Abas,” the Patron said, gesturing to the imposing sanisi at his right, a tall but very young sanisi who could not have been much past twenty. “You’re familiar with my eldest son, Shas Chaigaan Taar?”

“I am,” Abas said, inclining his head to Chaigaan. Chaigaan had the same build and broad cheekbones as his father. Roh had heard all but seven of the Patron’s sons were dead at the hands of the invaders. He wondered why this one was spared. Because he was a sanisi?

“You did not choose the prettiest of the dancers this year, Abas,” Chaigaan said. “I always thought Mhor the prettiest.”

“No,” Abas said, “I chose the best.”