He sat at the other end of the table.

“Do you yet know how long your leave is?” Anavha asked.

“A week. Nine days. We will have visitors for some of that, though. I have a long assignment we must prepare for.”

“A campaign?”

“Nothing so glorious. A personal favor for the Empress. I’m not sure how long it will be. Hasn’t Daolyn kept you busy in the greenhouse?”

“She has kept me at that well enough, and no doubt the greenhouse is enough for Daolyn in her evenings, but I hoped perhaps you would be willing, should you be gone for such a long campaign, to perhaps furnish me with some reading, perhaps?”

Zezili must have shown her disapproval in her face, because he interrupted before she could dissent, hurried on. “Just the daily papers from Daorian. I know your feeling about books, and Daolyn feels that way as well, but surely, what harm is there in papers? Just some news from outside? There was a silk merchant through here last week, she–”

“I regret that we have had no children,” Zezili said. A sore subject indeed, in any company. “I have heard that a man assisting in the raising of children often finds some fulfillment from it, but I’m here to take life in Rhea’s name, not give it.”

“You should just dedicate your body to her as well, then,” Anavha said. A bit too cutting for Zezili’s taste.

Zezili’s anger stirred. “You would like that, wouldn’t you?” she said. “Having a sexless woman for a wife? Yes, you’d like taking solace in none but your own body. Because that’s all I would allow you. My sisters have no use for you. Who will touch you then? Or will you content yourself to be a mad little thing, running after dajian effeminates?”

She saw Anavha clenching his fists, saw the anger in him, and saw it dissipate into tears. Rhea only allowed him tears.

“You don’t let me go anywhere,” he cried. “I can’t see anyone. These dajians, they don’t even speak proper Dorinah.”

Sometimes, Zezili wished she could allow him to shove a sword into a dajian. It was the best way she had found to silence sorrow.

She stood and squatted next to his little quaking form, brushed the hair back from his cheek. “Shush now, shush,” she said, and wondered what sort of mother she would have been if she’d had to deal with children. She would have done what other women did, of course – farm them out to the dajians and get on with her work.