The light was good for drawing. He had prepared his examining space with an artist’s care: first he’d arranged an apparatus of mirrored dishes and whale-oil lights around her, then soaped and rinsed his hands, donned thin membranous gloves, and stared into a candle-flame for ten seconds while breathing smoothly. He took all his notes in angular shorthand, writing with a sterile stylus on thick soft white paper.

“Your wound.” He tapped his temple. “Let’s talk about it. You were struck on the right side? And it’s also your right side that’s blind?”

“Yes.”

“That’s very unusual!” His enthusiasm was boyish, and admittedly charming; he even rose up a bit as he spoke. “You see, we can sometimes induce hemineglect by insulting the tissue of the brain, but it almost always occurs on the contralateral side of the body—that is, the side opposite the wound. And almost always the blindness is to the left. But your wound is ipsilateral, and also on the right.…”

She was irritated that he seemed to have no bad habits: he didn’t chew his nails, bite his lips, curl his hair, or slouch.

“Well,” he said, softly, “a very unusual wound. Let’s proceed with the body of the test, then. Iscend! Iscend, come in here, please!”

A terror entered Baru’s throne room.

Later Baru would (through guilty indulgence of gaze and imagination) pare Iscend down into more specific strengths and marvels, so as to quantify, and hopefully resist, her forbidding and devastating effect. But in that moment Iscend Comprine entered the room like one long golden brushstroke, like a swimmer stretching in the sun.

She was Clarified, born by the Metademe’s breeding plan, conditioned for service. Baru knew it instantly. She moved with a graceful inevitability as if falling into her own future. She was shorter than Baru, and slimmer, but not less present. Over the garment of her body she wore a black ankle-length sherwani coat with an interior pattern of striking green and blue diamonds, unbuttoned from the waist down and split for agility: she had the delicate athletic power of a pinstep dancer. Tain Hu would have sneered at Iscend, of course, Hu never gave a shit for anyone who walked like a performance. But there was a certain, ah, fetishistic interest in a woman whose every movement had been choreographed—

No! Look at the woman’s face, her face alone. Fix it in your memory: she is a person. Cheekbones like a mountain fox, prominent and deeply angled. Eyes as level as a calm sea, medial-folded amber marvels: what the poets called honest eyes, for their equanimity.

Baru would never forgive herself if she took advantage of a Clarified woman. They were slaves.

“Mister Torrinde!” Iscend shook his hand. “How can I help?”

“We’ll be proceeding with the attribution test now. Is your memory house calibrated?”

“Yes, your Excellence, my house is open.”

“Excellent. Let’s undress, then.”