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“Your little problem was delivered to Lady Sabiyana Seraysra,” Nicano says with a glimmer in his eye, his gaze repeatedly straying to Mer’s. “And lucky for you, we happen to know she’ll be with the Medericos this evening.”

“How exactly is it that you know,” Mer responds gruffly, not quite managing to summon the questioning tones necessary for the conversation.

He’s still struggling a bit through the physical effects of being so close to Lilari.

Of toeing right up to his vows and lingering there, suspended on the tepid safety that is the distance between pretense and meaning.

The difference between breaking and broken, at least by technical constraints.

“Between the two of us, Dometico, I think you understand the sorts of questions that should and shouldn’t be asked,” is Nicano’s reply before he saunters out the door. He’s put on ample bravado, probably for Lilari’s benefit, which is banal enough to Mer’s sensibilities to offer him space to focus.

Certainly more so than…other things, like the feel of a satin bodice, or being flush against that door.

“What are you writing?”

Lilari interrupts Mer’s train of thought then, which is best, as the spell he’s crafting might very well go awry if he thinks any harder about the thing he’s trying to avoid thinking about.

“What?” he asks.

“What’s the Imalian for?” she repeats, frowning down at what must be the sixteenth protective spell Mer’s written out.

He doesn’t want to be caught at knifepoint a second time, so the words for ‘explosion’ and ‘armor’ seem equally relevant, under the circumstances.

Lilari holds a blank slip of parchment in her hand, contemplating it.

“They’re spells,” Mer begins to explain, “you know, given all the mortal peril—”

“No, I mean – why Imalian?” she corrects him, and Mer looks blankly at her. “If you wrote them in Eristo’ah,” she clarifies, “would it not work?”

It’s been a long time since anyone around Mer has referred to his native language by its name. He has to fight the urge to look over his shoulder, however pointless that would be. “I was taught this way.”

“Well, yes, understood,” Lilari presses him, her presence a veritable chokehold on his ability to process thought. She has bathed, and smells of flowers and the sultry soddenness of freshly wet earth. “But haven’t you ever—?”

“I can’t write in Eristo’ah.” Mer feels embarrassed about admitting this, even though it’s not his doing. He was an orphan. And it’s illegal.

Lilari laughs. “But surely—”

Then she sees his face and stops laughing.

“How did you…?” She seems unsure what question to ask, specifically.

“There’s an exam for magical proficiency,” is what Mer says, because he doesn’t know how to answer the real question. “I wasn’t supposed to sit for it, obviously, but I had a patron.”

“Who?”

He winces. But what does he have to be ashamed of? It’s not as if he had a choice about who’d noticed him rather than leaving him to starve. “Adelion.”

He feels rather than hears Lilari suck in a sharp, critical breath. “Oh,” she says, and thankfully this line of questioning is over.

They’ve both succeeded, in the absence of the other, to the extent of their respective limitations. Lilari married a rich Imalian noble, positioning her to marry another. And if that isn’t power or freedom, it’s at least luxury, which is better than many other fates.

Mer had the equivalent happen to him. As the new patron of the decaying orphanage in which Mer lived, Governor Adelion paid for Mer to sit the scribal exams, and then assigned him to Moromaso for the duration of his noble service.

What did Adelion see in Mer that no one else would or could?

In the end, it didn’t matter. Mer spent a great deal of time around Adelion, which meant being grateful, despite never needing to ask Lilari why she’d run from him at the start.

But of course, Lilari heard the name Adelion as if Mer had spelled out I’m a traitor in calligraphic script, and why shouldn’t she interpret him however she likes?

It doesn’t matter what she thinks. They’ll hardly speak after tomorrow.

He’ll get back this stolen thing for her and then he’ll write the spells to warm her bath until he’s summoned to the Brotherhood, which had better be fucking soon.

The ride north from Setain is not very long, so Mer doesn’t have to think too arduously about the shape of Lilari’s waist below his fingers.

He doesn’t have to think about the way her breath changes when his chest meets the line of her spine.

He doesn’t have to think about the party they’re about to attend, which Nicano Asco is none too sparing about.

“You know those rich bastards,” he says in confidence to Mer just before they take their leave. “Everything is ever so cutesy and demure until they get behind closed doors.”

“Meaning?” Mer hazards to ask. He’s grumpy for unknown reasons, having seen Lilari and Nicano try to sneak a private moment, a heartfelt and/or lusty farewell.

But Nicano gives him a light smack on the arse, to which Mer barely withholds a disgruntled “oof.”

“Enjoy the orgy,” Nicano says, and kisses Mer full on the lips before winking at Lilari and sending them on their way.

***

It’s not like Eristoh is, or was ever, perfect.

A preternaturally warlike bunch of clans can’t really be trusted with unified statecraft.

But Imalians are just so hypocritical . There are so many rules, so many varying degrees to the hierarchy, who bows to whom, which titles are appropriate, which mistresses can be acknowledged and which ones nobody speaks of aloud.

They can be terrific fun, though, if you happen to be one of them.

Which Lilari is with limitations, and which Mer thoroughly is not.

Thank the gods he’s so handsome they probably won’t mind, Lilari thinks, assuming they don’t recognize him as Moromaso’s servant.

Which is unlikely. All the Imalians populating the fresh spoils of empire are new to their titles, and eager to prove they rank too high to concern themselves with other people’s staff.

Still, even the most horrid snobs can be occasionally astute.

“Stop fussing,” Lilari says as she adjusts Mer’s borrowed (stolen) clothing, grateful for the occasion of a masked ball and the fact that Nicano has an eye to current fashion.

Imalians are incredibly fussy, especially the men.

Layers and layers of brocade and velvets and silks, all of which are ill-suited for a life in Eristo’ah humidity.

Mer’s underlayers are already saturated with sweat. He keeps pulling at the voluminous tie around his neck, an Imalian symbol of dignity, which is characteristically ostentatious.

“Am I really necessary for this?” Mer asks – tired, Lilari supposes, of the meager stakes of her life and/or death. “And surely there’s no way I can just walk in and claim to be an enemy of empire—”

“They may eat with Adelion, but they fuck with Dometico. They’re gluttons, Mer, and they’re new to their money, and they’re bored.

” Lilari is a little too rough as she secures Mer’s vest, and he releases a withering sigh.

“Relax – it’s a masked ball , Mer. They won’t even be paying attention to you.

You just have to get Sabiyana alone.” The final piece in her carefully laid trap.

“And then what?” prompts Mer, as Lilari snorts a laugh.

“I’m sure you can imagine what.”

She turns away, irritable all over again, though whether with him or herself is unclear.

After all, she’s guilty of just as many betrayals as he is, if not more.

She’s the one who lays with the enemy as a matter of survival.

She hates Adelion and she still sat with him at her late husband’s table.

Surely she will be on her best behavior when Adelion attends her wedding to Moromaso.

So why does she hate this thought so much – the one where Mer bends his studious neck obediently, performing the dutiful Imalian scribe beneath Adelion’s approving gaze?

Because Mer’s smart enough to know why she’s angry, and possibly that’s the worst of it.

She’s had so many handsome idiots and beautiful sycophants over the past decade of her life.

She’s forgotten, for the purposes of survival, that sometimes people who are good and clever and kind still bend the knee to monsters.

It’s unbearable, this awareness of the truth, and frankly, she’s almost thrilled she’s sending him to his death!

She moves with clipped, unsteady anger until Mer reaches out. Not touching her, but the motion pauses her just the same.

She thinks an apology is coming, or worse. She braces herself for whatever it will be. The thing that leads her to forgive him. The thing that means she can want him again, because her anger is already so flimsy as it is.

Instead he says: “I’m a candidate for the Aramisman brotherhood.”

She scoffs: “What, you mean those hooded Imalian creeps?”

Mer mumbles something like assent and Lilari is relieved, overjoyed, to be able to hate him. Delighted to tell herself he has it coming, with the way the universe bends. “What absolute nonsense,” she tells him. “Aren’t those assholes completely celibate?”

Mer meets her eyes and she realizes he is angry.

No, not angry. He’s hurt . She’s insulted him and it’s annoying, the way she feels sorry.

The way she feels anything at all. Doesn’t he know the Aramisman Brotherhood is just another avaricious cult?

Speaking of hypocrites! The Brotherhood claim to be sorcerers, but really, they’re bankers.

They charge for their services and collect interest on the debts.

They’re worse than Imalian nobles, which is saying something.