meej

This is in response to this. It may not make much sense even if you read the preceding.

Doyle had just stopped chortling in what Sabines considered a most offensive and uncalled-for way, when her steward again presented himself before her high table.

Sabines regarded him over steepled fingers. Doyle helpfully pointed out that she was losing her touch. "He's barely flinching at all."

She took a pocketbook out of her sleeve, jotted a quick note to develop a code of handtalk to be able to tell him to shut up, and replaced the small notebook.

"Yes, Godwin."

"Your Sagaciousness, your four o'clock appointment has finished with the gardens and has been sitting in your antechamber -"

She held up a hand. Doyle had already begun laughing.

"The gardens," she repeated. "My four o'clock appointment." The steward stayed prudently silent while she drummed her fingers on the desk's surface. Doyle had no such courtesy, and had he still breath or a body he would have been choking with laughter. Briefly she considered the idea that he had something to do with all of this.

She sighed. It was a measure of the stress she was under that she could even contemplate the possibility of Doyle being able to touch the world, and wasting that ability on pranks before aught else.

"Show him in, then," Sabines said.

Godwin bowed deeply, and exited. A few seconds later, the doors opened again and another someone dressed in red and gold came in.

Sabines stared at her for a few seconds. Then the automatic response of an educator kicked in, and she snapped, "Stop slouching."

Her visitor's expression bore an interesting mixture of indignation and humiliation, but she stopped slouching immediately.

"I don't think even Balta was that tall," Doyle said thoughtfully. "Especially not when she was nine years old."

"She looks more ten or eleven," Sabines said absently, studying her four o'clock appointment, who was staring right back. This was not a young lady with the polished manners of her earlier appointment, but possibly she had a less silly problem.

"All right, young miss," Sabines said, pushing back her chair and standing up. It still did not bring her to eye-level with her appointment. "State your problem." It was probably not, Sabines considered, about a term paper or a research project; not unless they'd greatly lowered the entrance standards.

"My name is Weeshkal Avasar Dhaumradana," the girl said.

"Stop slouching, Weeshkal," Sabines chided.

Weeshkal stood up straight. "I asked my Big Brother Dion for advice and he advised me that he was Not Prepared to offer Any Sort of Opinion on this particular subject, so he asked his brother to bring me to a place that had Answers." She glanced around, and seemed very unimpressed. Sabines looked incredulously at her. This may have had something to do with Weeshkal's change of expression as the girl took in her black and silver robes; she looked more satisfied, and continued.

"My lord is Not A Man who makes Mistakes," Weeshkal said, "but he is going to marry a Lady who is Very Silly and perhaps -" here the little girl's face brightened undeniably - "he should Not marry her at all." Weeshkal actually looked rapturous for a few seconds. "Perhaps Viraj Samvayita could marry her Instead. He would Deserve It Completely."

Sabines sat down and buried her head in her hands.

After a few seconds, she said, muffled, "Would this silly lady have red hair and a very courtly and roundabout way of talking?"

"And she reads too much Questionable Poetry," Weeshkal said. "Dion's brother Orestes has hinted that she writes some as well."

Sabines tried to stifle her imagination at what sort of poetry the Lady Surya would write.

"Look," she said, letting her hands down. "I assume the decision's already been made. Do you trust the person who made the decision?"

Weeshkal looked thunderstruck, and also utterly heartbroken. "yes" she meeped.

"Stop slouching," Sabines ordered, "and go back and see what you can do about the silliness; it's very rarely permanent, but if you have the patience you should be able to get through it without bloodshed, as she's not entirely stupid." She thought of something else. "Your lord probably won't kill her," she said, intending to be reassuring.

The look on Weeshkal's face convinced her that this had not, up until now, been a worry.

"Thank you," Weeshkal said, finally, and dropped a very shallow curtsey, and slouched her way out without anything further.

Before she closed the door, she glanced back in, her eyes flickering over the room, and closed the doors, very gently.

"Well," Sabines began, and then stared at her totem owl.

Linisa was floofing from crown to tail.