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The great hall of Scratha Fortress echoed with the chatter and movement of the guests and servants. A caravan had arrived, to Idisio's surprise, with a large load of supplies; but as Cafad hadn't been at all startled, Idisio decided that the caravan had been part of the “arrangements” the desert lord made during their travels.

Even so, the feast had been drawn mainly from the supplies of the visitors rather than those of Scratha Fortress, and the dining-hall servants wore the colors and symbols of ten different families, not one; but the gathering turned out no less festive for those small details.

Idisio sat, rather uncomfortably, by Lord Scratha's left hand. He hadn't expected to be placed at the seat of highest honor. Gria smiled at him across the table, seeming perfectly content with her secondary status at the desert lord's right hand, and went on talking to Riss, who had been seated beside her.

Riss, for her part, was happier than Idisio could ever recall seeing her before. Her pale hair had been expertly braided into a ring on top of her head; Idisio had always thought that style silly, but somehow it looked just right on her. Someone had given her a dress of light blue fabric that almost slithered across the curves of her body when she moved.

Several servants had turned to stare already, and Idisio watched, out of the corner of one eye, the occasional quiet argument over who brought Riss her dishes and refilled her water cup.

Idisio couldn't help remembering the sweaty, irritable stable hand she'd been not so long ago, and shook his head at the contrast between then and now. He found himself wishing she'd remained that hard-edged person. It would have been easier to leave her behind.

Lady Azaniari—she refused to allow anyone to call her
Lord
—patted his hand. “You seem unhappy about something,” she said.
He searched hastily for a reason that wouldn't be too humiliating to admit. “You should be sitting here. Not me.”
“I had to twist her arm,” Cafad said, “to get her that close. And she only agreed because I said she could sit next to you.”
“That's not polite, Cafad,” Azni chided him, leaning forward slightly to look around Idisio at the desert lord. “Idisio wasn't speaking to you.”
“Would you have said anything different?”
“No,” she said, and laughed. “Not really.”
He grinned and turned his attention to the girls at his right. Idisio watched as the tall man deftly slid into their conversation, pulled their attention away from chattering only to each other, and maneuvered them into talking to people further down the table.
“Amazing,” he said under his breath.
“It's in his blood,” Azni said quietly, her expression more pensive now. “You should have met the previous Lord Scratha; the man could make a stick agree to jump into fire—and the fire not to burn it.”
“Lord Scratha—this one, I mean—didn't show any of that when I first met him,” Idisio said.
“Call him Cafad,” Azni advised. “You've certainly earned the right, even in most public situations. And I certainly won't be offended by it.” She paused, seeming lost in thought for a moment, then went on, “But you're right: he's been a very bitter, angry man for a long time.” She dropped her voice, leaning in closer to Idisio. “It's difficult to be charming when you've been hurt as badly as he has. I think Nissa was the first person who ever really touched his heart.”
“I'm surprised she's not here,” he murmured with a glance down to the end of the table, where Lord Rowe of Sessin Family sat across from Lord Evkit. Not places of honor, exactly, but at least they both sat at the main table. Neither seemed displeased, although Idisio noted that Lord Evkit tended to avoid looking in Cafad's direction.
“A Conclave isn't the place to sort that out,” she told him. “It's enough that he's allowed a Sessin onto the grounds. More would be pushing tolerance right now. And Gria has to come first, in any case.”
Idisio watched the girls across from him for a few moments, covering his silence with several bites of roast vegetables. Cafad had managed to start Riss talking to others and pulled Gria's attention to himself; he mostly listened, his dark eyes intent on her thin face as she rattled on. Now and again, when she gestured, Idisio could see the thick bandages on her wrists, mostly hidden beneath the long, dark sleeves of her dress.
“She'll always have the scars,” Lady Azaniari said very quietly. “I'm surprised she's even on her feet. She must be in tremendous pain; the cuffs only came off hours ago.”
Gria's eyes did have a vaguely fevered sparkle to them, now that Idisio looked for it, and her face shaded towards ash-pale at times. A quick glance around showed no sign of Sela.
“She's Scratha, all right,” Azni sighed. “She's got that stubborn blood. Well, at least he's keeping an eye on her. He won't let her faint at the table.”
Servants began clearing away dinner plates. One reached for Riss's plate; she thanked him with a bright smile. The servant beamed, then almost dropped the dish as he hastily retreated. She hardly seemed to notice, turning her attention back to her interrupted conversation.
“Riss will make a good ambassador,” Azni said, following his gaze. “I'll have my hands full training her, but she'll do well in the end.”
“You're staying?”
She nodded, her gaze still on Riss. “Cafad asked me to train Riss. And I'll be setting up a proper staff to take care of the place again.” She sighed and looked around the room. “I've missed the desert more than I thought I would.”
“Why did you leave?” Idisio asked, unable to resist. “I mean, you're a desert lord. If you don't mind saying.”
Servers threaded around the tables, distributing small plates of fruit. Azni smiled at her server and thanked him in a low voice; he grinned, winked, and slid an extra piece of fruit onto her plate.
Azni waited until the servers had moved further down the table before answering Idisio's question.
“I was very young when I decided to become a desert lord,” she said finally. “I chose that path for a bad reason: a broken heart.”
Her gaze misted. Idisio began to wish he hadn't asked; he suspected this tale would turn out maudlin or soppy.
“I was very young,” she repeated, and sighed. “I came up second on a random draw for the trials that year; the first supplicant. . . . didn't make it.” She looked down at the fruit on her plate, nudging it absently with one finger. “He was the boy I'd been in love with.”
Idisio stared at his plate, ashamed of his initial, condescending expectations. Under the haze of embarrassment, the fruit didn't look nearly as appetizing as it had a moment ago.
“I'm sorry,” he said.
“Oh, it was a lifetime ago,” Azni said. She shook her head, long metal earrings chinkling, and offered him a wry smile. “A lifetime, and yesterday. I fell in love again, of course, with Lord Regav Darden. We were both young, and idealistic, and decided to heal the breach between the northlands and the southlands. It didn't work very well.”
She sighed. “We probably made everything worse, in fact, with our attempts to force order onto chaos. Regav died. . . .” She shook her head, her gaze distant again. “I couldn't stand being around the memories, so I moved north, hoping to gain some peace. That didn't work very well, either, but I'm not as angry as I used to be. I see my own mistakes now.”
“It's hard to believe you were ever angry,” Idisio said.
She smiled and picked up a piece of melon. “Cafad's been a welcome distraction from my brooding over the past few years. Mm, this is good.”
Idisio allowed himself to be steered into a discussion of the food and from there into general talk of trade. That subject quickly involved people further down the table, and he didn't have much to contribute at that point, so he mostly watched Riss. She had quieted down and seemed to be doing more listening than talking now. Every so often she glanced up and met his eyes for a moment, adding a smile that caught his breath.
Servants cleared away the fruit plates and distributed small cups filled with a black liquid. The smell had an unfamiliar, acrid tang; Idisio stared at his cup doubtfully, then glanced to Azni for guidance. She lifted her cup, grinned at him merrily, and drained it in one gulp.
Idisio raised his cup; Cafad's strong fingers closed around his wrist.
“You've never had desert coffee before, have you?”
“No,” Idisio admitted.
“I'd rather not have Riss and Gria covered in spray. Take a sip first.”
Idisio glanced at the two girls, who watched him with open amusement and displayed their empty cups.
“Trust me,” Cafad said, and released his grip. “Slow sip.”
Idisio sipped cautiously. The bitter, hot liquid tasted like a mouthful of liquid ash.
Cafad reached to a nearby bowl of suka crystals and dumped a large spoonful into the small cup. The liquid inside almost overflowed at the addition.
“Stir that for a moment,” Cafad said, “and try it again.”
Now the coffee tasted like sweet liquid ash. Idisio shook his head and set the small cup aside. “I'm sorry,” he said, “I think I'll pass.”
Cafad shook his head, grinning. “You can't. It's traditional courtesy. Everyone has to drink the whole cup. Go on, toss it down.”
Idisio shut his eyes and gulped the two mouthfuls in the cup. It took all his willpower to keep his mouth shut instead of spitting the harsh liquid back out.
A cheer went up, and several people started banging their cups on the table.
“What's going on now?” Idisio muttered to Azni. She rapped the table sharply with her cup and grinned at him.
“Tradition,” she said, so he followed suit, a bit uncomfortable with the clamor.
Servants returned and began filling cups again. He tried to pull his away; Azni trapped his hand.
“Oh, no,” she said, still grinning like a maniac. “You hit the table with your cup! That means you want more.”
“Oh, gods, no,” he said, his eyes widening. “One was plenty!”
“Well, it's full now,” she said as the servant moved away, “so you have to drink it. It's rude to refuse a full cup.”
By one strategy or another, his cup was refilled four more times. Each time it tasted less bitter, and seemed to pick up a new flavor. The second cup tasted of oranges, the third like roasted nuts. The fourth had a distinctly minty taste, and the fifth reminded him of berries.
“This issn' so bad,” Idisio said finally, and stared as Cafad let out a roar of laughter.
“Whazzo funny?” He couldn't understand why he'd slurred such a simple sentence:
slurring a simple sentence
, he thought, and let out a braying snort of laughter at the way the words tangled together in his mind.
“It's a drinking contest. Each cup has more hard liquor and less coffee,” Azni said in his ear. “I expect you'll be hitting the floor soon.”
“Huh?” He began to form the protest:
why would I hit the floor, it hasn't done anything to me
; realized he couldn't even slur such a complicated sentence right now; and slid out of his chair with another loud, snorting laugh at his own incompetence. A moment after that, the world went sharply away.
Just before everything blacked out completely, he thought he heard a tiny voice sigh,
Humans
.

“That was mean,” Idisio moaned the next day, when the headache had faded enough to allow him to open his eyes and glare accusingly.
Riss draped a cool cloth over his face, ruining the effect. She didn't say anything, but she'd been smiling before the cloth blocked his vision.
“Why didn't you say anything?” he demanded, pushing the damp towel away.
She pulled it back into place. “I thought you knew the game. Gods, I grew up with it. We used strong tea, not coffee, but the notion's the same. I figured you understood what they were doing.”
“I didn't,” he said.
“Well, now you do,” she said prosaically. “You've got a surprising tolerance, you know. By the time you went down there were only three other people left: Lord Alyea, Lord Evkit, and Lord Irrio.”
“Who won?”
“Lord Alyea, actually. At seven cups, Lord Evkit was the last challenger. He went down and she was still smiling. I think Deiq was keeping her in a straight line on their way out, though.”
“Surprised Deiq didn't win,” Idisio muttered.
“Deiq wasn't drinking,” she told him. “Neither was Lord Scratha, past the first two cups.”
“Of course he was,” Idisio said, and pushed the cloth away. He squinted at her. “I saw him!”
“He faked it, to keep you going,” Riss said patiently. “You weren't seeing too clearly past the third cup, anyway.”
He shut his eyes and groaned as the headache returned.
“You need to rest. Conclave starts at nightfall, and you're expected to attend. It's just past dawn now. Cafad said to make you spend most of today in bed.” Riss took the cloth; the sound of her dunking it in a nearby bucket of water crackled in his hyper-sensitive ears. She wrung it out and draped the cool towel over his face again.
“If it's any consolation, I think you earned some respect, lasting through five cups.”
“It's not.”
“I didn't really think it would be.”

Alyea shrugged and took another sip of hot coffee. Unlike the harsh, black brew from the night before, this had been sweetened and milk of some sort added, making this cup much more palatable than the afterdinner version. She tried not to think about where the milk had come from, given the distinct lack of cows anywhere nearby and the goats penned outside the fortress.

Alyea knew southerners considered goat milk an everyday staple, but her mother had pronounced it “filthy” and refused to allow it into her household. Alyea had never questioned that belief before, and the notion of drinking it roiled her stomach.

Then again, my stomach upset might come from last night
, she admitted to herself, and took another sip of coffee.
“A drinking contest!”
She gave up trying to ignore him. “It worked.”
Deiq shook his head and took another turn around the room, which began to seem far too small to contain his nervous energy. “It's my own fault. I shouldn't have told you to be creative. And gods, Scratha's a lunatic, getting Idisio drunk! At least that sort of madness I expect from humans. But
you
—I didn't think you'd try to outdrink Lord Evkit!”
“Stop fussing so much,” she said, and shut her eyes. The mug felt warm against her palms; she turned it gently, the rough clay scratching lightly across her skin. “Like I said, it worked. I don't even have a hangover.”
Which wasn't strictly true; a nasty, tingly pain shot temple-to-temple every so often, and she really wished he'd lower his voice. But compared to what she'd seen of other people's day-afters, the headache hardly qualified as a hangover.
She idly wondered if Idisio had woken in better—or worse—shape.
“Did you expect to win?” Deiq demanded.
She opened her eyes and found him standing in front of her, scowling.