"I've seen it before," Eiah said.

Parit stopped. His hands took a pose of query. Eiah sighed and leaned against one of the high stools.

"Desire," Eiah said. "That's all. Want something that you can't have badly enough, and the longing becomes a disease."

Her fellow physician and onetime lover paused for a moment, considering Eiah's words, then looked down and continued his cleaning.

"I suppose we should have said something," he said.

"There's nothing to say," Eiah said. "They're happy now, and they'll be sad later. What good would it do us to hurry that?"

Parit gave the half-smile she'd known on him years before, but didn't look up to meet her gaze.

"There is something to be said in favor of truth," he said.

"And there's something to be said for letting her keep her husband for another few weeks," Eiah said.

"You don't know that he'll turn her out," he said.

Eiah took a pose that accepted correction. They both knew it was a gentle sarcasm. Parit chuckled and poured a last rinse over the slate table: the rush of the water like a fountain trailed off to small, sharp drips that reminded Eiah of wet leaves at the end of a storm. Parit pulled out a stool and sat, his hands clasped in his lap. Eiah felt a sudden awkwardness that hadn't been there before. She was always better when she could inhabit her role. If Parit had been bleeding from the neck, she would have been sure of herself. That he was only looking at her made her aware of the sharpness of her face, the gray in her hair that she'd had since her eighteenth summer, and the emptiness of the house. She took a formal pose that offered gratitude. Perhaps a degree more formal than was needed.

"Thank you for sending for me," Eiah said. "It's late, and I should be getting back."

"To the palaces," he said. There was warmth and humor in his voice. There always had been. "You could also stay here."