"
A curiosity,"
Seteta repeated, the disgust evident in her voice. "Of course."
As Persian continued to speak, though, she felt rage heating within in, and eventually she snapped.
"More fully functioning?" she bit out, twisting on the sofa to face the fae. "He knows three
languages, but none of them are his native tongue: the one he would need most to communicate in the desert. He knows crystal quality, but does he know how to find water that won't poison him? How to hunt and forage, and avoid venomous creatures? How to find an oasis?
"Though he won't have to worry about those for long," she spat. "Every person here now knows his face, and that he's carrying a fortune in coin on his person. As soon as you push him out of the city, he has a target on his back. He won't have to worry about the desert if the bandits get him first!"
She turned away then with a huff as Rheinhard reached out over the bond. The
gargoyle was no longer lounged at her feet, but had sat up, muscles tensed and eyes fixed on Persian, ready to leap if the stone creature felt its mistress was under any actual threat.
I will do my best to find the dragons. The woman I can keep somewhat stable. Nestor has guided me to give her something to keep her from vomiting. Rheinhard noted
. Mild concern came down the bond. What exactly was going on?
Thank you, Seteta answered back as she reached out to soothe the stone lion.
We're not in any danger. I'm just angry. Persian has played with lives for too long.
Hassani will not know what to do with himself, she continued.
Chaceledon and I met him in the gem market the other day. He's convinced that life in Pedeo as a pet is better than any other life he could possibly lead, and I'm concerned that even the idea of freedom will make him... do something reckless.
She didn't look at Persian again as the bidding continued, wholly ignoring him. She was relieved when Chaceledon was able to get a couple more of the Inizae, and she continued to watch over the remaining as they were sent to their fates.
She stood and stretched as Persian and Chaceledon finished their business, the lion doing the same a moment later. She remained silent as they descended the golden staircase, stepping around the two men as they neared the stage.
Seteta reached up and loosened her headscarf as she approached the steps, lowering the veil from her face.
"Amit!" she called up to Amphetrion in Abtat as she ascended the steps beside the stage, using a term of respect for an elder.
"I will lend you my arm on the way down."
If he was as old as Persian claimed, was truly the first of the Inizae he'd brought here, then he would know Abtat. She used the older dialect that the Inizae spoke, the one carefully preserved in their religious rituals, knowing it was more likely to be the one that Amphetrion spoke in his youth.
She reached him quickly, not giving him the opportunity to deny her offered aid as she grasped his hand and tucked his arm through her elbow.
"I have not heard that language in many lifetimes," Amphetrion said slowly, waveringly, as Seteta very, very carefully helped him down each step until they stood on solid ground.
"Do you remember how to speak it?" Seteta asked, turning to face him and making sure she was near enough to see her face despite his failing eyesight.
Amphetrion, though, did not answer, and she realized that his face had paled as he gazed at her.
"Amphetrion?" she asked quietly, reaching out in case she needed to steady him.
"You're not supposed to be here!" Amphetrion began to speak again, his words spilling forth faster than she had expected him to be able to speak, and with such fluency in the ancient dialect she'd used before that she could barely keep up.
"Nailah," Amphetrion reached out with a shaking hand to stroke her cheek.
"You are too important to be here."
Nailah? Seteta thought the name seemed... familiar, like something she'd heard in a story once, but she couldn't recall which one at the moment.
"I am not Nailah," she answered, but she did not push away his hand. "My name is Seteta."
"You must be Nailah!" Amphetrion insisted.
"If not, you are a spirit who has stolen her face! But... you are not a spirit." His fingers twitched against her face. "You are warm flesh and blood."
He stumbled then--or she thought he stumbled--and she reached forward to steady him, but he pushed her hands away, and she realized that... he was kneeling.
"Perati, forgive me!" Amphetrion cried brokenly as he leaned forward, prostrating himself on the ground.
Perati? The ancient pharaohs?
And then, for a moment, Seteta couldn't breathe. She forgot about Persian and Chaceledon. That she was standing in the midst of Pedeo.
As she remembered where she knew the name Nailah from.
From a scroll she'd found in her mother's things once, as a child. A very, very long scroll, one she'd unrolled out of curiosity, and discovered it was many times her own height in length, and incredibly delicate. The ink at the far end of the scroll was faded, almost to the point of being unreadable, but she'd managed. And she'd recognized names at the end with fresher, bolder ink. Her own name, her mother's name, her grandmother's name.
And at the very top of the scroll, barely legible at all, it had read The Record of the Descendants of Perati Nailah.
At the time, she had not understood. And then she had forgotten.
Was it then? she wondered.
When I started pretending that I was a princess, when I was playing make-believe?
Seteta forced herself to take a deep breath, let the scent of Pedeo bring her back from the memory.
Amphetrion still knelt before her, head pressed low to the ground, trembling.
She'd heard of human elders whose minds began to break with age, where they seemed to live in the past again for moment of time. She'd never heard of it afflicting an elf, but an elf had never lived this long that she knew of.
So, for a moment of time, she would be Nailah.
She knelt before Amphetrion on the ground, and gently rested her hand on his head. "What have you done that needs my forgiveness?" she asked gently.
"I could not obey your order to wait for your return," he sobbed. "It was too dangerous. He would have taken you, as well."
Him. Seteta suppressed a shudder, realizing Amphetrion likely meant Persian.
"Is that all?" she whispered then, almost choking on her words as her voice became thick with tears. "Then simply stand up, and my forgiveness is yours."
Seteta almost collapsed with relief as Amphetrion groaned, his arms shaking as he began to lift himself back up, and she steadied him again as best she could. When he was on his feet again, she looked away for a moment, wiping the tears from her face.
But when she looked back again, Amphetrion was resettling his glasses back in place, and squinting at her.
"Oh hello!" he said with a smile. "Do I know you? Has anyone told you that you look like my Nailah?"
And it seemed that the moment had passed.
"Yes," Seteta smiled, offering him her arm again, and slowly leading him over to Chaceledon and Persian. "I have heard it."
Chaceledon 
