A/N: I had so much fun writing about Roald and Shinkokami's relationship that I decided to continue the story and write about a relationship between Liankokami and a son of Saraiyu and Zaimid Hetnim (remember Tammy said their first son's name would be Mequen?) This story is set eleven years after the end of the first chapter - when Liankokami is fifteen. Enjoy!

See the world in the palm of his hand,
Striding steps that will cover the land.

Roses and poisoned apples. Rubies and pomegranates. Licks of flame dancing in glass sconces. Cherry boughs and blood-red velvet.

"Red for wantonness and lust. Wrath, temptation, sin." Black eyes behind a white mask. Charcoal and chalk. "Red - a most fitting theme for Your Majesty's masque."

"Quite true, Lord Zalmai." She is in white, standing starkly out against the dancers in red. It is the Queen's prerogative to stand out, where others must blend in. "My peerless beauty must lead my subjects into all sorts of temptation."

She is a slight little thing, a white ichimatsu doll in black Carthaki arms. "Loyalty... it is a most delightful virtue."

"As it should be," she says primly. She catches the Queen Dowager's eye and inclines her head respectfully. A child still, led by her mother. He takes note.

"All delightful virtues are illicit pleasures, masked."

She has a tinkling laugh. Breathy, ostentatiously flirtatious, a child playacting at being provocative, gratingly virginal. A fifteen-year-old's conceit - as though a full bosom, a tiny waist and (in her case) a crown must make one desirable. "Lord Zalmai, you are teasing me!"

"Not at all, Your Majesty. A father's love of his daughter - watching her blossom from childhood to ripest womanhood, ready to be plucked and savoured-"

Beneath her mask, beneath layers of crystal and satin, Yamani-calm and royal dignity, he can imagine her blushing rosy-red.

"And take chastity - a masochistic pleasure at best, imagining all sorts of naughty delights and then... then, why not acting upon it at all. Quite akin to feathering one's-" He is slipping into tavern-talk. He checks his tongue and smiles sweetly at her. But then of course she cannot see his smile, more's the pity. The mask, always the mask. "I beg your pardon, Majesty."

"Mother would call you very wild and reprimand me most severely," she says. Mother, always mother. Now, there's a wedge to be driven. What a charming little fool, this little queen is. She will draw intrigue like honey draws bees.

"To be worthy of the title 'fair', every lady must keep a scandalous court."

"Then you must be very wicked and very scandalous indeed, Lord Zalmai. They say Aunt Kalasin is the fairest lady in all the world, and you were in attendance at her court." Scandal - the word means naught to her but stableboys' bastards smuggled into noble cradles by the wives of barren husbands. Wenches to be bedded and whores to be shamed.

Scandal - to him it means bloodlettings and burnings, guttings and flayings, bartering bodies and selling souls. But she is young yet, she will learn. And she could not have chosen a worthier master than him to teach her - as he means to.

"Have no fear now, My Lady," he says gallantly. "I will so fill your court with scandal that you will, in short time, usurp your fair aunt's place a dozen times over."

She giggles. His grip on her waist hardens, tightens. His legs brush against hers, beneath whispering satin and pearls broidered by silk thread. She giggles even more, but now it is softer, shyer. Uncertain.

000

Mother's entertainments are always ostentatiously lavish - nigh vulgar, if truth must be told - but she really outdid herself tonight. We were receiving the Imperial Ambassador and his retinue from Carthak, and Mother had a masque, themed on the colour red. Princely, I suppose you could call it. Bloody, red as the wine that flowed in the two-storied artificial fountain that was erected on the terrace of the ballroom.

There is a fight to the death between two bears because Mother said the Carthakis are fond of lion-fights but since we don't have lions, we had to have bears. Mother said a bear-fight would be a most exotic spectacle for the 'desert-dwellers' (they aren't native in Carthak, naturally) so we had to have them, even though I couldn't bear to watch. Mother said it would seem weak in me if I hid away at the climax of the entertainment - yes, the awful bear-fight, and not the dancing or the feasting, was supposed to be the climax - but I refused. And then I had to listen to how I had no stomach for queenship, how I would go the way my father did and be killed for not doing my duty...

I really hate the way she brings father and his death, every other time I do something wrong (which is nearly always). But then, of course, I suppose she has my best interests - and more importantly, Tortall's best interests - at heart, so I try not to disobey her too often.

Where was I? Oh yes. The bear fight. I hid myself in the privy until I had word that it was over - rather like Uncle Liam hides in the curtains until the dancing is over!

Everyone had to wear red, but I had to stand out and so they made me wear white. Yes, white and pearls and crystals and satin, yet again. They couldn't find any lilies, thank God. Lilies make me sneeze, but then I'm the most notorious virgin in Tortall so I must wear the outward trappings of virginity at all state occassions - white, pearls and lilies.

Second to the ambassador is his handsome young protege. Lord Zalmai Hetnim - the third son of Lord Zaimid Hetnim, Imperial Healer of Carthak, and Lady Saraiyu, sister to Queen Dovasary of the Copper Isles. His eldest brother, Mequen is Heir Presumptive to the Kyprish throne since the Queen is now almost past childbearing age and Lady Saraiyu relinquished her claim to the throne in favour of her children.

Lord Zalmai is a delight. Mother sniffs and calls him a graceful dilettante, fit only for flirtations and stirring up intrigue, but I find him most charming. So tall, such a graceful dancer, and so very, very...

Well, he's the kind that makes you blush, you see? Vania says he's perfectly delicious.

There are whispers of a match between him and Vania. She's sixteen now. He's a third son, she a third daughter. Royal blood on both sides. Ideal.

But that doesn't mean I can't enjoy him before they marry him off to Vania. And I intend to. Enjoy him, I mean. He must dance attendance on me, and not Vania (until they're betrothed) because I am queen and she is only a minor princess.

It's really fun to be queen sometimes.