* * *
The next day, Si'Wren was formally presented by Ibi to the court and officially assumed her new status as Court Scribe. Emperor Euphrates was exceeding pleased, which would have made her all the more so by turns, were it not for her so recent experience with the polished wooden ox just the day before.
After she bowed low before him, he beckoned to her to sit on his right hand, several places removed. There were other, more important dignitaries who with all their robes and finery, considerably outranked her and sat closer to the Emperor. In fact, immediately to her right stood a royal palace guard, a rough-looking fellow, with his motionless back to the stones of the wall and a fearsome-looking spear in his big hands.
Seeing that the others were seated, she sat down also, and turned to stare curiously up at the guard standing beside her, but that other worthy only blinked in irritation and refused to look back at her or so much as acknowledge her presence.
Si'Wren dropped her eyes from the guard's aloof, stoic countenance, unaware that already many in the court room were covertly watching the newly appointed Royal Scribe with shifty, appraising looks, secretly wondering if she could be induced to sell out to them and at what price, in rank opposition to her Emperor's open claim to all her loyalties.
In contrast to the others' extravagance and finery in choice of raiment, Si'Wren had wisely followed Ibi's sage advice and foregone such vain nonsense in favor of a simple outfit consisting of pantaloons, blouse, long cape, and removable head covering, all loose in the folds but tight at the cuffs and waist, and all in starkest black.
By contrast, there was easily enough jewelry on all other royal dignitaries present to assure their inevitable drowning should one of them happen to accidentally fall into the moat.
Her hair was still the same length as always, almost to the waist in back. Sometimes, she kept it in a single long braid fastened at the end with a tiny black ribbon.
She took with her everywhere now her kit, consisting of the various tools and artifacts of her trade.
This consisted of two little wooden marking sticks kept in a black leather pouch, and a small honing stick of rough-surfaced lava rock from the stone masons quarter, for resharpening the marking sticks when the moist clay softened and distorted their tips. Actually, one had to set aside the dampened one to dry and use a dry one, and when the dampened one was dry, then to sharpen. She blinked ruefully at the memory of the day she had unknowingly tried to sharpen a dampened stick, and shredded it instead, thereby incurring the wrath of Ibi. How far she had advanced since that fateful day.