honey, Master."
She was sure - she was almost sure - she did not imagine it that he smiled. And it was only after her answer that she felt him begin to draw the cup toward himself. Still he did not - or could not - bear its weight, and so she carried it for him. Together they made only a faint gesture of holding it above his head, for the audience to see; and then she tipped it gently against his mouth, and saw him drink; and also saw a tiny rivulet run down by the side of his mouth and hiss off his chin, briefly leaving a fire-red tracing thread behind it.
He let her draw the cup back toward her again with his hand still around it. She looked again into his face and saw, though she could not have explained how she saw, that he was tired, tired almost to death; and so she knew that it was only weariness that made him clumsier still, that when he lifted his hand away from the cup, he was not able to do it cleanly, and his hand dropped a little, and glanced - only barely, fleetingly glanced - off the back of her hand, where it seared the thin flesh to the bone.
At the time it almost didn't matter. She found that she had been half expecting something like it to happen, and did not flinch when it did. She lowered the goblet only a little bit hastily, and tucked the weight of it against her body again so that she could drop her wounded hand to her side and let the long sleeve of her robe cover the burn. This made it throb worse than if she could have held it up, but that couldn't be helped. No one farther away than the three men behind her awaiting their turn - and possibly the Master's two aides - would have seen anything, and she wished to keep it that way.
But the three men waiting just behind her would have seen. The Grand Seneschal might have kept his mouth shut for his own good - it was he who had negotiated with the priests of Fire in the first place, and he who had received the news that the priests did not believe what he was asking could be done. She didn't know the Prelate well enough to guess after his motives, beyond a growing suspicion he had few of his own and preferred to borrow them from some stronger character. But the Overlord's agent would have every reason to tell the tale - and doubtless had. While it would upset the balance of the entire country if one of the demesnes were realloted, the process of the reallotment would hugely increase this Overlord's power, and bind the new Master to the Overlord with a political gratitude it would take generations of Masters and Overlords to bring into equilibrium again. And their current Overlord was a little too fond of political power - she among others believed - without such temptations as a Master who might burn his subjects by the touch of his hand.
By the end of the first day of the new Master's return, the people she met were looking first at her right hand. Gossip travels as fast as fire. By then she had dressed and bandaged it, so there was nothing to see but the bandage; but that was enough. And there was no way to shrug off what had happened as an accident. Of course it had been an accident: no Master could remain Master who deliberately harmed any of his people. What had happened to her should be viewed as no worse or more significant than if one of his coach horses had shied and trodden on one of the onlookers: an unfortunate mishap. That's all. But of course it was not, for it was not an accident that should have been able to happen. If the new Master were not a priest of Fire. If the new Master were still human.
"It is nothing," she said to the people she caught looking at her hand. "It is nothing." Sometimes she tried to smile. She'd smiled at Sama, when she'd asked for lint and salve; Sama was a Housewoman with a round, happy face and three children, and she and her children were excellent customers for Mirasol's honey. "I was clumsy. It is no more than if I brushed my hand against a dish