His next clients were the ambassador from the Tillabeth Isles and her spouses and daughter. Despite his detour to Uncle Pondarr’s house, he arrived in time, and was shown into a back parlor of the embassy, where Torisa, her husband Yaralo and her daughter Liapi soon joined him. After formal greetings in the imperial style, which Toamic had been teaching them, they explained that their wife Haroa was ill and would not be joining them. After a few weeks of teaching them, Toamic was still trying to wrap his head around their domestic arrangements; he had asked a few questions, when the course of conversation made it seem suitable, but had refrained from far more.

Lessons at the embassy were always fraught, as Toamic found Liapi’s charm and beauty distracting; her curiosity about imperial culture, her ridiculous giggle when she learned about another one of its absurdities, and her insightful comments about how their cultures differed, all made him wish that he were in a position to ask her to marry him. But she had never shown any sign of returning his interest; it was probably impossible with his position as her teacher, and she undoubtedly had much better prospects available, who had wealth and real social position as well as empty titles, even if she were willing to marry a foreigner.

And today, Toamic was distracted not only by his usual hopeless pining after Liapi, but by Saina’s offer and what his uncle had told him about how it was likely to affect his fortunes. Still, he managed to focus and teach a reasonably coherent lesson on the greetings and farewells to be used with people of various ranks on the day of the summer festival, even while thinking through what his uncle had said in the back of his mind.

And by the end of the lesson, he realized he had made a decision. And given that decision, he need to inform his clients of something.

“Something has come up,” he said. “I will be out of town for several days beginning on Firstday; I don’t know exactly how long, but we had better cancel our lessons next week, and meet again on Thirdday the following week, if that pleases Your Excellency.”

“It is no trouble,” Torisa said. “I thank you for telling me.”

“And,” he said hesitantly, “I should warn you that I will be… different when you see me next. I will understand if you don’t wish to continue taking lessons from me under those circumstances, and will of course assign no blame to you.”

Torisa and Yaralo nodded politely, but it was Liapi who asked the question they were clearly all thinking. “May I ask, different how?”

Toamic hesitated, but decided he might as well tell them now. It might be better than to confront them with it unexpectedly after the fact. “I will be a woman,” he said. “An opportunity has arisen to use powerful magic that would ordinarily be unavailable to me, and after due consideration, I have decided to take it.”

To his surprise and relief, they all nodded encouragingly, and Yaralo said, “I am glad to hear of your good fortune. Have you chosen a new name? Those among us who change their gender do not always do so, but I understand your names here are more strongly associated with one gender or another.” People in the Tillabeth Isles changed their gender often enough for him to make generalizations about them? Every time Toamic interacted with the ambassadorial family, he learned something new.

“I haven’t yet decided,” he said. “I’ll let you know when I see you next, or perhaps by letter before then.”

“Oh, and how should we greet you when we see you next?” Liapi asked. “Will it still be ‘crown of the line of Parramind’ and ‘your grace’, or something else?”

“I won’t be a duke anymore,” Toamic said. “I would be referred to as the Honorable… whatever my new name is, of the line of Parramind, and addressed as… as just ‘Miss,’ in a less formal greeting, or ‘blossom of the line of Parramind’ in a more formal greeting.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Liapi said. “And I’m sure you’ll turn out very pretty, O blossom of the line of Parramind.”

Toamic blushed and made his goodbyes.

During the evening of Seventhday, Toamic tried more than once to tell his mother what he had decided, but kept losing his nerve and putting it off. He wrote letters to each of the clients he would not see in person on Eighthday, informing them that he would be out of town for several days in the following week and would have to cancel that week’s appointments, and of his plan to become a woman. It was far easier to tell near-strangers than the one closest to him.

Eighthday dawned, and during his morning chores Toamic finally worked up the courage to tell her. He would be away from home all day, teaching one client after another with long walks between them, and with no time to return home until after supper at Garic’s house. He absolutely must tell her at breakfast.

So as soon as they were seated at the breakfast table and they had said the three blessings, he said, “Mother, I have made a momentous decision, and must tell you about it.”

“Tell me you haven’t done anything rash,” she said.

“No, though you may consider what I am about to do rash.” And he told her about Saina’s offer, though he did not mention the detail of how she had originally incurred the idol’s curse, and how he planned to travel with her to Three Towers for a few days and be transformed like her.

“What madness is this?” she asked. “Why would you do such a thing? To end the unbroken line of Parramind, and for what?”

“Do you regard being a woman as such a terrible thing, Mother?”

“Not at all, if it is one’s natural station in life. It is not yours. And what will become of us, if you become a woman? Won’t the house fall to your cousin Sorres if you are not the son of your father?”

“Uncle Pondarr says it could go either way…” He explained the gist of his conversation with his uncle, with frequent interruptions.

“He approves of this mad plan?”

“He does. He said hello, and that he would stop in to visit while I’m in Three Towers.”

“I have raised a madman,” she said, breaking down into sobs. “An effeminate madman. What have I done?” She called on the gods of her family and her husband’s family and the gods of the empire to witness her lamentation.

Toamic, though distressed at his mother’s distress, knew he had to finish eating or he would faint from exhaustion in the course of the long day of work, with so much walking back and forth across half the city. So he kept eating with half an ear to his mother’s increasingly repetitive monologue, now and then interjecting a soothing word when she paused for breath.

He cleared away and washed the breakfast dishes and then said goodbye to his mother. “I will be away all day,” he said. “You know how busy Eighthday is, and then Viscount Irindep has invited me to supper after our evening lesson. Don’t wait up for me, as I may stay and visit a little while after supper.”

“With that half-woman trollop you told me about?”

“She is nothing of the sort, Mother. Goodbye, Mother, O jewel of the line of Suticarr.”

But his mother had broken down weeping again, and could not return the usual farewell.

During the course of the day, Toamic informed each of the clients he saw of his plans. All were considerably more shocked than Torisa and her family; some, after their initial shock, expressed curiosity and finally well-wishes, but some were angry or disgusted. Toamic had expected to lose some clients over this, and this did not make him change his mind, though he had a few moments of uncertainty.

That evening, when Garic and his guests gathered in the parlor after supper, Saina and Toamic contrived to sit together in a corner, leaving Garic, Orram and Sir Tocain to play dice at the center table.

“Have you thought about my offer?” Saina asked.

“Thought, and decided. I will come with you tomorrow, and face the consequences when I return a woman. What time will I need to meet you, and where?”

“I’d like to set out about two hours after dawn; that will get us to a good reliable inn about suppertime, whereas starting earlier or later would have us eating at less savory places. Can you be here by then?”

“Of course.”

“How long will you accept my hospitality after we arrive and see to your transformation?”

“I shouldn’t stay long. I’ve cleared next week of appointments, but I’ll need to be back by Firstday of the following week.”

“Then you can stay with me four days, since it will take two days to get there and two days to get you back.”

“I would be delighted. What is Three Towers like?”

They talked about her home city for a while, until Toamic felt he must return home to pack for the journey tomorrow.

On Firstday, Toamic said goodbye to his mother immediately after breakfast, politely rebuffing her remonstrances. He reached Garic’s house in a few minutes, and joined Saina in her carriage, giving his small parcel of luggage into the care of the driver to tie onto the roof along with Saina’s trunks. Soon the carriage was underway, and he and Saina settled in for a long journey.

“So I’ve told you about some of our adventures, and I’m sure Garic has told you about many more in the months since he began taking instruction from you,” Saina said. “But I haven’t heard that much about you.”

“There is not that much to tell,” Toamic said. “My ancestors were illustrious for their own deeds, as you and your adventuring companions are, but my grandfather and father did little but incur debts and sell off property to pay them, and I have done little since my father died but sell off the rest of the non-entailed property and pay interest on the debt as best I can, by renting the entailed country property and teaching etiquette. My father and mother drilled all the forms of imperial etiquette into me from a young age, you see, and so it is my most valuable skill – very nearly my only skill.”

“Not your only skill,” Saina said. “I’ve watched your lessons with Garic twice, and not only do you know the greetings and farewells for every combination of rank and every occasion like the back of your hand, you are also a good teacher, patient and sensitive to the needs of your pupil. Back in our adventuring days I tried to teach Garic to pick locks, but we couldn’t seem to make progress – I didn’t have the patience or the words to explain what I was doing in ways he could understand. I think I would do better now, if I tried again, but there’s no need.”

Toamic blushed at the compliment, and Saina went on: “But there is more to you than your knowledge of etiquette and your skill as a teacher. Tell me, how long ago did you first realize you wanted to be a girl?”

Hesitantly at first, and then with greater confidence, Toamic told her about one of the stories in his father’s library where the plucky young hero, through an encounter with foreign magic, got transformed into a woman, and spent a good part of the book in that form. “And then she found a way to change back, and decided to do so, and I remember thinking, ‘Why would you want to do that?’ I must have been no older than eight when I read that for the first time, because I remember Mairrana, my governess, coming and telling me to blow out the lamp and go to sleep when I was partway through the scene where she decided whether to change back. And Father had to let her go when I was eight.”

“You knew a good deal younger than some, then,” Saina said. “For me it was not so clear; only an occasional wistful daydream, never consciously acknowledged. I lucked into getting a woman’s body before I ever clearly realized that I wanted it.”

“Younger than some, you say. How many like us are there? I had never heard of any until I met you, but when I went to my uncle to tell him of your offer and ask his advice, he told me about another, the younger son of Baron Sarambic. Or at least he was rumored to have paid a wizard to change him into a woman. And one of my clients, a man from the Tillabeth Isles, told me that in his country some people change their gender.”

“I know the baron’s daughter,” Saina said with a slight smile. “Norria. She was treated horribly by her family, but she is doing much better now. Perhaps you’ll meet her while we’re in Three Towers.”

“I would very much like to.”

“But as for how many of us there are, I think there are far more than most people suspect. I have managed to find nine like us, people born as boys who are happier now as girls, and five of another sort, once-girls who want to be boys. I haven’t found an artifact that can transform them as easily as the idol changes us, but I am training a new generation of adventurers to seek out such an artifact, and in the meantime I do what I can to help them. Paying a wizard to transform all five, even if I could find one who knows how, would probably be beyond even my means, but I’ve found an alchemist who thinks he can get them partway there, and I’m funding his research.”

“Nine of us and five of the other gender… And that’s all in Three Towers?”

“Most live in Three Towers now, to be close to each other and be able to help each other. I found them scattered across three cities and several smaller towns and villages. Many were disowned by their families, either after I helped them transform, or before I met them. Some live with me, and most of the others come over for dinner once or twice a week.”