Prologue #4
“Yes, but I know that one,” Rahat said. He stood and wrapped the blanket around his shoulders and padded barefoot around the pool. Ashar followed him close as a shadow, but Rahat didn’t hesitate to open the window for a cat to slink its way in.
The moment its tail flicked through, Ashar shut the window with a twist of magic, and latched the iron bars over the inside as well. He hadn’t even turned around, a word of caution still caught on his lips, when the cat loomed huge and claws like scythes flashed in the moonlight.
Ashar threw himself in front of Rahat, because he might be a courtesan wearing nothing but a silk bathrobe, but he was at least a little better suited to fighting than the God-Emperor’s visionary brother.
He shaped a wisp of incense smoke into a mesh of smoke-silver chains that he wrapped around the great tawny catfolk—bindings he’d learned the efficacy of in a far more intimate setting, but effectiveness was more important than decorum in a split second’s desperate casting.
Teeth clenched around the need to hold his concentration, Ashar said, “Rahat, run.”
The catfolk blinked golden eyes, grumbling deep in his throat.
It was certainly a tomcat; Ashar knew exactly where he’d looped those mage-chains to be certain he could keep him still.
On another day he might even have admired the deadly grace of the tall, lean, sleekly muscled creature that suddenly towered a head over him, even without the sharply upswept desert-lynx ears—but now was really not the moment to be distracted by the striking sand-golden pelt of a hired assassin.
The tomcat flexed his claws against the incense-smoke chains, the grumbling deepening into a snarl that would have pulled desperate apologies from Ashar under nearly any other circumstances.
“Rahat!” Ashar gasped, tightening three particular loops despite a furious yowl. “I can only hold him for a minute! Less than that now—go!”
But Rahat put a gentle hand against Ashar’s trembling shoulder and said, “I told you, I know this one. Kamil, if you would please stop snarling… What? Oh.”
Blinking at the excruciatingly precise placement of those smoke-wrought chains, Rahat put a hand over his lips, but a half-stifled giggle escaped regardless.
“Yes, if you stop snarling, I’m sure I can persuade my companion to—well, no, I haven’t needed to stop snarling with chain-bindings right there, because I haven’t tried to provoke him!
Ya majid, ya sahir, this is my bodyguard, Kamil al-Hafiz.
Do please refrain from crippling him. Or endangering his yet-unsired sons. ”
“By Bastet’s eyes,” Ashar groaned, and dismissed the smoke-chains in a glimmering gray cloudburst. “I am so very sorry. But—it’s just—I felt my familiar cross the veil, and I thought—”
“Kamil! You killed my companion’s familiar?”
“I followed your scent through a notorious brothel-district because you couldn’t be bothered to tell me where you were going,” Kamil growled.
“I found you behind barred windows in a house of ill repute being warded by a mage-summons, and for all I knew you were under some enchanter’s mind-warping powers already—”
“Master Asharan would never!”
“Which is exactly what you would say if he had,” Kamil pointed out, unimpressed. “You, whore, what do you have to say for yourself?”
“Kamil!”
“Sha—”
“Don’t!” Ashar barked, hands over his ears. “Don’t tell me who he is. Just let him breathe. Just let him be my sweet rahati for the evening, and I his rafiq. Please. For his sake, not mine, please.”
Kamil’s tail thumped irritably against the backs of his calves. “How clever are you, harlot? Clever enough to have suspected treachery when your familiar’s incarnation ended, clever enough to have warded that window, to have readied that spell. What else?”
“Clever enough not to ask,” Ashar said. “Clever enough to treasure the blessing of ignorance, when I can. Clever enough to make of it a gift to you both, if you will only permit it.”
Kamil narrowed golden eyes at him, and lashed out with a sharply pointed thought-arrow: You knew him from the first syllable, you fraud.
Wincing, Ashar replied, I told him I would never ask his name. I haven’t lied to him, not once. I just… didn’t need to ask.
Semantics and sophistry from a harlot, a professional seller of honeyed love-lies, Kamil retorted, unimpressed. I shouldn’t have expected anything better.
Kamil. Look at him, Ashar pled, desperate.
Have you ever seen him smile like this before, without the weight of his crown bearing down upon his brow?
How long has it been? Please let me give him this.
If I ever presume upon this hidden knowledge from which I shelter him—I will pay any price you ask of me, if you think I have asked of him anything above my station.
In the meantime, let him escape the weight of those chains of lineage and intrigue and duty, even if only for a brief time.
Swear to me that you’ll never influence his mind.
Only if it’s needed for his safety.
Harlot—
Would you prefer I’d left him without the slightest touch of influence, and let him wander off into the night, stumbling lost and alone among the back alleys before you’d hunted him down?
Kamil growled deep in his throat again.
“Kamil, be kind,” Rahat said, almost despairing. Kamil ignored him.
How am I ever to trust that his thoughts are his own, with you plying your influence “only when you consider it necessary?”
O vigilant guardian, I swear to you on everything I hold holy, and may the lord of lightning strike me where I stand if this is not the unsullied truth: he is surrounded by so many greater powers than my own, caught in such intricate schemings, that I am the last person whose influence you should fear.
Look first to those who seek profit from him, or power.
I’ve sworn not to accept a single copper coin for this night’s exchange of gifts.
…You are either a terrible harlot, entirely mad, or the best liar I have ever known. And you don’t smell of a lie.
A terrible harlot, I’m afraid. Too deeply given to a healer’s comforting, and not enough to business-sense.
My bookkeeper despairs of me upon a regular basis.
Ashar sighed, running a hand through his still-bath-tangled curls.
You know as well as I how difficult it is to lie this deeply, mind to mind.
I don’t know what further assurance I can give you.
(Honestly, it wasn’t a surprise that a catfolk bodyguard would have mastered the mind-touch, because all cats could make their opinions crystal-clear without a spoken word, and a guardian would have as much need of sudden silent warnings as a courtesan.
He didn’t think Kamil would take it well if he pointed out the common ground in their shared need for discretion, though.)
Kamil blinked those great golden eyes, and sneezed amusement. You’re sincere enough to have thrown yourself in front of my claws to protect him, even if I’d thought it a calculated ploy at first. But you had no idea who I am, did you?
All I knew was that you’d ended my familiar’s incarnation, and I admit I didn’t take it well, Ashar said. I am sorry for the extremity of my response. But you realize that if you hadn’t been yourself…
Extremity? If I hadn’t been myself, you should have incinerated me, not bound me. Don’t deny you could have done it. I can feel the fire in your heart.
Ashar looked down and away, baring more of his throat, signaling submission to the tall catfolk studying him through skeptical eyes. I am given to healing, first and most of all. I try very hard not to do anything so irrevocable.
But his distress broke the last of Rahat’s patience. The round little man strode over to his towering bodyguard and seized him by the elbow, planting himself soundly between them.
“Kamil bir Takhma al-Hafiz, stop tormenting my companion! Master Asharan is not a mouse for your hunting, and he is not to be interrogated as a common criminal. If anything, you owe him apology and restitution for his poor familiar. What has possessed you?”
“Oh, what has possessed me, asks the man who’s spent the evening in the hands of the enchanting harlot who has you calling him ya majid, ya habibi—ya sahir, even, with a cat’s charm and an alley tom’s sex drive—”
“Kamil, that is more than enough! You shame us both!”
“Please,” Ashar said, a little wretchedly. “We began this dance on badly unbalanced footing. Please, let’s all sit down, have a cup of chai, smooth out the bristling?”
Kamil ignored Ashar as thoroughly as he’d ignored Rahat earlier.
He was very much of the catfolk. “I’ll admit his courage in facing down something like me for your sake, if you’ll admit what a ridiculously terrible idea it was to run off into the arms of a harlot in some perfumed brothel without so much as a word. ”
“You call ya majid a harlot one more time and—”
“Ya rahati, he’s not entirely wrong,” Ashar told him with a rueful smile. “I am a man of several trades. One of which is meant to be chai and soothing conversation. Emphasis very much on the soothing.”
He knelt beside the chai pot to rewarm it with his heart’s fire, then poured two cups to offer with hopeful eyes.
It was his own masala-chai blend, redolent of cardamom and ginger and scented with rosewater to complement the rahat al-hulqum, and Ashar often thought it nearly as effective at charming patrons as his own enchantments.
Rahat accepted his cup with pointed grace, settling into the pillow-nest and sipping at his chai.
Kamil enclosed Ashar’s entire hand in a massive claw-tipped grasp, prickling firmly enough to make it clear that he could have removed the hand any time he pleased, before taking the cup and lapping at it. He raised his brows at the cream-rich taste.