Prologue #5
“I am somewhat familiar with the tastes of catfolk,” Ashar admitted. He poured himself a cup taken from a mismatched set, but he wasn’t about to turn his back on the God-Emperor’s third brother in order to search for another set.
Rahat gave Kamil a glare that might have been more effective if he hadn’t had the sweet soft eyes of a gazelle, and if Kamil hadn’t plainly learned immunity to his master’s looks long ago.
Still, with the air of a great lion indulging a cub’s scampering whims, Kamil folded himself onto the next pillow and tucked his tail neatly around his feet, lapping at the cream-rich chai.
“Apologize,” Rahat said.
“You somehow fail to grasp that I am doing my job, ‘ya rahati.’”
“You didn’t need to kill his familiar!”
“I might have known that if you’d told me where you were going!”
“It is not my fault you chose—”
“It is entirely your fault,” Kamil said sharply.
“I am only here because you came here without telling me where you went. If you’d brought me at your side and introduced me like a civilized being, I would never have needed to hunt your scent through a filthy—your pardon, ya rafiq— through a fragrant maze of alleys, to a ‘bath-house’ with mage-wards on barred windows, where I thought you were imprisoned under duress. ”
Rahat buried his face in both hands, muttering a muffled prayer or curse behind their shelter, and then glanced anxiously at Ashar. “I’m so sorry. I never meant for you to suffer for your kindness to me.”
“Nehal will sulk for a bit, but he’ll forgive me eventually,” Ashar said. “The sooner I can call him back, the less he’ll grumble.”
“Then please, call him now,” Rahat said, touching Ashar’s hand.
“We can just go, and leave the bath-whore to his business—”
“Kamil,” Rahat snapped. “You’ve wounded this man and the protections upon his home, and you slander him at every turn, even seeing the lengths to which he would go in my defense. No.”
“‘Whore’ isn’t slander if it’s a statement of fact,” Kamil said, whiskers twitching.
“You can speak of him with respect! Admit that you were taken off guard by a gentleman of the evening, and apologize.”
With a mocking bow of the head, Kamil rumbled, “I apologize that my master considers your whoring an insult to call by its name, ya rafiq.”
“Kamil!” Running both hands over his face, Rahat said, “And you wonder why I didn’t want to bring you in the first place! Ya majid, I am so deeply sorry.”
“What do you want?” Ashar asked softly.
“I want him to—”
Ashar touched a finger to Rahat’s lip, shaking his head. “Ya rahati, what do you want for yourself?”
Rahat shut his eyes tight and said in a very small voice, “I don’t want the night to be over. Not just yet. You… you said I could stay, if I wished, and…”
“Your courtesan is bright enough not to send you out into the alleys unsupervised,” Kamil said. “Fortunately, that’s my job. I’ll get him home safely, ya rafiq. You can sell the rest of your night.”
“Ya rahati?” Ashar asked steadily, despite Kamil’s amusement shading into mockery.
“I want to stay with you,” Rahat whispered, eyes shut, head bowed, still blocking out the world. “Just a little more. Please.”
Kamil wasn’t the only one who could pointedly ignore someone. Ashar stroked light fingertips up Rahat’s arm to steady him, bending close slowly enough for the warmth of his breath to be felt a moment before he kissed him.
“As you wish, ya rahati. This night or any other.”
Kamil huffed again, conceding the point, and turned away to better watch the window.
“Resummon your poor lost familiar, then?” Rahat suggested. “I owe you that.”
“You owe me nothing,” Ashar said. “But it would be my privilege to earn a smile.”
“O most glorious,” Rahat said wistfully, and pressed a kiss to Ashar’s palm. “Teach me how you call your cat-familiar? It seems a valuable thing to know, in the Catsprowl.”
“Well. What form does magic take in your soul? Do you touch magic through the divine, or through diligent study, or through inspiration?”
“…I hadn’t really thought about it?”
Ashar chuckled, rueful. “Inspiration, then, which means for better and ill we are two of a kind. Those who find this art simplest to master are those given to study: magic as words and recipes, sages with their scrolls and spellbooks. I learned it from a ritual enchanter who kept intricate incantations. But then, herding cats is notoriously difficult, and I should imagine herding magical cats to be even more so.”
“Truth, that,” Kamil admitted, wry.
“Where the clever-minded studied it as rituals, I practiced it as a performance,” Ashar said. “I keep it in my hands and my heart, not in a spellbook. But in turn, this makes teaching it more a challenge. Still, perform it with me, and we’ll see who answers the call?”
Rahat bent his head in agreement, despite Kamil’s little huff. So Ashar gathered the supplies he needed from the box of bath indulgences: a brazier and candles, incense and scented oils, a handful of tiny chiming bells, fragrant catnip.
He rolled back the tapestry carpet to bare the tiles, then called up a bit of cantrip-magic to trace a warding circle with chalk. Then he held out both hands to Rahat. Rahat blinked at him, but stepped carefully over the circle.
“Can you call fire or float a bit of chalk?”
“Fire, yes,” Rahat said. “Chalk… not well enough to write inscriptions, I’m afraid.”
“Then I’ll be the scribe, and you the giver of offerings.” Ashar tilted his head, considering. “In your court’s language—if I ask you the word, can you show me how it’s written?”
Rahat blinked again, surprised. “Will it work in another language?”
“I translated it into my mother’s tongue for myself,” Ashar admitted with a small shrug. “Isn’t the court’s language yours? How would you say cat?”
“Qut.” Rahat sketched the swoops and curls across his palm, right to left.
Ashar curved his hand over Rahat’s and laid a finger over his. “Do that again?” he asked. This time, when Rahat traced the word in his palm, the chalk carefully followed each movement.
There were seven more words to fill the compass, all of them cat-actions: seek, hunt, slay, nap, indulge, play, and charm—“Sahar? You named me that, didn’t you?”
“Among others,” Rahat agreed shyly. “It has layers. Charm as magic, but also beauty, fascination, glamour…”
“Oh, cat-spirits will love that word,” Ashar said, and kissed Rahat’s cheek softly. “Thank you for that.”
With the circle inscribed, Ashar called several pillows to his hands next, and placed them carefully, to not smudge the chalk. He sprawled as a cat might, and patted the pillow beside him. Rahat settled himself into place with far greater decorum.
Kamil leapt into the circle with heedless grace, stalking around them before he settled in a long lean curve around them both—around them both, when his only duty was to Rahat, but Ashar wasn’t feeling quite brave enough to call him on it.
“Everything from here is temptation,” Ashar explained. “Reminding their spirits of the joys of bodies, of play and petting and treats and the hunt, and the leisure after. Like so.”
He tossed one of the jeweled bells into the air and batted it with a hand until it bounced toward the octant marked with seek, and another toward hunt.
Slay, though…
“The one who taught me killed a living creature with her hands and her teeth,” Ashar murmured, pricking his fingertip with a jeweled pin and offering several drops of his own blood in a shallow bowl.
“I couldn’t bear it. Nehal accepted my invitation regardless.
I hope he’ll come when I call, but then, he is a cat-spirit. ”
Chin propped on crossed arms and tail twitching, Kamil sneezed on a laugh that wasn’t entirely contemptuous, but wasn’t all that far off.
“Blood spilled is blood spilled. If you’re fool enough to offer your own, what will he care?
So long as you have good hands for petting and don’t take his meat from him… ”
“I don’t eat meat, I’d never take his from him,” Ashar said.
“You’re fine, ya rafiq. More than that, you’re harmless.”
“May I borrow that?” Rahat asked, looking at the pin.
Ashar froze for a moment, thinking frantic things about royal blood spilled by his hand. “What poor host am I, to let you bleed in injury under my roof?”
Kamil huffed and offered a handful of claws, and Rahat touched a fingertip to the sharpest point, then let a few drops spill into the bowl.
The God-Emperor’s blood, spilled with mine, Ashar thought, staring at the bowl, a little staggered.
Kamil thwacked him solidly with his tail and Ashar startled despite himself, collecting his wits enough to reach for the dried herbs before Rahat could ask any inconvenient questions about his astonishment.
“Oh, we can’t forget—catnip too, of course!
” Ashar took a pinch and rubbed it between his palms to set free the pungent lemon-mint scent.
Kamil’s whiskers flicked forward sharply and his pupils flared wide, though he pretended indifference.
Ashar sprinkled a bit at each of the octant-points, especially indulge, before laying a dried stem beside Nehal’s favorite soft blanket at the inscription for nap.
With the offerings laid, Ashar floated a candle to each of the points, honey-fragrant beeswax blended with wood spices for the luxury of it. He murmured into Rahat’s ear, “Light them, if you would? Warmth and dancing light and enticing twists of smoke to be patted at; you see the appeal.”
Rahat spoke a word of power and all eight candles burst into flame at once, leaping high before settling in as the wax began to soften and scent the air.
“Now we wait?”
“Now we wait, and indulge, and sing,” Ashar said. He sprawled across Rahat’s lap and reached up to stroke fingers through his hair, grooming and cosseting.
“Sing,” Kamil said, ears flattened sideways. “Catfolk are not known for the sweetness of our voices, ya rafiq.”