Chapter 1 #4
“Here,” he said a bit breathlessly, “she doesn’t seem to mind this one? And she’ll be more comfortable if she doesn’t have to walk all the way through town, both before and after the kittens. She seemed to want a particular ribbon, though, I’ll—”
“You’ll sit down and eat,” Hira said firmly.
“…Yes. Good idea.” Sheepish, Master Asharan said, “I really am sorry, my jewel, I got rather carried away. But kittens!”
Rahat looked at him — his eyes shining in the morning sun that caressed his dark curls with luminous bronze highlights, his bath-robe barely clinging to the crest of one golden shoulder yet again.
And for all that Rahat should have felt guilty that he hadn’t thought of Sahar’s comfort himself…
all he felt was a wordless, inarticulate yearning to stay.
Here, with Master Asharan and his brilliant summer-smile, in this dawn-lit courtyard full of scampering kittens and souring pickle-pots and flapping laundry and the smoke of Elder Sister’s cooking fire.
Here, where no one served him zafrani phirni made with saffron that cost three hundred dinar per pound in bowls made of porcelain so fine he could see the shadows of his fingers through it as he lifted the bowl and always, always looked into it deeply enough to see whether this one was poisoned.
But some things were impossible, even if you were a prince and a prophet.
Some things were particularly impossible, when you were a prince and a prophet.
“Ya rahati?” Master Asharan said, hesitating with his fingertips poised above the leaf. “I hadn’t thought… we eat with our fingers here, but you come from so far away… are meals shared differently where you’re from?”
Rahat bit his lip for a moment, because telling Master Asharan about the protocols of the palace wouldn’t be kind. “Somewhat differently, yes,” he admitted. “Show me your ways?”
“Here,” Master Asharan said, scooping a bite of dal into three crooked fingers to offer him, but then Kamil hissed.
“Kamil,” Rahat said, startled. “They’ve fed half the neighborhood from this pot, there’s nothing wrong with it!”
He suspected that Kamil was giving Master Asharan a piece of his mind more literally than usual; Master Asharan flinched again, but he held his ground more stubbornly than Rahat would have expected.
“Meals are for sharing, here,” Master Asharan said.
“Friends, family, lovers, guests, even the neighborhood children. You share your home and your welcome with your own hands and your own nourishment. We’d have had saj with our dal if Padma-auntie hadn’t been out drinking at the Den last night and gotten a late start with her bake-fires, and today is the green-market day, so tomorrow Venkat-uncle will bring a pot of some sort of delicious greens and cheese.
I promise, I mean this as a welcome, not as an insult. ”
“An insult? Oh, Kamil.”
Rahat wasn’t actually surprised to hear it.
They made much of protocols in the God-Emperor’s court, and to feed another from your own hands wasn’t just an affectionate gesture; it was also a power play.
The one making the offering should be of clearly higher rank, distributing largesse, and the food given should be expensive and symbolic of a benediction.
Unless, of course, you were suggesting the recipient was a child, a weakling, or an invalid who needed to be hand-fed because of doddering infirmity.
He was fairly certain he remembered a few such honor duels in the tax records of blood debts repaid.
And he’d always thought it utter foolishness.
It couldn’t be clearer that Master Asharan meant it as a gift, that the neighborhood shared all they had with each other, whether it was a ladle of dal on a leaf or those exquisitely enchanted rose-sweets.
With a growl thick in her throat, Hira said to Kamil, “Don’t make me tear shreds out of your hide for contempt of our hospitality. I’d lose, but you’d regret it.”
Grumbling, Kamil looked away, not-incidentally baring his throat to Master Asharan. It was as much of an apology as he’d give, but Master Asharan smiled as though the moon had unexpectedly shone through stormclouds.
His Imperial Highness Faraj couldn’t stay.
As powerful as the God-Emperor’s third brother might be, the power of the realm itself was greater still.
He couldn’t discard his name and his title and his duties.
He owed the people of his brother’s empire his best work, to see to it that the Ministry of Finance collected only the taxes that were owed, and to distribute that gathered wealth in ways that suited the needs of the people at least as often as the desires of the powerful.
And it took regular, challenging, daily work to try to bend that curve, to stay on top of the paperwork-tangles and the bribes and the infighting with legalities in triplicate.
But Rahat had no such duties, or so he pretended, just for a little longer. Rahat bent his head and accepted the bite of dal from Master Asharan’s fingertips.
Just like Master Asharan’s rahat al-hulqum, Elder Sister’s dal was unlike anything he’d ever tasted, too.
There was nothing subtle or exquisite about it.
Smoke and iron and a fistful of long pepper tasted like a battlefield, like the determination to get up and fight one more day, like the stubbornness not to lie down and yield when people needed your strength, blunt and unrefined and unshakable as stone.
But then, Elder Sister got up every day and put herself and her pots of dal and her own insistence on lessons between the children of the Catsprowl and the grindstones of poverty and desperation.
He wondered who she had been before she became Elder Sister, and which god’s service she had sworn herself to. And he scooped up three fingers of dal and offered it to Master Asharan… who kissed his fingers as he accepted.
“Oh, that’s not fair,” Rahat sighed. “How can I bear to leave you, ya majid?”
“Think of it as enticement to return,” Master Asharan said, not the least bit apologetic, offering him a bite of the millet next. “Remember that you’ve promised me kittens!”
“And a good trader always keeps his promises,” Hira said.
“Yes, of course,” Rahat said, and somehow found a smile for them.
Bite by bite, the leaf was emptied of its meal, and Hira took it and spread it in the sunny patch at the center of the courtyard to dry out for a future fire. Master Asharan put an arm around Rahat’s shoulders, seeming entirely content to sit with him and watch the sun rise.
But Faraj’s duties called. And it would be noted if he arrived too late at the scriptorium, let alone wearing yesterday’s wrinkled clothes — or, heavens forbid, a bathrobe marked with the symbols of a Catsprowl bath-house.
There were powers enough in Tel-Bastet to overwhelm Master Asharan and the lady Hira, let alone the noble houses and jealous would-be heirs in the capital, many of whom had well-placed cousins in the Basteti branch of the ministry.
It would not be kind to let his distraction call unhappy attentions to this small courtyard and Elder Sister’s lessons to the neighborhood children and kittens.
He sincerely didn’t want to know what Elder Sister taught them about the history of Tel-Bastet’s resistance to the Empire and the rivalries between the different gods’ priesthoods and generations of Archmages’ refusal to bow their heads to the Imperial throne.
Because if he didn’t know, then he wouldn’t have to report it to the Minister of Orthodoxy.
He could already hear how both his Chamberlain and his Archivist would shriek at him.
In Archivist Najra’s defense, her shrieking would be delighted, but there would still be so much shrieking, and so much interrogating for details he truly wished to keep for his own, private treasure.
And what the Chamberlain would say, or the Deputy Minister of Finance…
his foresights rarely came with foresound, but once in a while the shrieking was loud enough to carry through regardless.
“I should go,” he murmured.
“And I should scrub the baths,” Master Asharan agreed, rueful, “because Hira thinks water is an abomination until I make chai of it.”
“That’s because water is an abomination until you make chai of it,” she huffed.
“But first let’s get you dressed,” Master Asharan said. “Kamil, if you go through Elder Sister’s kitchen and turn left, you’ll come out much closer to the marketplace.”
“I want fewer people to watch us take a walk of shame, not more,” Kamil pointed out.
“Oh, I have ideas,” Master Asharan said lightly. “Come on, back to the bath.”
Cradling Sahar’s basket against his chest because he wanted something to cuddle, Rahat followed Master Asharan back to the room they’d shared and stared unhappily down at the pile of his princely silks.
But with a flick of his fingers, Master Asharan had the cloth dancing through the air: steamed free of wrinkles, scented with a swirl of incense, neatly folded up…
? And then he whisked the folded silks into a bag that he tucked into the bottom of Sahar’s basket.
She prodded at it with a skeptical paw, then decided a silk-filled pillow might possibly be acceptable for her lounging.
Then he pushed aside a jingling curtain of bells and beads and blossoms to reach into a nook for an uncut bolt of towel-cloth, white with a blue stripe at the edge.
“Upaja has His priests and His mendicants too,” Master Asharan said, unrolling the bolt of cloth.
“And children flocking to a mendicant priest of the fat god for flowers and little treats… the adults will smile and move on, and the cutpurses will roll their eyes and move on, because Upaja’s priests never carry coin.
And a priest of Upaja would certainly have reason to bring blessings to Elder Sister’s cauldrons that feed hungry children, and laughter to her little classroom. ”