Chapter 2 #3
“What Kalyani wants isn’t something they care about,” Hira said. “Kalyani works here, with us. You know everyone thinks she slept with you to get her place. That’s why Chetan only got interested after she’d lost her eye.”
Ashar caught his breath. A tapestry he’d thought he’d understood was unweaving itself in his mind, and the new picture it formed was… less than welcome.
“I’d thought,” he said tentatively, “that Chetan was an overeager, clumsy puppy who didn’t understand how to explain that he cared for more than her face, and who didn’t know when to stop pushing. He’s… that’s… that’s not all, is it?”
“Oh, there’s that too,” Hira said. “We can leave it at that.”
“But that’s not all. And he has shown the rest to Kalyani, but not to me.”
Hira considered him for a minute, then leaned in to groom his hair. She did that sometimes when she wanted to comfort them both. “Will it bother you more to know, or not to know?”
“Please just tell me.”
“Randy young men often don’t handle rivalry well, or rejection,” Hira said.
“Chetan had been hoping that you would already have rejected her for her scars. You are handsome as humans reckon it, and a scarred woman would have a harder time selling some particular services, and she reflects on our House.”
“But that was my fault, not hers!” Ashar protested, horrified. “It was my fault I couldn’t heal her well enough, it was my fault I didn’t have the skill or the strength, there wasn’t enough time to take her all the way across the river to the Temple of Serket—”
Hira nipped his ear sharply. “It was not your fault at all,” she said. “Blame the cutpurse who came at her with the knife.”
“Well, yes, obviously, but if—”
Hira nipped him again. “Not. Your. Fault.”
“But—”
“Not the point, either,” Hira told him, ears laid back. “The point is that Chetan expected you would no longer want her, so he could have her instead.”
“That’s not how it works,” Ashar said, bewildered. “That’s not how any of it works.”
“You and I understand that,” Hira told him.
“Chetan is young, lustful, and not very thoughtful when his lust is involved. First he was too noticeably disappointed that you hadn’t cast her out.
And then she dared to reject his advances again.
So he told her that nobody else would make her a better offer.
Not when she’s worked where she’s worked, when she’s visibly damaged goods. ”
Ashar winced. “Twice my fault, then.”
“Not everything revolves around you. Not even faults.”
“The House of Jasmines, where her work is disrespected, is mine,” Ashar said. “The responsibility of that is mine. And if I could have healed her—”
“This is exactly why she didn’t want to tell you,” Hira sighed, thumping his ankles with a flick of her tail.
“Kalyani doesn’t blame you for Chetan being an idiot.
She blames Chetan for Chetan being an idiot.
And I can smell he does still want her; whether or not that’s love is a human question.
But you can see why she hasn’t wanted to give him the time of day ever since. ”
“I can, yes. I should apologize to her–”
“No,” Hira said. “Because then you still aren’t listening when Kalyani and I both agree Chetan’s the problem, not you. Just keep him and Padma out of her hair whenever you can.”
“Padma too?”
“You’re a man without a wife or even bastards. I’m catfolk, so it doesn’t matter that I know the finances better than you do; everyone thinks I hate water too much to run a bath-house.”
“You do hate water,” Ashar admitted.
“But I love money,” Hira said, whiskers twitching.
“In any case, Padma expects that when you retire from the business you’ll leave the House of Jasmines to Kalyani, who’s a human woman nearly everyone believed you were not just sleeping with but also courting — until today.
And then her son can have it from Kalyani, whom they both think no one else would want. ”
Ashar slid down the wall and buried his face in his knees. It seemed marginally better than banging his head against the tiles on the wall.
“Padma’s not the only one who’ll think that,” Hira added, with a cat’s merciless amusement in toying with her injured prey.
“Because all the rest of the aunties also talk about how tragic Kalyani’s ruination is…
while they lean on their sons in private.
Catfolk overhear things like that. We don’t actually sleep sixteen hours a day.
You just haven’t noticed, because the aunties who’ve come hunting you are the ones with unmarried daughters, not sons.
Now that the neighborhood has realized you’ve shared public affections with a lover who won’t bear you any children, the aunties with unmarried sons will be hunting Kalyani even more stubbornly. ”
“…No wonder she hit me with her shoe.”
“Was it worth it?”
“Yes,” Ashar said immediately. “Did you see Rahat’s face when Priye wanted a sweet of her own? Yes, it was worth it. I only wish Kalyani didn’t have to pay the price in fermenting gossip-brew.”
“Honey,” Hira said, “if she minded gossip-brew, she wouldn’t have spent three years working here and encouraging the neighborhood to think she’s sleeping with you.”
“Both of those can be true at the same time, that she uses the gossip and that I wish she didn’t have to.” Ashar sighed again. “And there’s another reason for me to find a teacher of life-illusions, for Kalyani’s sake.”
“Ask her whether she wants an illusion or the truth.”
“Yes, of course,” Ashar said, surprised. “But until I have the knowledge, I couldn’t even offer her the choice.”
“Why do you always have to do things the hardest way?” Hira yowled, with her claws flexing against the wood of the table she was perched on. “Learning a new magic you’re not suited to before you even ask if it’s needed. Born to fire, and you spend all that time with water.”
“I am not properly born to fire,” Ashar said. “Mistress Salimat says that’s at least half my problem. But also, where is safer for a not-quite-fireborn mage to make his learning mistakes than in a building full of tilework and bath-water?”
Hira laid her ears back and grumbled, because she had no better answer to that one. She headed to the linen closet and triggered the hidden wall panel behind the laundry-pile of damp towels.
“I’m taking money out of the emergency repair stash,” she told him, digging around until she came up with a jingling pouch and removing a fistful of coins, then setting it back in place and closing the hatch.
“Because you expect I’m so upset I’ll scorch something the next time I practice with incense…?”
“Because if you expect the city gossips not to subtract two from four and come up with a particularly gossip-worthy name on their short list before the sun sets, we need to either find or bribe a lot more smiling fat men into walking around in overgrown towels giving treats to children this week. Emergency gossip repair is still emergency repair.”
“May Upaja have mercy on my soul,” Ashar groaned, rubbing both hands over his face. “Because I don’t think Shai Vishal will.”