Chapter 3
The Walk of Chance
RAHAT
The first prayer-bell rang after the sun had risen far enough to glitter golden on the wet spots in the cobblestones of the marketplace, amid the bustle of opening shopkeepers and early bargain hunters.
A poet would have said something about morning mists, of course, but Rahat’s nose told him some of it was beer, and some of that in various states of pre-digestion.
He thought again about Master Asharan’s comment about the baker’s revelry of the night before, and decided ruefully that they were likely on the right path after all.
Rahat took a step forward into the marketplace, smiling; and he very carefully did not step into the poetically sunlight-gilded puddle of questionable origins.
As Kamil scanned for skulkers and set out on a narrow path behind a row of market-tents that he clearly hoped would provide cover, Rahat hesitated at the tangled mess of ropes and stakes and crates that Kamil’s cat-pawed grace had navigated without pause.
Rahat was just beginning to puzzle out which of the tangled roads and pathways Kamil had chosen to follow toward the correct gate of the Imperial fortress and the haveli when a little girl shouted, “Rahat-sahib!”
A dozen more children and kittens took up the cry from around the market, and an absolute flood of them started to pour out of the nooks and crannies of stalls and crates and half-rolled sunshades.
“I’m so sorry,” Rahat said to Kamil, in the three seconds before the wavefront broke around them.
Don’t be sorry, Kamil said, although Rahat could feel the heroic effort it was taking him not to snarl and bush his tail like a battle-standard in the face of a howling mob — even a waist-high one. Enjoy them. They’re kittens and they’re delighted to see you.
And then Rahat couldn’t spare another breath for anything but the younglings’ eagerness.
“Rahat-sahib! Can I have another sweet?”
“Let’s make sure everyone has had their first, and then—”
“Rahat-sahib, I brought you a flower! Can I put it in your hair?”
“Oh, thank you, habibti, it’s lovely.” Bending toward the kitten so that the little tabby could tuck the flower behind his ear, Rahat tried not to wince as the next little boy chimed in.
“Rahat-sahib, who’s your friend? Can I pet him?”
“He’d prefer if you didn’t.”
“Awwww…”
“But you can pet me if you like,” Rahat assured him. “And perhaps Sahar in her basket, if you’re gentle?”
“I want a sweet too!”
“Of course, of course! Here you are…”
By the time the younglings had mostly finished petting him and petting Sahar and daring each other to try petting Kamil and scuffling over their dares, and sometimes tucking flowers into Rahat’s hair and beard, and sometimes braiding the fringe on the hem of his not-quite-priestly bath-towel drape, and asking for sweets throughout, the sun was quite thoroughly up.
The kittens were fonder of it than the children; the kittens sprawled anywhere that was dry and didn’t smell too unpleasant, and the children retreated to the sun-shades of the friendlier merchants, or in some cases their parents called them back to their chores.
“I’m going to be so late,” Rahat sighed, tucking a meadowflower that had tumbled out of his beard back into place as they took an unexpectedly sharp turn into a narrow gap between buildings toward another alley.
Neither the gap nor the street ahead seemed to head in the direction of the haveli, but he trusted Kamil’s knowledge of the back alleys of the Catsprowl far more than his own.
“Worth it?”
“Oh, yes! Yes, I can’t remember a more delightful morning. But I can hear the third undersecretary of the ministry shouting already, and that doesn’t even take foresight.”
An anxious mew caught his attention, and Rahat looked up to see the shy little brindle kitten from earlier perched on a window ledge.
“Ya habibti! Come, come, I have sweets for you; I promised! Priye, yes?”
She mewed again, looking at Kamil with very wide eyes, then imitated glaring and finger shaking down at an imaginary smaller figure… though Rahat thought the figure would need to be very tiny indeed to be smaller than this kitten.
“Ah, don’t mind me, I’m just fretting,” Rahat told her, rueful. “And a few more minutes won’t really change how much the third undersecretary shouts. Here, darling.” He took a sweet from the pouch and offered it.
She scampered over to pat his belly with earnest affection and took the bite from his fingertips, with sleepy happy blinks suggesting kittens were just as susceptible to fragrant rose-scented nibbles of bliss as a certain besotted human prince.
Then she tucked something round and soft into his hand.
Rahat peered at it. It looked like a little ball of yarn formed of dozens of brightly colored strands, possibly a weaver’s trimmed scraps, carefully knotted together and wound around itself.
This variegated ball of yarn scraps was almost certainly the most treasured toy this kitten owned.
“It’s wonderful,” he told her sincerely. “Look at all the lovely colors! But it must have taken you so long to make it; I couldn’t take such a treasure away from you.”
But she pointed toward Sahar’s basket, and made a dangling-and-batting gesture.
“Oh, for playing with Sahar and the kittens!”
She nodded eagerly.
“Well, perhaps we can share? I could use a piece about long enough to dangle enticingly.” He unspooled enough of the yarn to reach kitten-height, unknotted the nearest tie, and returned the rest of the ball to her.
“Thank you. I’m sure they’ll love it. Look, Kamil, look at all the different colors! ”
Kamil made a grumbling sound, informing him, You are an excruciating pain in my injured dignity.
Chewing on the tip of one of her claws, Priye looked up (a very long way up) at Kamil. Then she buried her face in Rahat’s bath-towel drape, trembling all over. Rahat stroked her soft little ears gently, concerned.
“Habibti, Kamil may look fierce, but I promise you, he would never hurt you.”
You are absolutely lethal to a tom’s reputation, shahzada, Kamil told him, ears flattened.
“Can you share what’s wrong?” Rahat murmured. “You don’t need words. Just help me understand?”
With a little mew, she tucked something else into Rahat’s hand, and huddled even smaller.
She was so tiny it took him no effort at all to lift her into his arms. She buried her face in the crook of his neck and clung to him, kneading for comfort as though he were her mama, and her soft fur tickled his throat.
What she’d handed him was a bit of rock, pale gray, with a hole bored through one end of it.
“Kamil…?”
“It’s a whetstone,” Kamil said. “Good for sharpening blades, or claws.” His voice softened, gentler than Rahat had ever heard him before. “So that I can keep our Rahat-sahib safe — is that right, littlest sister? Thank you.”
She nodded, and Rahat bit his lip to keep from giggling at the tickle. Kamil took the stone carefully, and stroked the sides of each claw against it, one at a time, just loudly enough to rasp. Priye’s shivering shifted into the tremors of the tiniest of purrs.
“Thank you so much,” Rahat told her, cuddling her close; she was delightfully soft, and much more accepting of hugs than Kamil. “We’ll all be safe with Kamil to keep our watch.”
“You had to say it, didn’t you,” Kamil sighed.
“Of course I did, because it’s true. Nothing will get past you that’s more dangerous than a cup of hot chai.”
That hadn’t been an entirely hypothetical example, of course.
The fretting shadows that had been simmering at the corner of his eyes for several minutes suddenly flared and spilled over.
Rahat put his hand over Priye’s sensitive ears a split second before Kamil growled and lunged at the man who’d just rounded the alley’s corner — and, yes, dropped his mug of chai.
“Shah–”
“Shut up!” Kamil hissed, tail lashing violently as he pinned the third undersecretary of the registry to the nearest wall with an arm-bar across the throat. Sahar’s basket still swung from his other arm, and she gave an irritated yowl.
“But he—”
“Shut. UP. You’ll scare the kitten.”
“But—”
“Are all your undersecretaries chosen for their stupidity?” Kamil snarled, sharp claws just an inch from the poor man’s throat.
Not entirely unsurprisingly, he fainted.
“I thought you said that wasn’t foresight, the third undersecretary shouting,” Kamil muttered, setting Sahar’s basket down much more carefully than he let the dead weight of the undersecretary slump to the paving-stones.
(Sahar sniffed at the undersecretary’s collar and the puddle of chai with similar levels of unimpressedness.)
“It wasn’t foresight; I’d expected Ahmed to do a great deal more shouting than that,” Rahat admitted, cradling the shivering little huddle of Priye with careful hands.
Ahmed was a loyal, honest, and devoted servant of the Ministry of Finance, and all of that was very much to the good.
But they had also worked together for enough years that Rahat understood Ahmed did not handle chaos or disruption to his systematic and orderly world well.
Ordinarily, Rahat agreed with him that an orderly world was much preferable to chaos and disruption.
But this was a particularly unusual morning.
“It’s all right, habibti,” he told Priye.
“Ahmed wouldn’t shout at you, and I’m quite used to the grumbling.
But perhaps we ought not linger exactly here. ”
“You carry the kittens, I carry the idiot?” Kamil sighed. “Come on, I know a good place nearby.”