Chapter 3 #3
“All the better,” Esha said. “To a humble weaver like myself, it would of course be a great honor to be spoken of in such exalted halls. And if you would entrust me with your stained garments, the soap-maker three streets west also has a spell for swift drying.”
“This is something that is going to happen, isn’t it,” the third undersecretary said warily, staring at the bolt of fabric. “I am going to sit half naked in the marketplace with— with—”
“No more so than your average monk,” Esha pointed out.
“This man is not your average monk!”
“Well, neither are you, Ahmed-sahib; but I should still imagine it is preferable to wearing wet and stained clothes to your scriptorium.”
The third undersecretary took the cloth bolt from her and stepped behind the hanging tapestry that partitioned off part of the tent for privacy’s sake.
After a bit of rustling, one skinny arm held out a fistful of clothes.
Esha took them with a bow toward the tapestry, just in case, and she also bowed to Rahat before hurrying away toward her soap-making neighbor’s stall.
“Ahmed?” Rahat asked, since the third undersecretary showed no signs of re-emergence. “Are you feeling unwell?”
At that, he stuck his head back out from behind the tapestry, more than a little wild around the eyes. “Am I feeling unwell? I don’t know! Either all three of you have lost your minds, or I have!”
“Would you like me to fetch you another cup of chai?” Rahat offered. “I do feel somewhat responsible for the unfortunate fate of your first cup.”
“No. No, your H– no, sahib. I would not like to send you into the marketplace, wearing nothing but a towel, to fetch me a cup of chai.”
Ahmed stepped out from behind the tapestry, rather badly wrapped in the entire bolt of cloth, and he sank to his knees and bowed his forehead to one of the scratch-mats on the ground.
“Please, y-… sahib. Please put your clothes back on. And let us make haste to the ministry before the sky turns to blood and the jackals swear off carrion and the sun rises in the west. But at the very least, put your clothes back on first.”
Rahat laughed, a little, but he couldn’t pretend it was a happy sound. “I confess I will miss the street children, who did not find my figure quite so bluntly revolting.”
“Shah–” Kamil’s snarl cut him short, and the third undersecretary amended himself desperately, “Sahib. Sahib, it’s not — that’s not why—”
Little Priye hissed at him again. He dug both hands through his hair, and tried another side.
“Three days ago, sahib, if I had staggered into the ministry late for my shift, wearing nothing but a bath-towel and reed sandals — whether or not I was reeking of alcohol or hashish, would you not have been concerned for my state of mind? Would you not have wondered whether I was ill or bewitched or suffering some crisis of the soul?”
“I had not intended for a spilled cup of chai to become a crisis of the soul, either yours or mine,” Rahat sighed. “But you say to put my clothes back on, and… when it comes down to it, Ahmed, I’m not certain they are mine?”
“They were fitted to your measure, sahib. Whose else could they be?”
“They were fitted to my measure by servants of my brother’s household, in the colors of my brother’s heraldry, in the styles appropriate for my brother’s kindred, as dictated by my brother’s ministers of protocol,” Rahat said, fidgeting with the fringed hem of the towel-cloth.
“But I’ve wondered, this morning in the marketplace…
if I were not always my brother’s, who I might find myself to be?
Off duty, as it were. Others do have times they are not on duty.
I wondered if I might have one morning to be only myself, fetching my own cup of chai, greeting children who had never seen me in my brother’s robes of state, before my duty called once more. ”
“But you are always your brother’s, sahib. All of us are always your brother’s.”
“Yes,” Rahat sighed, “but, Ahmed, you can fetch yourself a cup of chai from the marketplace without it becoming a courtly scandal.”
“Sahib, if I were wearing nothing but a bath-towel draped like a priest of the fat god, it most likely would have been a courtly scandal!”
“You don’t have the figure to pull it off,” Kamil pointed out, droll.
“No, I… I can understand that,” Rahat admitted, rueful. “But I don’t have anything else that isn’t …his. I didn’t know any other way to learn… who someone might see if they looked at me, and they didn’t see his shadow first. If they only saw me, and no one else.”
“Sahib… why?”
“You know, that was nearly the first thing I asked myself when I woke up to a cat walking on my face?”
“And now why was there a cat walking on your face? Cats are prohibited in the haveli!” Ahmed wailed. “Any of them could be a Basteti infiltrator!”
“But Sahar is my own cat! Also I doubt she can read any of the languages of record, so the tax filings are quite safe from feline espionage,” Rahat hastened to assure him. “Although I’m less certain the ink-pots will go unspilled and the quills un-pounced-upon once her kittens arrive—”
“Her kittens,” Ahmed said, in the voice of a man whose last desperate grasp at a hope of order had just slipped away.
“Any day now, I suspect,” Rahat said fondly, gesturing toward the basket where Sahar was sound asleep. “She’s quite round, isn’t she? Kamil teases me that she recognizes we are of a kindred shape.”
“Kamil… teases you, s-sahib?”
“Don’t tell anyone I told you this,” Rahat confided, “but he has occasionally revealed a sense of humor.”
Kamil, who was very pointedly honing his claws on the whetstone, said, “I got it implanted the last time I took a gut-stab.”
Rahat put a hand over his mouth to keep from giggling, because poor Ahmed looked as though he couldn’t decide whether Kamil was serious, and, if so, whether he would murder an undersecretary for an inappropriately timed laugh. And Priye looked nearly as uncertain as Ahmed.
“What set all of this in motion, sahib?” Ahmed asked, wearily. “Please tell me it is not a matter of a woman.”
“Are you entirely sure you want me to answer that, Ahmed?” Rahat asked.
“Because there is still another choice here. The other choice is that Esha brings us our cleaned clothes, and we get dressed, and we go to our work laughing together about a spilled cup of chai. And then we hope that no one at the Ministry of Orthodoxy looks more deeply into the matter.”
“Yes, please,” Ahmed said, eyes closed and a hand passed over his face. “Please let it be as you say, sahib.”
But Rahat still saw the shadow of Ahmed’s leapt-to conclusions in the leering shadows at the corners of his own eyes, as clearly as though he’d shouted it: of course it is a woman, it is always a woman and a commoner and usually a harlot, it is always a woman who sees opportunities to seize in a royal name and title, I’ll have to have inquiries made about any rumors of bastards.
A wild, impulsive part of Rahat wanted to march into the ministry wearing nothing but his towel-cloth and his flowers, declaiming to everyone he met that he had found someone who treasured him for himself, someone who had given him such sweet proof of his regard, to taste and share and know.
To declare that he understood now why love was madness as the poets sang it, and that his love was as mad and glorious as any poet’s lay, bought and paid with no coin but the promise of kittens.
But he didn’t need to be a prophet to foresee how badly that would go, both for himself and for Master Asharan.
Because Master Asharan had gone to such lengths not to hear Rahat’s other name spoken, and the sudden descent of Imperial inquisitors upon the little Catsprowl alley-neighborhood would be an unjust and unwarranted cruelty.
He gently folded Rahat’s name together with Master Asharan’s and tucked every thought of them into the magic of the little enchanted rose-pouch. Then he settled the mantle of Faraj’s names and titles back onto the shoulders he squared.
“By the way,” Faraj said idly, “you’ll also be relieved to know that it is not at all a matter of a woman.”
It crashed against Ahmed’s assumptions so abruptly Faraj could all but see the shockwaves ripple.
“It’s not? That’s wonderful! I — I mean— but then if it’s not, why on earth…?”
“The other path,” Faraj reminded him. “The cup of chai, the laughing together, neither of us wearing towels as we walk together into the ministry… more particularly, the following lack of inquisitors and physicians and divination spells to enquire about madness or ensorcellment. We both prefer that path, yes?”
The way toward it was vanishingly narrow, but Faraj could still hope that diverting the shouting toward the existence of a cat-familiar rather than a lover would be kinder for all involved. And the path broadened if Ahmed helped him.
“Yes. Yes, absolutely, sahib. A thousand times yes.” Ahmed bowed his forehead to the scratch-mat again, and said, “Do not permit me to threaten that path, but… if I may ask… can you tell me that you are safe and well?”
Faraj honestly hadn’t thought Ahmed would be so bold as to care about him as a person, rather than as the God-Emperor’s brother or as an uncommonly chaotic disruption to the work of their shared ministry. Oddly touched, he reached out to lift Ahmed from his obeisance with both hands.
“I am both safe and well,” Faraj assured him, smiling.
“I am not ensorcelled. I have all my faculties about me. On the question of women, I have this morning conversed with two women and one molly, none of whom have proposed to me any activities more intimate than sharing a bite of breakfast or cleaning clothes. I’m afraid I have no idea how many dozens of children and kittens I’ve met, though Kamil has most likely filed the identifying characteristics of each of them in that steel trap of his mind. ”
“You’re not wrong,” Kamil said.
“Is that of any comfort to your concerns, Ahmed?”