Chapter 3 #4
“Thank you, your H-… sahib.” Ahmed took another careful breath, and asked, “Again if I may… what set all of this off to begin with?”
“I had a vision,” Faraj said, knowing both that it was entirely true, and that Ahmed would likely think it a diplomatic falsehood. “A kind man’s hands tending a pot of blooming jasmine in a window. I knew that I had to find him.”
“And was it worth all this?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Faraj said, and hoped he didn’t sound too desperately smitten. “He helped me to summon my lovely Sahar.” And the other things he’d learned from Master Asharan would, he hoped, remain between them.
“Will she live in the stables, then, with the barn cats?”
Sahar laid her ears back, and Faraj said, “Good heavens, no. She’s my familiar. A spirit made incarnate. Her soul recognized mine, and wove herself a body to join me. She is part of me, and I’m a part of her.”
“Sahib. That is exactly why cats are not allowed in the haveli, and why catfolk must use their taller shapes,” Ahmed said, rubbing his temples.
“Because any mage could send his familiar into the haveli and wreak untold mischief from within. To say nothing of assassins or spies. Leave her in the stables, or with the guards at the gate-house, or in one of the granaries where they welcome mouse hunters.”
Faraj remembered the note of sympathy in Hira’s voice when she’d seen in him things other people can have that you can’t. Ways other people can be that you can’t.
He tried, very much, not to abuse the power that came with being the God-Emperor’s third brother. He tried not to want the impossible or the impolitic or the ill-advised. And his servants tried to provide everything else he might want, within their power.
He had rarely wanted anything as irrationally or as desperately as he wanted to wake up in the mornings with Sahar walking on his face, so that he would know his heart was whole…
even with part of it living outside his body, purring into his ear.
He wanted to remember that Master Asharan was just as real as she, and not just a figment of a fever-dream.
And he wanted to be there when the kittens came, in case she needed anything.
It was beyond absurd to envy the stable-boys and their mouse-hunting barn-cats. But for a moment, he did.
“I have friends in the city who can keep an eye on her when her time comes,” Kamil said. “They know more about kitten-bearing than all of us combined.”
“But I want to be with her,” Faraj murmured. “If anything happened and I were too far away…”
He wondered again at the grace Master Asharan had offered them, to forgive Kamil for ending Nehal’s incarnation, even if he’d known that he could resummon him and Nehal would accept.
Faraj thought he couldn’t possibly be so generous with anyone that threatened Sahar; he didn’t know whether he could re-weave all the pieces of spellwork that crafted the potential for a cat-body for her spirit to step into.
He didn’t know what it might mean for the kittens.
He didn’t believe he could have managed the charmcraft alone; it seemed far more likely that Master Asharan’s power had woven the path, and that Sahar had chosen to accept the invitation because Master Asharan’s skill had eased her way along with Nehal’s, rather than anything Faraj had done himself.
Faraj should have asked Master Asharan how anyone could bear living with a part of himself outside his body, risking what any small soft creature risked in a city full of predators of varying morals.
“Sahib,” and it was beyond strange to hear Kamil call him anything but shahzada, unless that something else was idiot.
“When a queen wants her privacy for her kittens, even if she were admitted within the haveli, she’ll find it.
She’s likely to vanish under the bed, or into the attics, or into the rag-heaps at the laundry.
Or even the depths of the vaults, if she’s picked up your knowledge of where you hide things that are valuable and treasured and defended.
She’ll find the place she wants. I sometimes think the small ones pick the most awkward places where humans are least likely to fit on purpose. ”
“Your guardian is wise,” Ahmed said.
“He is. I know. He is a blessing.” Faraj bit his lip for a moment. “Perhaps I could take lodging in the city for a time?”
“Sahib!”
“If we were traveling to or from one of the capitals, there would be places I could stay with her,” Faraj said. “I can’t travel to the capital now, of course, not when we’re this close to the Greater Convocation. But would it be too terribly disruptive if I sought a room as a common man might?”
“When you travel, we scour each of the caravanserai from cellar to spire three weeks ahead of the day you arrive,” Kamil said. “And this is Tel-Bastet, not one of your brother’s capitals.”
Silently, he added, You know I’d expected your enchanter to have taken you captive and turned your mind last night. You know why I’d expected it. If you stay with him, you draw the powerful and ambitious to his door, when he fought so hard not to hear even a hint of your title.
And when you leave, if you are ever recognized leaving that place as yourself? He does not have a hundred guardsmen and a dozen mages to protect his bath-house from the spies and the scryers who would sell their knowledge of his name and your intimacy to the highest bidders.
Faraj sighed. “Could I stay in the palanquin? Or in the stables, even?”
“Sahib,” Ahmed groaned. “Are you certain you have not taken leave of your senses?”
“I am yours,” Kamil said. “Where you go, I follow. But I have to sleep sometime.”
“And you would not rest well in an unfamiliar, less secured place. I’m sorry.”
Priye set down the rubber fish she’d been gnawing on. She wriggled her way into Faraj’s lap and nuzzled her cheek against the crook of his shoulder. Gently, Faraj stroked her soft fur.
Esha brushed the canvas flap aside and stepped in carefully, nudging the scattered cat toys aside with her feet before she set down a tray of five simple unglazed kulhad brimming with chai.
“With my compliments,” she said, “and your cleaned garments, Ahmed-sahib.”
Ahmed grabbed the bundle she offered and fled behind the hanging curtain.
The tangled, twining shadows flickering at the corners of his vision lurched abruptly, but it was difficult to make out why in the dimness of the tent’s shade.
One of the challenges of his foresight was how much it depended on sight, unless people were actually screaming somewhere-and-somewhen.
He sighed, and squinted a bit, and took his best guess.
“I suppose I must go,” Faraj said, “if Ahmed and I are to attempt to share the excuse of the spilled cup. My lady Esha…”
She nearly dropped her own cup at that, and awkwardly caught herself short halfway to a prostration that had been pure instinct. “Yes, Rahat-sahib?”
“If I cannot find any way for Sahar to come home with me, if there is no choice but to leave her… might I prevail upon you for the occasional indulgence for her? You have such wonderful cat toys, and I think she will be no happier at parting than I.”
“You must leave her? Oh — the fortress. The cat wards, the wardens.” She tapped a finger to her lip.
“Rahat-sahib, the thoughts I am having are unbecoming a dutiful servant of the Empire. But they are most tempting to a Basteti woman who hawks her wares at the top of her lungs and feels herself unjustly robbed of a valuable sale, if the guards see fit to refuse delivery of a wealthy nobleman’s impulsive purchase of cat toys. ”
“Oh my,” Faraj said.
“There’s nothing I can do about the wards themselves,” she said.
“But I can make the wardens regret their choices. Priye, sweetie, would you keep an eye out here while I find out exactly how far I can bluff my way into the haveli with three baskets of very obvious cat toys? You can play with as many toys as you like.”
Priye’s ears perked up immediately at the mention of toys and mischief. She rubbed her cheek against Faraj’s, purring loudly, then scampered over to take a post at the front of the stall.
“My lady Esha, if we make a scene…”
“I’m the one planning to make the scene, Rahat-sahib,” Esha said. “They especially won’t want me making that scene while you’re waiting outside the gate, cradling your new darling in your arms because they won’t let her in.”
“Why are we talking about making scenes now?” Ahmed sighed from behind the dressing-curtain.
“Because the Imperials prefer to make scenes stop,” Esha said.
“The Imperials much prefer that there are no loud and raucous scenes right outside the gates to the haveli where the archives and the records of all of the taxes are stored. Especially not when a gentleman of Rahat-sahib’s stature is trapped outside the walls in the middle of the shouting.
Don’t they prefer for Rahat-sahib to remain safely within the walls and well-guarded there, Ahmed-sahib?
You are an excellent servant of your Empire. ”
“Esha, if you had fur I would kiss you,” Kamil said, grinning with all his fangs.
“I will not be a party to anything that reeks of insurrectionists,” Ahmed said.
“Then help me think of a better way for Rahat-sahib to be able to bring his cat home with him. That way, I won’t need to shout outside the gates about the sale I was forbidden to make by your cat-unfriendly policies!” Esha told him brightly.
“This is extortionate!”
“You only mentioned insurrection the first time.”
“That was before you resorted to blackmail!” He hurried back out from behind the curtain, wide-eyed and rumpled, and scooped up his kulhad to wave it in Faraj’s direction as though it were his last talisman of sanity.
“Sahib, the cup, the chai, the lack of blackmailing women— where did that future go?”