Chapter 4 #2
Ashar stifled a sigh, and began to fill a tray with kulhad and katayef and dates and apricots and a chai-pot that was light enough to maneuver one-handed. Perhaps their mouths might be more pleasantly occupied if he could get them to chewing instead.
Geeta-auntie took a katayef as though it were a lifeline, and chewing gave her the chance to not make another too-public mistake.
Ishta-auntie was more than happy to take a kulhad and nibbles, but she was busy gathering sharp things from the debris of what the other two were spilling.
The room didn’t really need more noise, but letting Ishta-auntie keep watching and noting things didn’t seem entirely safe either.
Ashar said to her, “I am somewhat bemused that all of this has spilled over from one delightful night I shared with one delightful man, when all of you know that I will not kiss and tell.”
“It’s because you do keep your intimate matters private, beta,” Geeta-auntie said, patting his arm as she took another katayef. “You keep your clients’ business to yourself, so if you showed him to us, he is not a paying client, is he?”
“He is not a paying client,” Ashar agreed. “Which is why I am even less inclined to kiss and tell.”
“But he is not of the neighborhood! So if he is a fraud with designs upon this House, of course it is our duty as your neighborhood aunties to— er— um— that is—” She put the katayef in her mouth and chewed vigorously.
“To establish our own designs on your House before this newcomer gets the chance to beat us to it,” Ishta-auntie finished for her.
“Ishta!”
“He’s not stupid, Geeta. And we’re not subtle.”
“Should we be?”
“A bit late for that now,” Ishta-auntie said. “But also, subtle hasn’t gotten him married yet, so if Hamda is about to try to push Oma on him I’m at least throwing Safaa into the ring.”
“Safaa may not be eager to be thrown anywhere,” Ashar pointed out. “And I am quite particular about consent.”
“When did consent ever have anything to do with matchmaking busybodies’ scheming?” Ishta-auntie chuckled, and sipped at her chai.
“That would be among several reasons why I have not married.”
“Well, you’re not getting any younger,” Ishta-auntie said frankly, which Ashar thought was quite ironic since he was half her age.
“This bath business is for young people with the stamina for it. The rest of the neighborhood may think you’re being wooed by some impoverished vagrant sham-priest who pays you in sweet words and kittens, and that’s one type of problem, but me?
I’m betting you’re smarter than that. Which leaves us with the other possibility, that you set up the priest-farce yourself, if he’s rich and you’ve just found your golden palanquin ride out of here. ”
Ashar kept breathing, and remembered to blink.
Hira was very good at keeping her silence, but cats were sometimes a little too honest with their bodies. She went much too still, and her ears and tail slicked down flat.
“I thought so,” Ishta-auntie murmured, satisfied.
“I don’t kiss and tell,” Ashar told her quietly. “Rich or poor, priest or pariah, you will have nothing from me save that he is treasured.”
“Since when has that ever stopped the gossip, beta?”
“I will defend his name and honor with every power in me. And I’m not going anywhere.”
“Pull the other one,” Ishta-auntie said, under her breath, watching the others squabble back and forth. “If you’re too smart to be scammed by a fraud, then you’re also too smart to stay in the Catsprowl if you’ve found yourself a rich lover who’ll whisk you away from here.”
“You’ll believe what you will,” Ashar said, “and you’ll gossip as you will. I’m smart enough to know I can’t stop that. But, Ishta-auntie, I know you’re smart enough to recognize that the truth is the most keenly bladed gossip you can wield.”
He took a deep breath, and lowered every professional facade he’d ever practiced. He looked her straight in the eyes and said with every sincerity in his soul, “I’m not going anywhere. He promised me kittens, not coin.”
Ishta-auntie sighed deeply, and reached up to pat his cheek. “I did think you were more sensible than that, beta,” she told him. “I wish you didn’t mean that, because now none of us are going to know when you’ll change your mind until you do.”
“I’m not going to change my mind.”
“Do you think you get to have it both ways because you’re a man? Honey, if he’s rich and he’s got a reputation to protect, you don’t get to keep everything. You’re a bath-house harlot. You’re his woman on the side. Either you lose him, or you lose this place. You don’t get to keep both.”
“I know,” Ashar said. “Last night’s joy is a pleasure I’ll never regret. But I’m fully expecting that I’ll lose him. I’ll be surprised if I even meet the kittens.”
“Oh. Hmm.” A bit wistful, Ishta-auntie said, “Well, it’s good to know you’re clear-eyed about it.”
“Have I ever been otherwise? Which is why I’m so baffled that you’re wasting your gossip on a single night’s joy.”
“But it’s too sad if you lose him so soon,” Geeta-auntie said. She had stopped watching the back-and-forth of Hamda-khala and Fathuna-khala’s dickering in order to reach for another katayef. “We should fix that for you. We’re very good at matchmaking, you know.”
Ashar hadn’t reassembled his professional face yet; he stared at her as blankly as Ishta-auntie did.
“Geeta,” Ishta-auntie said, very slowly and deliberately. “If you matchmake this man with anyone but one of our daughters, then the building goes to the one-eyed girl’s future husband, and Hamda will wring your neck herself.”
“Oh! Right, yes. …But it’s still too sad.”
“Thank you for your consideration, Geeta-auntie. You’re very kind to think of my happiness,” Ashar said, because he could say it and sincerely mean it.
Just as sincerely as he also meant the rest: “And I absolutely will not kiss and tell. So if anyone adds yet another set of entanglements by matchmaking me with any rich or poor fat men they can find in the entire city, trying to guess which of them I have known particularly well? I may donate this whole damned building to the priests of Upaja and beg a sleeping-room back from them, just to rid myself of any possible questions of bride-prices and inheritance!”
“Oh,” Geeta-auntie said, blinking. “Oh, dear. Don’t do that, please.
I mean, all those Upaja-priests would mean more husbands for our daughters, I suppose, but none of them keep any coin at all, none of us would get a bride-price more than a bowl of kheer.
And you couldn’t run your business that way, and it’s seven whole blocks to Imari’s bath-house. ”
“I’m glad we all understand that no one wants that. And, as long as we are not being subtle,” Ashar said, “I don’t see why none of you can believe Hira is the best person to guide the House of Jasmines. She already runs the finances. I’m useless with numbers.”
“She’s catfolk,” Ishta-auntie said. “Do you honestly think if you left catfolk entirely in charge, any of them would keep the House of Jasmines as a water-type bath-house? Sandboxes and sunbeams, yes. Water… she’d either replace the baths or get a human for them, and then we’re back to the one-eyed girl taking over the place. ”
“Her name is—”
Ishta-auntie put a hand over his mouth and said, “Ask me how many market-witches I’m willing to bet are spending the morning making scry-charms for the sound of her name within ten blocks of this building. Three dirham says it’s more than a dozen.”
“Oh, five hells.”
His own wards were very sharply tuned for privacy, set to bar malice, but not mischief.
Anyone who fully warded against mischief found their businesses snubbed by catfolk within a day…
not to mention that most of the aunties and uncles of the Catsprowl couldn’t have crossed his doorstep either.
(Which was not usually as desirable a situation as it currently felt like.)
Mischief left a lot of room at the corners of teasing, taunting, and vexation, for little spells like hexes and scrying, and countercharms to foil them, and other ways for minor mages to make a living by vicariously dueling with their rivals’ works.
Ashar ran through a mental list of the more skillful scry-fuddlers and silence-charmers he knew of, subtracted three whom he knew had unmarried grandsons, and added visits to several market-witches to his market list. Along with a visit to Padma-auntie if she was sober, and Chetan, and Venkat-uncle had a nephew about Kalyani’s age so he’d need to test the waters there, and…
he needed more than five hells to swear by, really.
Hamda-khala made a noise Ashar had last heard from an angry cat in an alley, and grabbed one of the kulhad of piping-hot chai to throw.
Ashar hastily dropped his tray onto a quick twist of incense-smoke to free both hands. He spun the chai-wave away from Fathuna-khala, flinging it against the tiled wall to steam and drip instead.
“All right, that’s it,” Hira said. By instinct, she would have tried to grab a misbehaving kitten by the scruff; humans didn’t scruff the way cats did, but the collar of Hamda-khala’s kurta gave her a reasonable grip. “You abuse our hospitality, you lose our hospitality. Out.”
“I demand you unhand me, you mangy animal–”
“Better groomed than you are,” Hira said, marching Hamda-khala toward the door. “You want a catfight, go to the taverna. Attacking people with hot sticky spice-water is uncivilized.”
“You work in a bath-house, beti,” Ishta-auntie pointed out, as Hamda-khala sputtered about disrespect and insults and Fathuna-khala shrieked at her in a dialect of high Imperial that Ashar couldn’t pretend to understand.
“I’m degenerate, not barbaric,” Hira said. “Out. All of you.”
“But I wanted a bath,” Geeta-auntie said wistfully.
“Come back later.”
“How much later?”
“When you’re housebroken,” Hira said, tail lashing. “Or at least trained well enough to pretend in civilized company.”