Chapter 4 #3
“The nerve!” Hamda-khala gasped, as Hira pushed her through the door.
“Honestly, Hamda, you know how catfolk feel about sticky wet messes,” Ishta-auntie said, taking a couple more katayef from the smoke-floating tray as she walked past, then grabbing Geeta by the elbow with her free hand. “Thank you for the treats, beta. Do let me know when you change your mind.”
“About when we can come back for a bath?” Geeta-auntie asked hopefully.
Ishta-auntie sighed and said, “Yes, Geeta, that too.”
They closed the door behind themselves. The jali facing the alley usually weren’t charmed for silence, because most of the time Ashar wanted people on the street to hear the sounds of laughter and chatter from the entry room.
But it also meant that they all could hear what Hamda-khala was shouting about them as Ishta-auntie shepherded all of them toward the taverna two streets down.
It technically wasn’t open yet, but one of Ishta-auntie’s nieces ran the kitchen, so Ashar was certain they’d spend a fair amount of the morning airing their grievances over a sukurdan of grilled bites and pickles as sour as Hamda-khala’s expression.
Once the shouting had faded into a somewhat dimmer roar, Kalyani cracked the door to the Camellia Room open again.
“You heard all that, didn’t you,” Ashar said wearily.
“Yep.”
“I can think of one way to get them off our backs about marriage without losing the business,” he said. “I don’t suppose you’d consider marrying me?”
“Ashar, I adore you, but I’m not stupid enough to marry into the disaster of your personal life. And if you weren’t so overwrought right now I’d be a little insulted you thought I could be.”
“Entirely fair. I’m so sorry.”
“So,” Kalyani asked, popping a date into her mouth to chew. “When are you leaving?”
“I’m not leaving.”
“I’m starting to question your sense,” she told him. “If you left you’d never have to deal with any of that again.”
“I’ll still take the aunties over the alternative,” Ashar sighed.
“I know the aunties.” None of the aunties would dream of poisons or daggers in the back.
If Hamda-khala wanted to throw a kulhad of chai in your face, she also wanted you to see whose hand it had come from.
Hamda-khala usually kept to the street language when she was insulting a person’s entire lineage; Fathuna-khala sometimes forgot most of the neighborhood didn’t speak the same registers of the Imperial court language that her grandmother had known.
Ashar certainly didn’t speak the court language himself.
And Rahat had never spoken a single word that hinted at bringing a back-alley courtesan of a single night’s pleasant dalliance to the Imperial court with him.
Ashar might be terrible at mathematics, but even he knew he couldn’t afford to add together any calculations of a future upon an offer that had never been made.
Even if Rahat had been so bold as to make such an offer upon a single night’s acquaintance…
in all decency, Ashar couldn’t afford to accept.
The moment anyone learned that he was an enchanter who could lay charms strongly enough to blur a man’s will?
That type of power, in the hands of a back-alley courtesan whom a besotted shahzada suddenly sought to bring to the palace?
Rahat deserved better than for the courtiers to whisper that he had been charm-fudded by a grasping gold-seeker.
He deserved to be loved for himself, and for his court and his family to know he was loved for himself.
Not for them to fear he had been taken in by a charming, power-hungry enchanter from the Catsprowl.
And Ashar could no more change the nature of his innate magic than he could change the color of his eyes. He could never not be the same type of common-born, charismatic enchanter that the courtiers feared.
He truly couldn’t blame Kamil for his angry fear that the kind shahzada had been charmed against his will. If Ashar didn’t know himself, he would have suspected himself too.
“Right,” Kalyani said. “So, call me Camellia until this blows over. Hira, you’ll warn me when he changes his mind, won’t you?”
“You’ll know when I know.”
Scrubbing both hands over his face, Ashar said, “I am no more compelled to abandon my home and my neighborhood and my life’s work for the sake of one night’s joyful dalliance than you are to marry Chetan, Camellia.”
“Of course not,” she said. “But the difference is you actually enjoy your man. Why wouldn’t you want to follow him home and tangle yourself underfoot and purr at him until he keeps you?”
“I am not a scrawny alley-stray to be lured away by one of Hamda-khala’s fish heads,” Ashar said. “I find joy in him, not in any temptation of his coin. And I am almost certain he prefers finding a night’s refuge here to the place he lives, which neither of us would call his home.”
“Oh, one of those.” She spat a seed into a catch-bowl and popped another date into her mouth. “You have the worst luck in lovers, Ashar.”
“Not at all. He was entirely delightful,” Ashar said, carefully not looking toward the Imperial fortress. “And if fortune permits us to meet once more, I am looking forward to meeting the kittens.”
“He’s gone as mad as a poet,” Camellia groaned. “Priorities, man. Kittens do not pay the taxes or get the aunties out of our hair.”
“Why would they need to? They’re kittens. They’re their own delight.”
“Mad as a poet,” she said again.
“Look on the bright side,” Hira said. “He’s not a randy tom or a poet. He’s not yowling in the alleys at all hours and getting pots thrown at him.”
“Yet,” Camellia said, gloomily.