Chapter 5 The Way Things are Done
The Way Things are Done
FARAJ
In the end, gaining the entrance he sought was simple. Tangled, of course, but simpler to arrange than Faraj would have thought possible, before he’d asked… because he, specifically, personally, was the Imperial prince who had asked.
The guard returned with a very young Archivist-mage named Hikmat who wore a dozen spelled rings and an illusion of the beard he wished he was mature enough to have.
The guard and Ahmed both tried to explain the insupportable affront to The Way Things Should Be Done while also couching their language in rhetorical flourishes that were not nearly as subtle as the poets and courtiers of the God-Emperor’s palaces.
Young Hikmat looked overwhelmed even despite his illusion of maturity.
His beard looked translucent to Faraj’s sight, and Faraj tried not to be too rude about staring while the boy tried to stroke his beard the way elder mages did and his hands slipped through.
Faraj suspected the guard had chosen this poor boy so that, if the Ministry of Orthodoxy later chose to visit wrath upon whomever had violated the Imperial wards, Archivist Najra’s heretical influence would be blamed for the young Archivist-mage’s wayward morals, and the guard roster would not find itself a mage short in its own schedule.
But the boy was also just as clever as Faraj remembered from his own visits to the Archives. He must have realized his slip with his beard; he laced his hands behind his back instead, to hide their unsteadiness.
“Your Highness,” he said in a studiously grave voice, “it seems to me that a cat-spirit charmed to be your own familiar, summoned by your own voice and your own blood, should of course be welcomed into the shelter of the Empire’s fortress — just as your bodyguard who serves you is welcome in his taller form, so that no one could mistake him for any other.
Of course those who are yours are above reproach, because they are yours.
The problem is that any mage who knows what they look like could also take on their seeming much too easily.
And, well, small gray cats are not rare in Tel-Bastet. ”
Faraj nodded, keeping his hands busy petting Sahar so that he wouldn’t stroke his own beard in nervous sympathy.
It seemed unlikely to go well, a reminder that Hikmat’s notion of ‘easy’ illusions might not be quite so easy.
But then, for all he knew, the guards might not even have noticed Hikmat’s beard slipping.
Faraj was never entirely certain how much of what he saw, he was the only one to see.
“So we need something that we can teach the staff to recognize and to validate, something that would respond properly only when one of your own wore the token, to prevent counterfeiting.” Hikmat glanced up — not quite as long a way as little Priye, but still a very long way up — at Kamil.
“I mean no offense to your dignity, O m-most intimidating of guardians. Pray pardon me for… for suggesting… well. For the small ones who cannot loom as impressively as you do, the simplest way to attach an enchanted token to a cat is a collar…?”
The poor young man’s voice squeaked high on the last word.
But Kamil had no need to terrify kittens, no matter their species. His tailtip twitched a bit, but he made no other sign or sound of irritation at the word “collar.”
Visibly relieved, Hikmat gathered up his facade of lofty intellectual assurance and rattled on about resonances and bindings and symbology and charmcraft until his voice caught short in his throat again.
The shadow suddenly cooling Faraj’s back from the sun had a familiar point at the top, and at the four corners where the marching tentpoles were anchored as well.
“Greetings!” Esha said brightly. “I have brought a delivery of cat toys for his Imperial Highness, and did I happen to hear you mention a need for collars?”
So Mistress Salimat planted an illusion-double of the poles of a Catsprowl market vendor’s stall in the middle of the Path of Starlight, for maximum attention-gathering inconvenience, much like any cat would do when faced with a sunbeam and a choice of where to sprawl in it.
And she, Esha, and Hikmat made a bustling flurry of choosing among the ribbons and the charms and the jinglers in Esha’s baskets, to assemble half a dozen collars that could adjust as kittens grew.
Each of the ribbons they chose was a different color, in case the kittens all turned out gray as well.
Faraj pricked his fingertip again to offer a few drops of his own life-blood to set the enchantment on the little collar-charms, so that the charms would be bound by his blood into the Imperial wards and would only shine with the God-Emperor’s sigil when Sahar or, presumably, her kittens wore them.
That particular question of whether the kittens would be recognized for themselves by the wards would take more time to resolve.
Honestly, the part of the enchanting that had taken the longest was persuading Sahar to choose among the ribbon colors.
She had been very fond of both a vivid purple and a rich blue that complemented her fur.
Eventually Esha had settled on looping the two ribbons together so that half the collar was blue and the other half purple, and she tied it in a particularly ornate bow with the shiniest of the little golden bells.
This offering was finally acceptable to a cat who was very proud of her beauty.
Faraj hoped very much that he had actually beckoned a cat-spirit and not a full cat-goddess.
But even when you were a prophet, it could be difficult to tell them apart.
Any size of cat had powerfully-expressed opinions that were often much, much larger than its physical body.
He’d known Kamil long enough to have learned that much.
Thus bedecked in a manner suited to her majesty, Sahar meowed a demand to be carried across the threshold in state, befitting an honored queen.
Hikmat put a hand over his mouth; whether he was fluent in cat or in a magician’s familiar’s language, he was certainly fluent in the sound of demanding feline expectations.
Some noises crossed many species barriers.
Faraj said, “As you wish, O softest of queens.” He lifted her basket into his arms and carried her through the Lower Falcon Gate, wondering whether the ward was at the outer or inner edge of the wall.
He might never know, because he walked through them both with no difficulty whatsoever, and Sahar never made a sound of protest.
Standing in the courtyard a bit bemused by how simple it had been once everyone had made the exceptions for the God-Emperor’s brother that they would not consider making for anyone else, he asked, “Hikmat? Is that all settled, then?”
“Yes, of course, your Highness,” Hikmat assured him. “I admit I had worked out parts of the theory some time ago, purely as an intellectual exercise. I knew I couldn’t bring my — my cousin and her familiar here, you see.”
Stricken, Faraj asked, “But don’t you miss them?”
“I can visit them when I return home,” Hikmat said.
“She — they live in my father’s qalat, about two days’ ride from the outskirts of the city.
So Mayet is more fond of hunting mice than quills, but she will certainly make do with quills if we give her half the chance, and I’m a scholar.
Even if she were permitted, it’s much safer to keep her away from gallivanting throughout the rare books section with inked paws, because she delights in being chased. ”
“Oh dear,” Faraj said, thinking again of how many tax records Sahar and her kittens could leave their marks upon if they chose. “I suppose it will be some time before my Sahar has the energy to consider gallivanting, but perhaps I should look ahead, and acquire some kitten corralling materials.”
“Good luck with that,” Mistress Salimat said dryly. “Esha, if you need enchantments for that, find a different witch. I know my craft, but I also know how much mischief kittens can get into.”
Ahmed made a half-strangled whimpering sound as he shaped a reverent and desperate mudra with both hands, invoking a cloud crossing the blaze of the sun in hopes for a breath of the God-Emperor’s mercy.
Faraj looked up at Kamil and said, “You were no trouble at all when we were young. How much trouble can such adorable little ones truly make?”
Kamil coughed an incredulous noise just short of a hairball, and even Esha looked politely skeptical.
“Your Highness,” she said, “even in the Catsprowl markets I have heard the tale of the deadly young Basteti hunter who once sought your blood upon his claws.”
“And that was all a dreadful misunderstanding!” Faraj insisted. At least, from his own perspective, with his insights through time, it had been. And he’d been right… eventually.
Silently, Kamil flexed his claws, to make several very sharp points.
Ahmed began edging further from Kamil and closer to the guards, with eyes as white around the edges as a high-strung horse.
Faraj sighed. “Can kittens truly make that much trouble?”
“You have not spent much time around toddlers, have you, your Highness?” the guard asked, struggling with a straight-enough face.
“Start there. Then add gnawing, clawing, climbing, shredding, pushing of breakables off ledges, reckless endangerment, and multi-hour hide-and-seek adventures without diapers to the possibilities.”
“Ah. Er. Well. I do begin to imagine, yes.”
On the whole, kitten misadventures weren’t the sort of thing that were both imminent enough and dire enough to crowd out the other greater calamities clamoring to cast their shadows across his foresight.
But Faraj suspected he was about to need to learn how to spare some attention from disaster-level foreseeing in order to pick up on the adorable-nuisance variety.
“You could still reconsider, your Highness,” the guard said.