Chapter 6 Marketplace Mischief
Marketplace Mischief
HIRA
With Kalyani watching over the House of Jasmines and Ashar distracting an entire flock of aunties simply by walking out the front door of the building, Hira folded herself down into a much smaller four-legged shape and went out the courtyard window.
After a quick glance around to see who else might have noticed, she scrabbled her way up the facade and over the roofs.
From this vantage point, she could make her way through the city much more quickly and much less noticeably than if she’d walked on two feet with her necklace chiming and a pouch of coin in her hand.
Usually, Hira didn’t have to go hunting for fat priests wrapped in white priest-cloths.
She knew exactly where to find Tel-Bastet’s own Upaja-priests at the Temple of Bastet; everyone did.
But when she needed to find the Upaja-priests who were not their own Temple’s priests, the less familiar ones arriving from across the Empire to help Tel-Bastet’s local priests feed the Greater Convocation?
Then she was going to need more eyes through more of the city, because they might be coming in from any of the roads.
And she needed to find the traveling mendicants, because everyone in Tel-Bastet knew their own Upaja-priests by sight; the only chance of blurring Rahat’s identity came from the less-known mendicant priests.
Of course, she couldn’t tell her cousins that reason. Neighborhood cats gossiped as much as neighborhood aunties.
Wealthier priests of other faiths who were arriving for the Greater Convocation often came by boats on the river if they could afford to, because it gave them the opportunity to be seen and heard in all their finery in one of the most open expanses in Tel-Bastet.
Unfortunately, “if they could afford to” rarely applied to Upaja’s mendicants, who were known for never using coin.
So Hira stopped at the riverside wikala just to be certain she hadn’t missed her guess, and she bribed the catfolk at the doors to send word to her cousin Menna if any of Upaja’s mendicants happened to stop in with a company of wealthier priests.
And then she sighed, resigned herself, and headed over the roofs to the sunny rooftop cat-lounge of her cousin Israa’s favorite taverna.
Israa knew her well enough to know something was up by the droop of Hira’s whiskers.
“Yessssssss,” Israa exulted. “Look at who’s dragged her tail out of that soap-reeking water-pit and come to ask us a favor! Hira, any time you want a real job…”
“Weren’t you just telling me I was too lazy and domesticated last week?”
“That’s what nepotism is good for, honey.
” Israa stretched luxuriantly and rolled over to sun the other side of her lush gray fur.
Her green eyes gleamed in the sunlight. “So what are you here for? Thievery? Pouncing? Larceny? Mating? Mischief? Wanton destruction? Because if you’re here about your domesticated number-buggery, you have the wrong pride. ”
Hira thought about it for a minute. “Mischief.”
Astounded, Israa sat bolt upright. “Do my ears deceive me?”
“Mischief and mating. And gossip.”
“HIRA!” Israa pounced on her eagerly and started licking her fur into a disheveled kitten-mess, just to aggravate her.
Purring so loudly she couldn’t have spoken over it if she’d wanted to, Israa yowled into her head, I’m SO PROUD!
Our prodigal kitten has come home to the pride at last!
I KNEW under all that revolting humanity, there was a cat in there somewhere!
“NYAOWRRRRRRR—”
Let her go, Israa, cousin Menna yowled into both their heads. If you irritate her too much, she’s going to stalk off with all the gossip still stuffed between her ears. And what a waste that would be.
Hrrmpf, Israa said, and let Hira go. Menna leaned in to smooth Hira’s rumpled fur with a pleasantly raspy tongue.
There, dear, we all know Israa’s got the sensible maturity of an eight week old alley kitten. Now, about that mischief…?
“If you see any of the fat god’s priests who aren’t Bastet’s own, the ones coming in from out of town for the Convocation? Tell me where to find them,” Hira said.
“Why?” Israa pouted.
“You’ll have to tell me where they are to find that out.”
Even Menna’s pleasant grooming stopped short.
“But whyyyyyyyy?” Israa wailed. “You’re obsessed with those jingly shiny human coins! They don’t have any! Hiiira—”
“Find me some fat priests in white wraps if you want to know any more.”
“But the sunbeam is PERFECT right now! Hiiiraaaa—”
Menna said, “You’re devilishly clever, you know. Even I’m tempted.”
“WHAAAAAAT?” Israa yowled at the top of her lungs.
“She said mischief, Israa,” Menna pointed out, grooming her paw in some agitation. “Humans are often mischief-impaired. And priests are usually even more mischief-impaired than ordinary humans. So she’s playing the mischief—”
“—on the CATS?”
“I knew you would appreciate it more,” Hira said smugly.
“NYAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO—”
“See you later, Menna,” Hira said, squirming away from Israa’s outraged grab. “Let me know when you find some Upaja-priests.”
By the time Hira made it back across the river to the Catsprowl side, the cat gossip network had spread ahead of her.
Four assortedly brown, similarly round, and suitably white-draped mendicants she didn’t recognize were pinned to their seats in the food market by dozens of vigorously purring kittens.
The kittens were making it very, very clear that the only acceptable option was to continue making soft laps and pettings and highly personal cat-toys for the neediest of tiny creatures who had never been fed ever.
The priests were clearly both charmed and bewildered, because the kittens were not paying such avid attention to the other marketgoers.
But anyone who was a priest of Upaja had to be accustomed to the general notion that a creature who wanted to be fed would find them worth wheedling, even if they were more usually sought out near their shrines’ cauldrons.
The human market-cooks were a bit bemused by it all, but one of them was filling a thali with both human-suited and kitten-suited nibbles.
“Perrrrrfect,” Hira purred, as she pulled out several silk treat-pouches full of dried fish and sweets.
Before she’d decided she would keep Ashar for her own human because of his deft hands and attentive brushings, Hira had spent a lot of her time like Israa, basking on rooftops and occasionally helping herself to whatever someone hadn’t secured thoroughly enough.
Israa had taken to helping herself to the more thoroughly secured things, because she adored scratching that curiosity-itch (in ways Hira was not above exploiting for her own ends).
But Hira liked the stability of knowing where food she didn’t have to hunt for herself would be coming from, and how many coins it took to make sure of that.
And really Ashar did need someone in his life who understood the seedier side of mathematics.
Still, Hira couldn’t remember the last time she’d lent her pickpocketing skills to purse-depositing rather than purse-extracting.
The priests would have been ridiculously easy pigeons to pluck if they’d actually had any coin of their own.
One of them must have been court-born; he tried to rise to greet her until the kittens in his lap yowled their indignation and he hastily sat back down again.
But between the chattering of the introductions and the passing around of snacks and the wriggling of the kittens and the priests all simultaneously needing to make sure Hira had enough food offered to her and fretting over whether that garlic smell also came from the pigeons or just the pickles, she would have had a dozen opportunities to empty their belt-pouches.
If they had had belt-pouches, of course, or even belts.
Instead, she deposited a silk pouch full of dried meat in the hands of one of the priests who was helping his neighbor remove cats from his scalp. The neighbor’s long, tight-braided hair was tipped with jingling bells. He could not possibly have visited Tel-Bastet before in his life.
“First Convocation?” Hira said, finding the pouch of dried fish by feel and wriggling it free of her collection, palming it to be able to sneak it to him before too many kittens smelled it in her hands.
“How did you guess?” he replied wryly. “I’m Bekele, pleasure to meet you, are all the— ouch— are all the wild kittens this— hey, no, don’t eat that—”
“Yes,” Hira said, whiskers twitching as she helped him pry a kitten’s claws out of his braids. “Your head is entirely covered with jingly dangling kitten toys. All the kittens will be Like That. I’d suggest a scarf. And also fish snacks.”
“Oh, bless your name.” Bekele was more than happy to take her pouch of fish and wave it under the kittens’ noses until they leapt for the treats instead.
His other neighbor, the courtly one, struggled between kitten-distracting, kitten-petting, equitable distribution of the snacks, and that long-trained instinct to greet a stranger with a grace that the kittens were not inclined to permit him, because that was much less entertaining than mischief.
Hira ‘casually’ gave him the pouch she’d filled with rose-sweets, and removed another kitten from making a nest in his beard.
“If they call you Rahat-sahib, just row with the current,” she advised him, setting both kittens down close enough that they could gleefully pounce again and keep him from asking too many questions about why.
Four sets of ears perked up immediately. “Rahat-sahib?”
“Um? Upaja’s-blessings-be-upon-er-just-a-moment-please—” He made a hasty gesture toward what would have been a more formal hand-clasping and bow of introduction, if his elbows hadn’t suddenly been occupied by kittens climbing over him to demand both rose-sweets and more eager swatting at Bekele’s jingling braid-bells.