Chapter 6 Marketplace Mischief #2
“He’s actually Shai Rahim,” Bekele’s other neighbor said, gently juggling three kittens to try to keep them out of Bekele’s braids and off the table.
“I’m not sure that’s going to matter,” Hira said wryly.
“If someone comes up to you yowling about Rahat-sahib, they probably mean they want you to give them treats. Someone who wasn’t one of our own Temple’s priests fed half the younglings of the neighborhood this morning, and you lot have been known to feed the rest.” It was entirely true, and she’d made sure she could say it in a way that was entirely true, so that she wouldn’t need to wonder what her ears and whiskers were telling Israa’s little inquisitive watchers.
“Here, pass me a couple more kittens so Venkat-uncle has a place to set the thali.”
Hira had no reservations about getting both arms full of kittens along with a mouthful of kitten scruff when some of the wigglers were feeling excessively rambunctious.
Amid the chaos of juggling the kittens and the thali and tying up Bekele’s braids with a scarf one of the kitchen cooks had spare, Hira got names for the other two: Tarikku and Shai Prahlad, who looked to be the eldest of them.
And she snuck treat pouches into the crooks of their elbows and next to their hands without them noticing — at least until kittens started batting at the drawstrings of pouches they hadn’t known they had.
Once Venkat-uncle set the thali on their table, the grilled chicken and brined fish and roasted slices of spiced lamb and the four varieties of cheese and yogurt were finally even more interesting than the bells in Bekele’s braids, which had been so cruelly hidden away from fascinated kittens by the kebab cook’s scarf.
Poor Venkat-uncle’s vegetables and pickles were utterly ignored by the kittens, but happily that still left several katori of dal and vegetables un-nosed and un-licked for the humans to consume.
The humans juggled kittens and katori and the handful of bells they had managed to retrieve, passing around the mustard-sharp and sour aam ka achaar and lemon-brined fish that were natural kitten repellents.
They also scattered lemon juice and greens liberally over the sliced bazmaward and any spiced lamb and yogurt dollops they wished to keep on a scoop of bread long enough to deliver to a human’s mouth.
While the kittens agreed that the crisp-fried taameya disks were not kitten food, they would gleefully have made them into bat-and-pounce toys if given the opportunity.
Now that he finally had his hands free, though not yet his lap because two of the kittens were soundly asleep on his thigh, Shai Rahim cupped his hands together at his brow and bowed toward Hira in the reverence of gratitude for generosity received.
“May Upaja’s blessings be upon your name and your house unto the tenth generation,” he said fervently. “And also have you had your breakfast? You seem not to be eating…?”
Hira sneezed a giggle she tried not to admit was a laugh around her mouthful of kitten scruff. In comparison with cats’ eager chaos, humans were adorably predictable sometimes, and Upaja’s priests even more so. It was terribly useful, how predictable humans could sometimes be.
“It’s almost midday, I certainly hope you’ve had your breakfast!” Shai Prahlad said. “If you have not, we must mend that!”
“But if you are catfolk, what time is breakfast?” Tarikku asked.
Hira took the kitten’s scruff out of her mouth and licked her chops to get the fur off her tongue.
The little wiggler was now eyeing the yogurt katori, which would make a mess of her silk pouches if she let the kittens fling it everywhere, so she didn’t set the kitten all the way down onto its scamperful little paws.
“When the person who brushes you and feeds you wakes up at dawn, that is breakfast, and when he wakes up at sunset, that is breakfast instead,” she said.
“But if your owner sleeps so late and you haven’t eaten all day, aren’t you hungry?” Bekele asked, full of concern.
“Who said he was my owner?” Hira grumbled, ears flattening. “He’s my human. He brushes me and feeds me when I tell him to. Who do you think is in charge there?”
“Oh — oh, a thousand apologies—”
“And also who said I haven’t eaten all day? My human calls the first food after sleeping ‘breakfast.’ I just call it ‘food.’”
“Well, have you had food recently enough, then?” Rahim asked.
“I wouldn’t say no to some more fish, if there’s any that isn’t citrus-doused,” Hira admitted.
Humans were so useful for catching fish.
Somehow they seemed not to mind being flapped at and splashed on.
To judge by Ashar’s bath-house, most humans even sought out dunkings and soakings of their own free will.
But surely these good priests were not so depraved that dunkings and soakings would be enough to lure them away from the market to the bath-house… were they?
She was a catfolk who enjoyed accounting, so she wasn’t about to call anyone’s tastes unnatural. But other humans sometimes got loud about Ashar’s depravity.
Being catfolk, she didn’t entirely understand what most humans found so alluring-but-contemptible about depravity. To judge by Ashar’s sales offerings and the corresponding accusations, “depravity” meant “skin rubbing on skin with slipperiness involved.”
Hira herself was blessed with a wonderful plush pelt with no mangy skin patches bared to lick or gnaw or rub. So she had no need of such depravity herself. But in her experience, catering to the soggy, soapful, and skin-slippery forms of human depravity could be very profitable indeed.
As the priests fussed over how to prepare some fish for her without either taking food away from kittens or presenting her with citrus-brined fish-pickles, Hira considered the flock of them, ears flicking at the chatter of the marketplace.
On the one paw, these priests were human and covered in road dust, so they were likely more susceptible to the depravity of Ashar’s baths.
On the other paw, Upaja’s priests not only didn’t understand profit margins, they also seemed to have some kind of religious allergy to silver.
And while she could perhaps have lured them to the bath-house with promises of food, the Catsprowl market’s food stalls had a much wider variety of nibbles on offer. Most of the vendors already knew Upaja’s priests would gladly trade vegetable chopping or dish scrubbing for their meals.
Hira understood how to tempt cats with some combination of food, toys, and curiosity, and how to tempt humans with some combination of food, coin, and water-sodden depravity.
But she had never needed to tempt any of Upaja’s priests before.
Humans agreed that Upaja’s priests tended to be good people, and humans described “good” priests as priests who were also “not depraved” — despite how much Shai Madhur enjoyed the ache-relief of Ashar’s baths and massages, and how much other humans teased him about that.
Without the lure of either food or anything resembling coin, she wasn’t sure how far depravity alone would get her with a flock of good priests who so eagerly fed kittens.
Still, she’d taught Ashar and Kalyani nearly everything the two of them knew about throwing themselves into a venture headlong, twisting about midair, landing approximately on their feet, and looking like they’d meant to do that all along.
They weren’t bad at it, for humans. But Hira was confident she was better. After all, she’d been born with it.
She was going to dangle human-style fetish-lures in front of the priests of Upaja, with absolute confidence.
They could not possibly be offended that she thought they were depraved enough to be tempted.
And if they were offended, she would not apologize; a cat was always correct, and a cat always meant to do whatever had just happened.
We have baths that are wet, splashy, full of soap and oil on bare skin, and this is a desirable thing, somehow, Hira told herself firmly. And then she pounced.
“You’re missing a few bells,” she said to Bekele, while scooping up another kitten whose butt-wiggle suggested a pounce into the yogurt was imminent. “Would you like to come to my humans’ place for some grooming? You’ve been walking a long time, and they have hot baths and—”
“Oh, yes, please,” Shai Prahlad said, cupping both hands to his brow.
“And I didn’t even get to the soap,” Hira said, feeling her nose twitch as she tried not to snicker. “My humans are very good with brushes and petting and—”
“You had us at hot baths,” Tarikku told her, with a blissful sigh.
Gambling on human depravity never fails, does it, Hira thought, trying hard not to laugh no matter how much her whiskers were twitching. “Wonderful. I’ll be glad to show you the way.”
“Ah — is this what is commonly referred to as a ‘seller’s pitch’?” Shai Rahim asked, uncertain of the words in the street-tongue, which suggested right along with the accent that he had been Imperial before he’d sworn himself to Upaja. “I’m afraid that none of us—”
“Carry coin? I know,” Hira said.
“But we can carry water and wood!” Bekele said hastily, feeling among his many braids to learn how many bells had been liberated from his person by newly-jingling kitten-scamps.
“You can if you want to,” Hira told them. “But I’d rather be paid in gossip.”
“Beg pardon?” Shai Prahlad said, blinking.
“Humans gossip wherever their mouths aren’t occupied,” Hira said.
“Baths are good for that, obviously. But somehow you still manage it around food, too. Upaja’s priests serve food wherever they go.
Which means you’ve just arrived from other cities with your heads full of gossip that nobody else has heard yet.
” Grooming the back of her ear idly, Hira told them, “I’m catfolk.
I want to know everything. And I want to know it first. I’m sure my humans will trade that curiosity-scratching for some wonderful petting in the baths. ”