Chapter 7 Trial by Catnip #2
The outer balcony garden was one of Faraj’s more carefully designed refuges.
The garden centered on a babbling fountain whose rippling path over bell-chimes and harmoniously pitched stones had been planned both for beauty and for discretion.
Scry-charms couldn’t cross running water, and soft voices were less likely to be heard through the fountain’s chatter and a touch of delicate warding.
The benches set in the shade of the mashrabiya-enclosed balcony a story higher had a careful trickle of dancing water splashing behind them as well as the broader streams to the front and sides.
Faraj stepped into the center of the scry-warded garden benches and settled Sahar’s basket out of splashing range. Then he held out his arms, and Najra flung herself into his embrace with a sound she’d clearly hoped would be mistaken for a laugh.
“You found him!” she said, hugging him until he squeaked; that foresight hadn’t even needed prophecy. Then she let go and scrubbed at her face again. “T-tell me everything.”
“Come back here,” Faraj said, offering his arms again. “You are my Designated Cuddle-Assistant, yes? Cuddles are…” He sighed. “Very much needed, I think.”
“The jali isn’t glazed, the — the backlighting — Esha and Ahmed—”
“There are so many more terrible tales they could tell of my forbidden cat and my unforgivable stubbornness than of a hug in a sunlit garden with three chaperones and a friend in distress.”
“Then n-nobody needs more weapons.” Najra scrubbed at her face again. It wasn’t like her to let anyone see her weep, and she seemed frustrated that she couldn’t manage to stop. To Kamil, she said, “I’m s-so sorry. You shouldn’t have had to defend me.”
“Not you alone,” Kamil rumbled. In the grip of the catnip, he was rubbing his back against the carved texture of the jali, claws flexing rhythmically against the empty air, and Faraj thought he didn’t realize he was doing it. “My shahzada foresaw a threat. I responded. …What did you see?”
Faraj took a breath, but the words caught in his throat. The Chamberlain would have pricked her with silver to seek her banishment and I would have felt it were too closely tangled into Master Asharan must have felt it too and poor little Nehal.
They were both watching him too closely. They both knew him too well.
Najra said, “I’m betting on silver for banishment, something sharp somewhere in the tapestry kit. I’m not planning to test the hypothesis, for the record.”
“Yes,” Faraj managed, because it was true enough. “Thank you.”
“And because it was the Chamberlain, I’m betting he would have gone for Sahar. Which also suggests you’re spell-bonded enough that you’d feel her injury if your foresights warned you.”
His throat had closed entirely, and he couldn’t look at Kamil. He nodded a little.
Wryly practical, Najra said, “Maybe we’d better prepare an excuse for you to take a personal day off your schedule at short notice, if you’ll share her experience of kitten-bearing.”
“Merciful stars, yes. We need an excuse that isn’t food poisoning, because I would truly hate for the kitchen staff to be questioned or chastised or, mercy forbid, replaced over a misunderstanding like—”
Najra put a finger to his lips and said, “Clearly that wasn’t the problem you couldn’t speak of. So what was the problem you couldn’t speak of?”
(Najra could be just as ruthless in her hunting of knowledge as Kamil was in his hunting of danger. Most of the time, Faraj appreciated it more than he did at the present moment.)
“Personal, then,” Najra said, rubbing her chin.
She had never mastered the knack of silent speech the way most catfolk did, the way Kamil had taught Faraj; but with insights like hers she didn’t really need the pawing-through of other people’s thoughts, because she would have been even more terrifying.
“If it had to do with anyone else, you’d be fretting with us over how to help them. ”
“Must we really?” Faraj asked, plaintive.
“Your foresight says it matters. Your bodyguard just overdosed himself on catnip on the strength of his faith in your foresight. Don’t leave him in the dark, Faraj.”
She only used his personal name when it was important.
In public she called him your Highness, of course, but in the private study she often amused herself and the Eldest Archivist with pet-names.
Faraj briefly wished she’d called him something like your Royal Cuddliness, because then he could have laughed.
On a deeply personal level, he understood the ache of little Priye’s struggles with finding the right words to not hurt someone. Every word felt sharp as cracked glass underfoot, and he had to keep walking.
“If… if I would feel… when the Chamberlain would. Um. Would seek Sahar’s… ending. Last night… my teacher, his familiar…” Faraj’s throat closed again, and he couldn’t force another sound around the knot, for fear it might come through as tears.
Kamil bit at the stone with a panting growl, still rubbing his back against the texture of the jali as a slightly more controlled choice than rolling around in the grass batting at seed-stalks under the influence of the catnip.
“I can’t tell you that I’m sorry,” he rumbled.
“I don’t have your foresight. I thought you’d been entrapped and enchanted, just as the hajib fears.
If you’d told us what you’d told Najra, we could have known otherwise.
” Under the drug-addled haze, the pain in his voice was much more clear than Kamil would ever have wished if he were sober: “Why couldn’t you tell us? Why couldn’t you tell me?”
Faraj buried his face in his hands, but it did nothing to block out the memories.
There had been a thousand other paths he could have chosen, for years. A thousand ways for him to tell the Chamberlain, to tell Kamil, even to tell a fellow priest. And not a single one of those other ways had led him to last night.
The Chamberlain would have doubled the guards and set extra guardians to watch his every step, rather than believing the shahzada and his Archivist were merely distracted by some paperwork chase that led them into the back alleys of the Catsprowl.
Kamil would have brought a squadron with him in some of the paths, and brought his towering sharp-clawed and sharp-tongued self in others.
And even in the vanishingly few paths where he would have been willing to take his smaller shape until they arrived, Kamil’s very first words to Master Asharan had always sought to separate them, to drive a common-born Basteti bath-house courtesan away from the God-Emperor’s wealthy and powerful brother.
Even last night, Faraj had been blessed by the utter freedom of that blissful time before Kamil had hunted him down.
And even then, Kamil had tried to drive them apart, before Master Asharan’s most human charms had persuaded him that his protective defenses were not entirely needed.
But Faraj was, ever and always, the nadhir. He had always dreamed of trouble.
He had always known that reaching through time toward the hand of the man who tended that jasmine plant in the window would lead to more and more trouble.
A year ago, on the night the springtime stars had last aligned with the stone lacework of the jali screen in his visions, Najra had almost persuaded him that it was worth the trouble he would cause to reach for his own joy.
And he had resisted then, telling himself he couldn’t cause so much distress with his own selfishness. She’d been persistent—
—and not a single part of this was Najra’s fault. And neither was it Kamil’s.
His choice to leave without a word, for the chance at that one night with his name left unspoken. His choice not to warn the Chamberlain or the Deputy Minister, who would have tried to stop him.
His choice not to warn Kamil.
His own choice, his own selfishness, and Nehal had died and Master Asharan had felt it—
Sahar yowled Stop that noise! directly into his mind.
Faraj realized he’d been weeping, and shoved a hand over his mouth to try to stifle the sound.
Sahar climbed into his lap and planted her forepaws on his chest and started licking the back of his hand with a raspy tongue. He ventured to stroke her head and she promptly started grooming his cheek, as though he were one of her kittens.
Along with it came a wordless but quite clear mama-scolding: If the cat-enchanter had not needed to summon Nehal into a new incarnation, then Sahar and her kittens could not have come to her chosen person either.
Sahar was well pleased with her incarnation, and she expected to keep her lovely, soft, round, warm body. She did not want a world where she had not heard the cat-enchanter’s call because her chosen person had made less trouble.
Making less trouble was positively uncatlike.
“What’s she telling him?” Najra asked Kamil quietly.
“She likes having a body,” Kamil murmured, one foot scratching at the garden path. “She wouldn’t have been called into a body if I hadn’t killed his rafiq’s familiar.”
“That’s my fault,” Faraj protested. “Not yours.”
“The reason you couldn’t trust me enough to tell me is my fault,” Kamil said. “Why couldn’t you tell me? If I don’t know, I can’t mend it.”
“I can’t ask you to change your soul,” Faraj said, sniffling a little despite himself.
“Your devotion. Your protection. You’re a guardian befitting the God-Emperor’s third brother.
It’s just that… I needed not to be the God-Emperor’s third brother.
” He gulped hard. “The God-Emperor’s third brother has no place in my rafiq’s arms.”
Kamil made a noise somewhere between a yowl and a grumble, gnawing on the wooden bench for a frantic minute, tail thumping solidly against the jali. When he could master himself again, he panted, “Najra, I need a favor. From his Designated Cuddle-Assistant.”
“May I?” Najra asked Faraj, a bit wistful.
“Esha and Ahmed—”