Chapter 8 The Way Things Should Be Done #2
It was hardly her fault she had been born with a mind and a heart that were different than others’.
She had always been fearfully clever; she used her wit as sharply as other courtiers used their wiles.
He was certain that what she felt for her sister was her own version of love, through all her algorithmic models of the ways that other humans felt passions and desires that she did not share.
He was just as certain that she was brazen enough to consider his Highness to be nearly her brother, despite the heresy of such thoughts. He was certain that she treasured his Highness as dearly as any living being, and even more dearly than those cursed spellbooks of hers.
What he had not previously considered, what he should have considered years ago, was whether she was brazen enough to send his Highness to spring some sorcerous trap simply to indulge her own curiosity.
There had to be more to it than the cat.
There had to be. If his Highness had conceived a desperate desire for a small and pettable cat-companion, Kamil would have grumbled fiercely, but Irfan was certain Kamil would have permitted his shahzada such an indulgence.
And if his Highness had instead conceived such a desire for a summoned work of forbidden sorcery, Archivist Najra and her spellbooks were right there, and had been for years.
Irfan would still have been distressed at the heresy and the vulnerability, of course, but Archivist Najra had held her place and her power for decades, and she already knew his Highness would offer her anything. She had no need to bind his soul to ask him whatever she wanted.
If it was more than the cat… Irfan could see a vast array of possibilities that the enchanter might desire.
A charming little spy in the Ministry of Finance or the Archives, an entangling of Bastet’s power with the God-Emperor’s prophet, influence over the kindest and most powerful man in the oldest part of the realm…
an enchanter had hundreds of desires he might fulfill with a spell woven into his Highness’s heart. But what his Highness might desire…
Irfan hoped, desperately, that his Highness had felt his own desire. That the troubling dreams had not been the enchanter’s soul-binding all along. But of course a soul-bound man would swear his mind and heart were his own; it was what made such bindings so insidious.
If Irfan had had any idea his Highness was struggling with a matter of soul-bound fate, he would have worked harder to support him.
His Highness had spent too much of his life trapped between the thorns of duty and obligation and the visions he alone could see, pulled this way and that by heiresses he could not desire but was expected to, courtiers who desired his power far more than his person, and priests who could not accept even a hint of impropriety from the God-Emperor’s prophet.
If his Highness’s need to deceive himself in some matter of destined foresight has overwhelmed his usual restraint, I would have suggested his Highness should acquire a pocket-dog for that unquestioning, unpolitical support.
Cats are not known for their selfless, loving, and loyal service even when they are not actually demonspawned.
…It would have been beyond improper to offer himself to his Highness. His place was to serve, nothing higher.
But when the alternative was a soul-bond to a possibly-demonspawned bit of velveted sorcery…
Rubbing his brow against the rising headache, Irfan thought, I would have dared a great deal of impropriety to have spared his Highness this.
One of the khadim had left a floating bowl of lotus and jasmine blossoms next to the smoldering incense, had drawn a fine silken curtain across the southern panel of the mashrabiya for cooling shade but left the others open to ventilation, had straightened the reed pens and silverpoints and refreshed the inks on his desk, but left his papers untouched.
His people knew him so well, as he knew them.
As well as he’d thought he’d known his Highness.
Last night he’d thought certainly his Highness had simply been swept up in some scholarly enthusiasm in the Archives, that Archivist Najra would have tucked a blanket over him when he’d fallen asleep in his study and woken him in the morning to send him to his work.
This morning, it had become unmistakable that his Highness had somehow vanished.
Out of the haveli, into the city, into the hands of a soul-binder.
And his Highness was the nadhir, who foresaw the coming of trouble.
If Irfan had had the slightest hint… if there were anyone he could have called upon, any aid he could have offered, any comfort to his Highness’s unfilled need…
He flinched at the sharp sound of a rap on the door, and pulled himself together hastily. “Yes?”
“It’s Esmat the cook, your Eminence, if you have a moment?”
“Yes, of course,” he said, because there was nothing else he could say if it were an ordinary day and an ordinary cat and no questions of import weighing upon his soul. “Come in.”
Esmat led with her shoulder; her arms were full of a tray and a pot and two delicate porcelain cups, with a flutter of papers pinned by her fingertips beneath the tray. She closed the door behind herself with a long-practiced ankle, then blinked the moment she looked at him.
“I’m so sorry, your Eminence, if this is a bad time I can ask about the Convocation banquets later? But no wonder his Highness asked us to send you sustenance.”
He didn’t sigh. He couldn’t sigh. The kitchens were the most concentrated cluster of gossipmongers outside the barracks. He could smile ruefully, and he could ask, “Do I look so dreadful as that?”
“You are always as crisp as new-fallen snow, your Eminence,” Esmat said. “Which means that to see you ruffled, the situation must be dire. How can I help?”
“Your pastries are a marvel of the five realms,” Irfan said, “and that zafrani chai smells marvelous. Please thank his Highness for his thoughtfulness.”
“But won’t you see him much sooner than I will?”
Irfan froze. There had to be something casual and light that he could say to brush her concern aside, but it had already been a heartbeat too long, and then a breath, and then it was too late.
“You’re not angry with each other, are you?” Esmat asked, blinking.
“I am not angry,” Irfan said, and it was almost true.
“I am concerned. We are very nearly upon the most precarious diplomatic and religious balancing act for three years in the Greater Convocation, and now is when his Highness has brought home a cat. To walk upon the tables and scratch the silks and spill the ink and—” His breath was coming too quickly; he couldn’t let anything slip about soul-binding sorcery or concealed spies or assassins; and Esmat looked as though she was trying very hard not to laugh at him.
Laughter was better than the alternative, he told himself fiercely, even as it stung him to the quick that she thought he had no better reason than fussiness. He couldn’t let her think he had a better reason than fussiness.
“Surely we can keep it distracted with a nice saucer of nibbles in a sunny mashrabiya nook behind a solidly closed door.”
He couldn’t say I have no idea what sorcerous powers of enchantment or escape may lie within its grasp. Instead, he said, “His Highness’s cat is nearly ready to burst with kittens.”
“Oh, dear,” Esmat said, pouring him a cup of chai so that she could hide her smile behind a bent head and attention to the cup. “A month from now, they may be quite troublesome indeed. But the Convocation should be nearly completed before they can get too very far on their own little paws.”
“I’m sure you’re correct,” Irfan said, from within the shell of his most poised diplomat’s demeanor. “Now, you had a question about the Convocation banquets?”
“One of the apprentices spilled vinegar on the kitchen’s notes from the last Convocation,” Esmat said, “and I’m sure some of the priests’ requirements have changed since the last time anyway, but it would at least be a place to start.
Do you know if your scribes kept a copy of the menus from three years ago among the diplomats’ records, or should we inquire with the High Priest of Upaja? ”
“I’m quite certain we kept a copy at the time, but I couldn’t guess whether it has been filed among the Archives,” Irfan said. “If you send your apprentice to ask among the Archivists and I write to the High Priest, we can have your answer within a day.”
“I wouldn’t wish to put you to any further trouble, your Eminence.”
“I need to write to his Reverence in any case,” Irfan assured her, curving both hands around the warm cup of chai to keep himself steady.
“You do?” Esmat tilted her head like a curious bird. “You’re not — that is — please forgive me, your Eminence, but — you will be kind, won’t you, even if you are upset about his Highness’s cat?”
“If I were so unkind, I would already have written to the Ministry of Orthodoxy,” Irfan said, and sipped at the cup of chai.
It was warm and sweet and fragrant, and he reminded himself that his Highness had sent it with Esmat through care and concern.
He should return some gentle gesture, because if his Highness retained enough of himself to care despite the sorcerer’s influence upon his heart, then his Highness would doubtless be fretting.
“About the way his Highness felt for the High Priest? But that was years ago! None of us would ever — and of course it was all nothing but hearsay. We might have suspected, but none of us ever had proof, none of us would ever say anything to the Ministry—”
Irfan blinked. “About the cat, Esmat.”
“Why would you write to the Ministry of Orthodoxy about his Highness’s cat?”