Chapter 9 The High Priest’s Penance #2
“Not me personally,” Shai Vishal admitted. “I seem to be forbidding. But Shai Madhur…”
“Oh, of course the children would be after him; everyone knows what a sweetheart he is,” the courtesan sighed, running a hand through his absurdly beautiful curls. “I should have hurried with that last batch. But I of all people know there’s no outrunning rumor in this town.”
“I can ask one of our mendicants to help watch the cauldrons, if you’d like to have a private word,” Shai Jyoti offered them.
“I find I am intimidated by the thought. Is this what shame feels like?” the young man asked, rubbing at his chest. “How unpleasant. I much prefer being shameless.”
“What have you done that you feel to be cause for shame?” Shai Vishal asked.
“Nothing,” the young man said fiercely. “That is also the problem. That, plus it seems every woman with a marriageable daughter in thirty miles has lost their mind at once. But I will not kiss and tell. Not even to a High Priest whom I revere. But I should at least have warned you about the sweets, except that I didn’t have time until after it was already done, and…
” He rubbed at his heart again. “I truly dislike whatever this feeling is, as though I should regret what I cannot regret?”
“If you wish to speak to the unburdening of your soul,” Shai Vishal said, “Shai Madhur’s shift has recently ended, and he is the most comforting of us.”
“I am not sure whether I need comforting or scouring,” the young man admitted. “I am fairly sure I owe penance for the trouble I have made. But I cannot actually regret any of it.”
“Well, then perhaps I am the best suited after all,” Shai Vishal said, and swung his cauldron’s palta around so that Shai Jyoti could reach the handle more easily.
For all that Shai Vishal had first known him as a winsome, coltish boy with a ready smile, he had to admit that he had grown into a breathtakingly handsome man who was very, very well aware of how to use his charms.
Shai Vishal had never been the focus of those charms before, and he had the unsettled impression that the young man wasn’t even aware of what he was doing.
It couldn’t be accidental that, rather than sitting upon a guest’s pillow beside Vishal’s scribe-table, he had instead perched himself in the mashrabiya’s window-ledge at the exact angle where the sunlight through the carved screen glanced through his jade-bright eyes and carved his features from honeyed amber and gilded his luxuriant sable-dark curls with glimmerings of bronze and gold.
It couldn’t be accidental that he’d shrugged the collar of his vivid blue kurta loose enough to bare the golden arch of his throat and the sweep of his collarbone.
But it also didn’t seem conscious, either.
After years of such dedicated study of the performance of his body-arts, his instincts for the angles of sunlight and the embodiment of elegant beauty must have been nearly as well-honed as a cat’s instincts for the warmest sunbeams. Somewhere along the way, he must have learned that his beauty could often win him indulgences, just as cats’ purring charms often let them escape a scolding.
Still, Shai Vishal had never seen anyone make himself so emphatically stunningly handsome in the direction of Upaja’s High Priest before.
Even before Vishal had been stern and middle-aged, he had always been fat and scholarly and pious.
Most of all, to the marriage-market’s point, he had long been known never to touch coin through devotion to his chosen faith.
His family of birth had despaired of him because of it.
Shai Vishal had never been a catch worth the fishing. He was almost bemused by the tug of such an exquisitely presented lure.
His judgment had never been swayed by lust in his life. But he was an artist; he had always had a certain weakness to beauty. Floundering in waters deeper than he had expected, he cleared his throat and tried to settle his unsteady balance.
“You use more than one name among the community,” Shai Vishal said, “and I have known you since you were a child.” (Perhaps that might remind him to reel in the lure a bit.) “Which of your names would you prefer I use now?”
“Oh. Um. I… would you call me Asharan? I cannot imagine you calling me either master or Chameli-sahib, your Reverence.” He fidgeted with the cuffs of his sleeves; something about the way he tugged at the hem shifted the fall of the sunlight and shadows against his throat.
“Thank you, Asharan.” Shai Vishal folded his hands on the surface of his scribe-desk so that he would not fidget himself. “I will not, of course, ask for intimate details. But if you are to relieve your heart’s burden, I would ask you to begin in the place that feels most involved?”
“I am so sorry I didn’t warn you,” Asharan burst out, and again it echoed dizzyingly somehow.
“I didn’t have time, I didn’t have space — I’m used to thinking of the performance within the walls and within the time, you see?
I make a very good performance of charm and confidence as long as I don’t have to keep it going too far past the doorway.
You’ve seen a cat fall off a window-ledge and pick itself up and its whole body shouts I meant to do that? ”
“Yes, of course,” Shai Vishal said, hoping his beard hid the quirks of his amusement.
“Right. Yes. Inside the House of Jasmines, I know how to throw myself into the performance and land on my feet every time. Except that this time I did need to cross the threshold and take it outside, he — he needed that affirmation. I needed him to know that I wasn’t ashamed to be with him.
I wasn’t! I’m not! Except that I didn’t think of much beyond how he needed the affirmation, and every time I turn around things get more complicated.
I thought of what it would mean to him that the aunties saw us together, but I didn’t think of what the aunties would think that I’ve been seen accompanying a man outside the privacy of my baths.
And I’m not married, and I own the building, and now they’ve all lost their minds with the matchmaking with their daughters! ”
“You have my utmost sympathy,” Shai Vishal said, from the depths of his soul. Asharan blinked at him.
“That’s the voice of experience,” he said. “How did you escape it, your Reverence?”
“I don’t suggest you give away everything you own, swear off coin, and gain fifty pounds,” Shai Vishal sighed.
“Not everyone is suited to Upaja’s priesthood.
I acknowledge and honor your sincere devotion to our God and our service.
But I think you would not find the cauldrons a joy in the way that you find your baths and your perfumes a joy. ”
The young man flinched again. Shai Vishal shook his head, frustrated.
“That’s not a criticism,” he said. “It’s an observation of the difference in our natures.
I would be miserable facing the need to present myself as a charming, attractive, and vivacious personality.
Just as you would be miserable calculating the donations in the storehouse against the daily usage and deciding how many pounds of which aging vegetables to cook before they cross the threshold into compost.”
“And that also seems a more worthy and valued endeavor,” Asharan murmured.
“Unto each their own calling,” Shai Vishal told him.
“This city can be pungent enough even with your bath-house to offset the accumulating odors. I assure you that I do most sincerely appreciate your efforts on behalf of our nostrils. But, unfortunately, I also cannot recommend my own escape from the fortune-seekers to you. We will need to seek another path to your heart’s ease between what you cannot regret and what you feel obligated to regret. ”
“I would truly welcome your advice,” Asharan said, rueful. “I couldn’t even haggle for my chai spices without being pursued this afternoon.”
“That, I fear, is not an experience I’ve ever shared,” Shai Vishal admitted, reflecting that even when he had been a wealthy Imperial heir he had never been pursued through a marketplace by young women or their mothers.
Be less stunningly gorgeous was unfair and unworthy advice to give; it was hardly Asharan’s fault that he was an attractive man who had not sworn off coin, and who was currently known not to be occupied by any particular woman’s attentions.
And Upaja’s priesthood considered curse-work to be anathema; as Upaja’s High Priest, Vishal had sworn never to invoke his gentle god’s wrath without grave need.
(No matter how tempting the occasional curse might be when he opened another sack of donated grain and found it seething with weevils.)
…Upaja’s priesthood considered curse-work to be anathema.
But young Asharan was known to be enough of a mage to have claimed the title of master, and to have worn it without shame in other settings.
Scurrilous rumors aside, Shai Vishal had seen enough of his mage-talents to know that his claim to mastery was not solely in the more prurient reaches of the body-arts.
“I have not studied the magical arts myself,” Shai Vishal admitted, “but is there any relief you might find in… well… the enchanter’s equivalent of a fly-swatter? We of Upaja do not curse, but we also dissuade the flies and rats quite firmly, for the sake of our foods’ healthfulness.”
“If I were to sting the prying noses of every gossiping auntie and uncle with newfound designs upon grandchildren begotten of my loins, I would have no business left within a month,” Asharan sighed.
“And I would still prefer their gossip focused upon me, rather than upon those dear to me. Which does bring me back to poor Shai Madhur and the patting and the treats. I had thought the morning’s treats would have kept the young ones distracted until the rest-hour, at least. The children have never pestered me so avidly for their morning chai. ”
“Your chai is less intensely sweetened than your rahat al-hulqum, I imagine.”