Chapter 9 The High Priest’s Penance #4
“Save for the mockery that I am a bath-house servant, and one without the business-sense to chase men who have two coins to their names. I know Shai Madhur is too pure for me, your Reverence,” Asharan murmured. “I am grateful that he honors me with his friendship, being as different as we are.”
In some disbelief, Shai Vishal pointed out, “You cannot always be this self-denigrating, or you would not have succeeded in your work as well as you have.”
“I am quite unaccustomed to shame,” he admitted. “I suppose it is ironically suited that I am shameless, given the nature of my work.”
“Not at all, young man. I have never known you to have cause for shame.”
“…Until now, of course.” His hands were knotted together, but not in the way of any god’s prayer.
Shai Vishal sighed, and reached out to set a fingertip under his chin, nudging his chin up as carefully as he disentangled kittens’ claws from his priest-cloth.
“Not even now,” he said, holding Asharan’s wide-eyed gaze steadily.
“Perhaps least of all now. You chose as kindly as you could, in a hurried dilemma that needed both attention and discretion. Of course I would have preferred to be consulted, but I can guess at your rushed circumstances with a departing guest’s foot upon your doorstep. ”
I can, in fact, guess at those rushed circumstances more keenly than you would ever wish for me to have guessed.
“But every time I stop to think, I think of something else I’ve overlooked,” Asharan said.
Shai Vishal could not say to him, I would scarcely expect a Catsprowl bath-house companion to have properly planned in advance for all of the layers of political and theological intrigues snarled around the God-Emperor’s own brother.
Instead, he said, “There is an irony in this as well, but I would advise you to stop thinking so intently. Much like Madhur, your strength is in your instinct for love and compassion, not your political calculus.”
Asharan laughed ruefully. “Ask Hira her opinion of my mathematics. And then cover your ears for the yowling. I am always the falling cat who absolutely meant to do that. But sometimes the water is too deep when I get in this far over my head.”
“You are allowed to ask for help,” Shai Vishal said, and put a hand over Asharan’s.
“We who are priests of kind gods find our souls’ comfort in helping.
Of course, I would not suggest asking a priest of a god like Mentu the Bloody.
And Bastet and Sekhmet’s priestesses would not understand why anyone would not proudly yowl your lover’s name in the streets so that all would know that you have claimed him for your own.
But Banebdjetet of the Reckoning may aid with matters of soul-calculus, if my own efforts are not skilled enough to comfort your distress. ”
“Not skilled enough? Your Reverence, you have already forgiven me far too much, and I haven’t even begun to understand the penance I owe.
” He tilted his head like a shyly peering brush-sparrow.
His eyelashes really were stunningly unfair.
“Are you celibate? —Shai Nanda’s enthusiasms aside, of course? ”
“I will not answer that, because neither answer will help you,” Shai Vishal sighed. “You do not need my forgiveness. You have not sinned against my God’s name or our priesthood. The forgiveness you need most is your own.”
“Do you…?” Asharan peered at him again. “You do believe that. But then I still don’t understand why my heart stings me with greater pains every time an auntie stops me in the street to brag of her daughter’s child-bearing hips, when all that has changed is that they have learned I have found delight in a man’s arms.”
Because you can’t wear your lover’s name proudly upon your lips, and you can’t forgive yourself yet for not being able to embrace him under his own royal name in front of the world. And I can’t possibly tell you why I understand that.
What else can I tell you that would be just as true, but differently so…?
“No matter what you do, you will disappoint someone,” Shai Vishal said, because he was the High Priest of Upaja and he knew this truth to the marrow of his bones.
“No matter how hard you try, someone will want more than you can give. And the nature of your service has enough in common with the nature of our priesthood’s service that you still feel their disappointment as keenly as young Madhur does.
Perhaps even more so; we are secure in our shelter at the Temple, and you must try to please as many as you possibly can, because of the demands of selling cleansing and comfort and pleasure for your coin. ”
Asharan gave a shuddering sigh and passed both hands over his face. “That is almost unbearably true, your Reverence.”
“I thought it might be. But I am old enough and weary enough to understand that it doesn’t matter whether they want little rose-sweets or the entire bath-house from you.
If Shai Madhur has only prepared date-balls, it doesn’t matter that the kittens want rose-sweets instead.
If you have only one bath-house to inherit, someone’s mother will be disappointed no matter how many daughters you might wed at once.
There is a practical limit on the number of wives and children one person might support in a building of fixed size.
” Considering his guest, he added, “That also leaves aside the question of whether you would wish to marry any women at all.”
“At this particular moment, it seems even less appealing than usual,” Asharan admitted. “Not that I mind women in general, just that I mind the expectations.”
And if you think the women of your neighborhood come with expectations, then your instincts guided you very, very well to keep his Highness’ name out of the gossip, Shai Vishal thought.
“Should I give your order my bath-house in penance, your Reverence?”
Only long years of training in deportment kept him from sputtering. “All the gods’ mercies, no. Don’t be absurd,” Shai Vishal said. “That penance would be entirely disproportionate, and none of us would be able to manage it on your behalf when people pay you in coin.”
“I suppose I could charge katayef instead?”
“Are you truly so desperate to free yourself from the aunties’ marriage-grasping?”
“I am truly so desperate to free myself from whatever it is that claws my heart so fiercely,” Asharan murmured.
“But freeing myself from the marriage-gossip would be an extraordinary relief as well. I wouldn’t wish for him to hear…
well… that he could be so swiftly replaced.
In either my heart or my finances. I had told him that I would not accept his coin, you see. ”
Shai Vishal did not say, He will not hear it so swiftly at all, given the circles he walks in. The immediate concern was Asharan’s own heart.
“He does understand the services that you sell? And what it means that you would not accept his coin for the night?”
Asharan buried his face in both hands again, with a tragic almost-whimper.
Shai Vishal sighed. “I do not judge your work,” he said.
“Truly I do not. But if…” How to say this obliquely enough, but still clearly…
? “If your partner is expected to continue a family’s bloodline, then he may well understand the pressure of…
something like your neighborhood aunties’ hen-pecking.
I cannot swear that he understands, of course.
But it seems likely that he would understand, if that might settle your heart. ”
He did not suggest Asharan attempt to find his beloved to hold the conversation for clarity’s sake, as he might have if he’d thought the beloved were simply a wealthy and round merchant. Vishal didn’t wish to be cruel with his dissembling of ignorance.
Asharan looked up at him with wistful eyes, and said, “He would understand the pressures and expectations, yes. I never thought we would be likely to …continue. But I would never wish for him to feel so easily replaced.”
“And you ask me for penance,” Shai Vishal murmured.
“It seemed a reasonable heart’s curative to ask from a priest?” Asharan said, rueful. “Surely I have erred, to feel such distress. Surely I have not foreseen how much trouble—” His voice caught short at that.
But Shai Vishal couldn’t let himself warn him about that, not without tipping his hand as to why foreseeing trouble caught at his attention.
Instead, Vishal told him, “You would not have asked Shai Madhur for penance, would you.”
“Oh, mercy. I wouldn’t have troubled Shai Madhur’s innocent soul with matters of… of intimate entanglements.”
“So, in distress, rather than coming to Shai Madhur for comfort, you come to me for a scolding instead.”
“If you wouldn’t mind?” Asharan quipped, and then blinked at some slight flinch or wince he must have seen in Shai Vishal’s face.
“It’s not — I mean — it’s not that I came to you expecting that you would hurt me, your Reverence.
Shai Madhur is… sometimes he is too kind.
As his friend, I treasure his kindness. But I do not necessarily trust his judgment.
Not in the intricacies of sex-charged relationships.
I trust you to judge me fairly, if I can ever convince you that I do seek your judgment. ”
And now he is consoling me, Shai Vishal thought, unsettled. Not a moment’s political calculus in him, but he shares Madhur’s keen eye for heartache. What an unlikely pair they make in every other way, but I am glad they find comfort in their friendship.
Now if only I had any innate skill in comfort to offer this poor soul, in Madhur’s place.
But he has asked me for my judgment, and even flinched in the expectation of it. If he seeks a High Priest’s hand to lift the weight upon his soul, that hand must be mine.
I would not trust the sensitivity of this task to another. And, selfishly, I would not give another the leverage upon the Empire itself that he has unwittingly given me.