Chapter 11 A Feast for the Gods #6
“It pleases us greatly,” Faraj replied, lifting his voice to make a point of the royal plural to the gathered crowd. “To honor both Order and Beauty, we delight in the wisdom of your choice.”
Farida bowed once more, then untucked the silk veil at her waist, pinning one end under her toe and reaching up above her head to limn the soft billowing of a lotus petal, softly lit from within by the lamp in her other hand.
Half a dozen other dancers ran to gather around her, untucking their scarves and pinning the petal-ends underfoot as they began to slowly, elegantly unfurl each petal of the lamp-glowing lotus one dancer at a time.
It was best performed late in the evening, on a clear night like this with a near-full moon, when the lamps would shine through the silk and illuminate both the petals and glimpses of the dancers within.
Farida and Faraj had come to a wary truce over the years.
Although she felt his lack of lustful interest in dancing-girls as a threat to her standing, she also sternly appreciated that he would not impose himself upon those dancing-girls, and would not bestow intimate favors to set off even greater rivalries than the ones the qiyan already squabbled about among themselves.
Faraj did not need nubile gyrations at his banquets with priests — especially not with both Anuket and Neferkamin in the gathering.
He didn’t mind that Farida was slow, methodical, and poised compared with her young proteges’ swift feet and youthful stamina.
What he did need was Farida’s years of experience with managing the attention of a diverse audience that often included priests, scholars, and honored guests who were not human.
That included her years of judgment in selecting a routine like The Blossoming of the Lotus so as not to exuberantly flutter their gilt-edged scarves around cat-priestesses and a hair-triggered cobra-priestess.
He had tried to explain his gratitude to her, and he hoped that she believed him.
But she had been sent to the dusty, ancient, often-overlooked backwater haveli that passed for Faraj’s court as a hand-me-down from his brother Ziyad twenty years ago, when Ziyad had already felt her to be past her prime, and Faraj feared she would never fully trust a prince’s promises of favor again.
Behind the cover of a sip at his cup of honey-wine, Neferkamin murmured, “Haven’t you put her out to pasture yet, your Highness?”
“You and I are why he has not, you realize,” Anuket said, nudging Neferkamin in the ribs with an elbow. “Not to mention the cat-priestesses.”
Sekhmet’s Priestess had taken up the pointedly alert guardianship of the High Priestess of Bastet.
Pakhet’s Priestess, meanwhile, was staring at the occasional eye-catching flutter of the youngest dancer’s scarf with huge black pupils and a twitching tail-tip, coiled in readiness for a single excuse to pounce.
“Neferkamin,” Faraj said softly, “if I may prevail upon you for those promised reinforcements…?”
“Oh, send the shepherd to entertain the cats,” Anuket pouted.
“Elias is kind, but he is surely not as experienced in distractible teasing,” Faraj explained, fidgeting with one of the arched coconut slivers of leaping fish.
“Whereas I am confident Neferkamin has developed the best-honed instincts of any mortal man in the Empire when it comes to knowing exactly how far he can press his luck, his flirtation, and his teasing before he is slapped across the face, with or without claws.”
Anuket laughed aloud, clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle the sound at a glare from the musicians, and spent a while wheezing with the need not to irritate the qiyan further.
“I am wounded to the quick,” Neferkamin said.
“You know he’s right!”
“Of course he is. Which is why I am wounded to the quick.” Still, a certain wry merriment glimmered in his eyes with the warm shine of the dancers’ lamplights.
He bowed to them both with a hand to his heart, gathered up his cup of honey-wine, and moved to settle himself squarely between Pakhet’s Priestess and the dancers’ sedately arching petal-veils.
Pakhet’s Priestess flattened her ears back, but Neferkamin reached up with a confident hand to scratch the best spot on her cheek, just beside her ears, and within a few moments Faraj could hear her grumbly purr even over the music.
With the sun fully set and the prick-points of lamp-flames scattered about the courtyard like a scattering of golden stars, Faraj settled his mask of blandly smiling tranquility more firmly into place.
Any prophetic shadow vivid enough to catch his gaze in the dark would need to be truly dire, but he couldn’t let himself fret about what he couldn’t see.
Other people somehow made their way through the world with no foresights at all, and in the inverse people grew restless when a prophet looked fretful.
So in the dark, beyond the limits of his own vision, he placed his faith in his people — Farida, Hadil, Irfan, Kamil, even Neferkamin, this evening. He smiled into the glittering lamplit splendor of the night, and held to his faith in their skill and dedication, and nibbled at his maqlouba.
And his people upheld his faith in their order. Every step from every dancer was precise. Every note from the musicians was pitch-perfect. Every dish served and every glass filled by the khadimuna was flawlessly presented and exquisitely delicious.
Faraj smiled on cue, he prayed on cue, he spoke without stammering when he needed to.
He ritually washed his hands between each course, he kept his utensils straight, he made what seemed to be the appropriate gestures at the appropriate intervals.
He even quoted the necessary verses when one of the priests challenged his memory with fragments of three-thousand-year-old scriptures, all while watching his Chamberlain’s cues for the timing of every stage of the almost-ritual performance.
He prayed with particularly heartfelt relief over the judhaba course, because Hadil had handed the platter supporting the steaming dish to him with a smile: perfectly golden in the peaks, soft as a pillow beneath the glaze of roast drippings, heaped with succulent slices of lamb and pheasant, and not at all overbaked through delays of either political or theatrical dramas.
Holding it up to the brazier offered him enough light to glance at the shadows, but the worst he foresaw from this dish was the Priest of Ta-retiu’s irritability at his juniors’ eager overindulgence.
After the judhaba and the fresh fruit and sweet halawa that finished the banquet, all that remained was for three of the khadimuna to carry incense and ushnan hand-powders for the diners to cleanse sticky fingers and freshen the air.
The others were happily partaking of the leftovers within the modest concealment of the serving-hall, but Faraj was pleasantly surprised to find his little blossom holding the fine-ground fish hand-powder for the cat-priestesses.
Since the catfolk would likely lick at their paws as soon as no Priest of the Assessors was watching, he’d talked with Kamil and Esmat over the years to develop a blend which offered a suitable cleansing texture and also tasted appealing to groom from fur.
The other khadim held a more floral and woody blend, because Faraj had to admit his human nose preferred those scents to the lingering smell of dried fish.
Side by side, neither of them flinched when the Cobra-Priestess slithered over to taste the air above each of their offerings, although they were standing close enough to lean into each other for support.
“Feeling emboldened, little onessss?”
“His Highness has promised you will not bite us,” the little blossom said, “and I trust in his prophecies.”
“With your livessss…?”
“With life and soul alike,” she said, chin up, and yet trembling. Faraj got to his feet and straightened the skirts of his jama, walking over to place a hand on each of the young ones’ shoulders.
“Neferkamin,” he murmured to the High Priest of Menas and his wide dark eyes, “you may wish to look away.”
“How can a High Priest claim his faith more frail a reed than a servant’s?” Neferkamin asked, and moved to stand beside him.
“Your sssscentsss and powderssss cannot masssk your fear.”
“They don’t need to,” Faraj said. “They only need to mask the smoke and drippings from the roasts.”
Beketmeret hissed in either displeasure or amusement; Faraj sometimes had difficulty telling which was which, with her. He stepped forward, putting himself between her fangs and the young servants, trusting Neferkamin to steady them if needed, and rolling up his inner sleeve to bare his wrist.
“In your greatness, your Glory, you have never needed to sate yourself with tiny mice when a more tempting power stands before you,” he said, offering her his hand and his bare wrist. “These little ones are under my protection. Take my hand first, in whatever way you will, and let us be done.”
Beketmeret bent her head in what would have been humility from a human, but which let the ticklish flicker of her tongue taste the bare skin of his wrist.
“Keep your hand,” she said, “and your dussty assshes of rossses.” She slithered back to the brazier and coiled up more tightly than usual, either sulking or saving her warmth for the night.
Faraj didn’t sigh his relief; he couldn’t admit that much in front of so many eyes. But he cupped his hands together next to the servant’s bowl of sweet-scented hand-powders.
“With all due respect to our catfolk-priestesses,” he said, “I fear I am even less inclined than usual to make my hands smell edible.”
With a slightly hysterical giggle, the khadim tipped a measure of the scented powder into his cupped hands so that he could rub them both clean and dry, then offered him a cloth to dust the remnants away.
“Thank you, your Highness,” the little blossom said.
“Thank you for your faith,” he replied, smiling. “My brother’s peace is strengthened by the many hands that hold it so dearly.”
“With all respect to the God-Emperor’s peace,” Neferkamin murmured, “his Imperial Majesty is not the praiseworthy man we see here, tonight, standing between his people and danger.”
“Oh — well, of course it is my honor and my duty to stand in His stead, whenever I may.”
“How do you somehow manage to be the most foresightful and yet most oblivious fool I’ve ever met?
” Neferkamin sighed, and offered his hands to the shocked-looking khadim with the bowl of powdered fish.
“If you would indulge me, young one, I would like to smell lickable to someone in this mad menagerie. I hope at least the catfolk will find me diverting.”
“You need never question your appeal, O treasure of Menas,” Faraj sighed.
“At any other time you would be right,” Neferkamin said. “But tonight… well.” He managed a crooked smile. “Modesty is dreadful. Even for a few hours. I don’t know how the rest of you live with it.”
“We do muddle through, as obliviously as we can,” Faraj said. “One who values his modesty must cling to it with some determination in your presence.”
“But why?” Neferkamin asked. “My God’s worship is clearly more enjoyable!”
“Nevertheless,” Faraj said, much the same way he had to Beketmeret, and for much the same reason… although Neferkamin’s pout was so much harder to resist.
Something that tickled like soft ears or whiskers perked up in his thoughts at the scent of fish warmed by rubbing between Neferkamin’s hands, but Faraj only realized it was neither himself nor Kamil when the feeling of a sleepy, luxuriant stretch followed.
Fish AND petting? Sahar asked hopefully.
Faraj realized that his cat-familiar had napped her way through the entire evening’s drama. Of course, she must have known just as clearly as he did that Beketmeret would not bite him, because he knew it himself.
Every political quagmire short of venom, she’d decided, was her human’s problem to solve, not her own.
It was unseemly for a prince of the realm to wildly envy his cat for her untroubled, drama-free nap. Irresponsible. Unbecoming. And she was quite correct that the political problems were her human’s to solve, because her presence would only have compounded them.
…Faraj envied her anyway.