Chapter 12 Devotion #3
“Your hajib is going to be even more displeased to find you taking orders from your cat, you realize,” Kamil said.
“But I have no idea whether the particular porcelain bowl is part of the necessity,” Faraj replied.
“If I am there in the kitchen, looking through the dishware with my cat is a royal whim, but if I send the dish back with a khadim five times because my cat will not accept a different dish than the dish of her visions, then I am either mad or a tyrant. If not both.”
Shahin was the young flight-mage on duty overnight, fidgeting with a pale quill balanced on his fingertip in the night-blue shadows.
Faraj suspected that his restlessness had seen him put on the overnight watch because it was by far the slowest, in some exasperated elder’s effort to rebalance his impetuous young humors.
He brightened immediately when Faraj approached the platform facing the inner courtyard.
“Off to work already, your Highness? Where to?”
“The kitchens, if you would be so kind?”
Shahin blinked. “Your Highness, we have messengers for that.”
“But then my imperious and velveted queen would need to wait even longer for her fish.”
“Mrrrrrrow,” Sahar agreed, butting her head against the silk of Faraj’s sleeve.
“Oh, so she’s why the Chamberlain’s got his underthings in a knot?” Shahin offered his fingertips to Sahar, grinning when she rubbed her cheek against his hand. “Lovely to meet you too, my lady. Let’s swoop down like falcons and get you some fish.”
“Let’s swoop down not at all like falcons and get her some fish,” Faraj said.
“Sure, whatever. —Your Highness,” he added hastily.
The swooping was not quite as unfalconlike as Faraj might have wished, or else his stomach was just a ball of nerves from the rest of the upheavals anyway, but he was not at all hungry himself as he hesitated outside the archway to the kitchens, despite the delicious smells from within.
The cooks and bakers were already bustling, because the guards changing shifts would want their breakfasts and dinners after the morning prayers, and he needed to be in the expected place for morning prayers with six Priests of the Assessors of Maat under his roof after two previous days of disruption, and was the sky purpling in the east already?
“Your Highness!” Dusting the flour off her hands hastily, Esmat gestured a quick reverence.
Faraj had established years ago that he didn’t wish to disrupt the entire kitchen with obeisances if he crept in for a snack to go with his reading, and so the kitchen staff scattered a flurry of greetings and vaguely respectful gestures and went back to their kneading and stirring.
He wondered if he should tell Esmat that she had a smudge of flour on her cheek.
“How may we serve this morning?” she asked. “I did ask his Eminence about the visiting priests already; we’ve retrieved a copy of the assembled dietary requirements for the Greater Convocation from the Archives — do please thank the Archivist for me. How else may I help?”
“Mrrrrrr,” Sahar said, licking a paw delicately and blinking big soft eyes at the cook.
“Well, aren’t you just a charmer!”
“I believe she would like some fresh fish,” Faraj said, “and I thought it might be amusing to serve the fish in a dish with waves?”
“Waves…?” Esmat shrugged it off and called, “Badriyah, do we have any dishes with waves?”
“What for?” a voice called from the pantry.
“For fish for his Highness’s new cat!”
A yelp and a clatter of what sounded like dropped pots later, Badriyah came hurrying out of the pantry with her arms full of porcelain plates and bowls.
“I’m sorry, your Highness, whatever you wish, of course!” She set them out on the confectionery table, and Sahar peered at them with flicking whiskers.
It was perhaps not entirely surprising that a cat-familiar bonded to a nadhir prophet would have a perfectly clear foresight of what had to be the most expensive dish in Badriyah’s hastily gathered collection, because the waves were frothed with silver and pearls and the bowl was rimmed and footed with gold.
“If I may…?”
Badriyah was young enough that she gave him an incredulous look before she straightened her face. “Of course you may, your Highness.”
Faraj thought wistfully of how the alley-kittens had treated him as a climbable and pesterable round treat-dispenser rather than an Imperial power to obey instantly. He took the bowl with careful hands and offered it to Sahar for her inspection.
FISH, she yowled, unimpressed, and Badriyah giggled before she clamped a hand over her mouth.
Esmat had claimed a river fish from one of the cooks and cut it into tidy cubes on a cutting board; she swept the cubes into Sahar’s bowl with the back of her knife and set the bowl into her basket, and Sahar took to her bowl with evident delight, purring even with her mouth full.
From behind him, the Chamberlain said in an utterly flat voice, “Your Highness, you have less than an hour until you lead the morning prayers. The Priests of the Assessors of Maat will not overlook your sleep-robes as our kitchen staff do.”
He tried not to flinch. He wasn’t sure if he succeeded. “Esmat, if you would see to it that some fresh fish are supplied to my kitten-nursery each day, I would be most grateful.”
“Of course, your Highness.”
Shahin might sass his shahzada and tease him about falcon-swooping, but nobody sassed their hajib and stayed employed in the Imperial residence. The young flight-mage was stiff and silent and entirely fidgetless as he flew them back to the uppermost balcony in the inner courtyard.
“Thank you, Shahin,” the Chamberlain told him. He never failed to thank his people, even at the end of his patience, and he always knew everyone’s name.
“My honor to serve, your Eminence,” Shahin said, with a hand over his heart. The fiddle-quill was nowhere to be seen.
The khadimuna of the wardrobe were waiting anxiously for the chance to do their work; Faraj set Sahar’s basket on the corner of his desk despite the Chamberlain’s wince, so that he could hurry to slip out of his night-clothes and let the khadimuna quickly dress him and wrap his turban and line his eyes with kohl and fasten his shoes and his jewelry.
They were even more attuned to the Chamberlain’s moods than Faraj himself; they were done in half the usual time, and at a slight nod, they all but fled.
Faraj wondered if it would be too unforgivable if he fled with them. But he couldn’t begin to address the inequities in the wider world if he began by flinching from his own Chamberlain’s strictly-controlled temper.
“I assume I should know what I have done badly?”
The Chamberlain breathed an almost silent sigh. “I assume you should know what you have done would have been very clever, if this dispute were to be judged in the court of common opinion.”
“Oh,” Faraj breathed, because at the mention of common opinion, a translucent flutter of white cotton suddenly settled into place among his visions, and on the other side he saw treasured jade-green eyes and a familiar, radiant smile.
The Chamberlain looked at him sharply, and he scrambled for a cover.
“Because cats are more charming than I am, and because the kitchen staff will talk? I confess I had only thought that she was hungry.”
“You thought that, or the summoned creature bonded to your soul suggested that to you?”
Faraj sighed as well. He had always been a terrible liar, and his Chamberlain knew him far too well. “I am told that perfectly ordinary cats can also make their humans well aware that they must be fed immediately or the world will end.”
“And you yourself are more charming than you realize, not merely the cat,” Irfan told him, with a quirk tugging at the corner of his lips. “But no one is charming enough for six Priests of the Assessors of Maat to pardon disorderly lateness.”
“That is most certainly true,” Faraj admitted. “Will you clear my schedule for tomorrow afternoon, if I promise to return in time to dress properly for the formal dinner with the priests? And see whether there can be garments discreetly found in my size which are made of cotton, not saffron silk.”
“What will you do if I say I cannot, your Highness? Your hearing is the day after, and surely you wish to prepare.”
“I am certain you have already guessed what I would do,” Faraj said. “That alternative would be even less ideal, would it not? And I will prepare in my own way.”
“As you say, your Highness.” The Chamberlain bowed, rigidly and formally correct, and opened the door to the inner courtyard balcony where Shahin waited to take them to the priests.
“Thank you,” Faraj told him, and meant it sincerely. Because the Chamberlain had given him a great gift when he had mentioned the court of common opinion, whether or not he had intended it.
He knew that his brother’s holy scriptures held no defense for him. But the people and the catfolk of Tel-Bastet deserved for their voices to be heard as well. Until two days ago, he had never dared so openly defy the traditions, the layers of protections and restrictions, the Way Things Were Done.
No matter what Shai Vishal had to decide, Faraj could at the least bear his own witness to the court of common opinion, to the thoughts of those whose voices were rarely heard in the Imperial haveli.
There had to be some better way to elevate the voices of common opinion than by getting himself judged for soul-bonded heresy, Faraj thought. But he was very new to the idea of pointed disobedience, and he hoped he could be forgiven a few stumbles as he learned the art of it from his cat.