Chapter 13 What You Can Afford to Know #3
“You are as shameless as he is,” Basima-auntie said.
“Excuse me, he is as shameless as I am,” the calico retorted, cutting another broadleaf. “We were here first.”
“Today, or in general?” Sami asked, blinking.
“Both,” Mreret said. “There were catfolk here long before you preyfolk started piling rocks onto each other. We’ll be here after you leave.”
“Unless you get bored and wander off,” a gap-toothed boy bringing them another stack of broadleaves said, grinning. “Or unless there is a moth, or a pigeon.”
“Hsssst,” Mreret said, and took great interest in grooming the tip of her tail.
“But do you feel it unjust that we humans came and claimed this place?” Sami asked anxiously.
“Justice is a human thing,” she sniffed. “The God-Emperor’s humans yowl about his territory, we ignore them, everyone pretends they won the hissing match, life goes on.”
Shai Vishal coughed into his fist by the cauldron, his face carefully turned away.
“Oh dear,” Sami said. “When you say that you ignore the territorial yowling, do you mean that you do seek entrance into the haveli?”
“Do you really think I’m not going to lie to a nose-blind human with an accent like yours?” Mreret asked, arch-voiced.
“I have been advised to count on it, actually,” Sami said, letting his hand brush against Ashar’s as he folded the next bowl. “But I have also been advised to count on the difficulty of herding any number of catfolk into the same lie.”
Her whiskers twitched a feline comment on her amusement. “Well, true enough.”
“Supposing you were to have more freedom of access to the haveli and to the places which the Imperial bureaucracy has claimed for its own, what might you like to do there?”
“Shred all the silks, I expect,” Basima-auntie said tartly. “And relieve yourself on tapestries and ancient relics, just because you could.”
“That is unkind of you to presume, Basima-auntie,” Sami said.
“Oh, she’s not wrong,” Mreret said, with a luxuriant stretch from the twitching tip of her tail to the curl of her impertinent tongue. “I’d sniff everything and scratch everything, to leave my mark. And piss in a corner, to make Hoda-auntie choke on her teeth.”
“Hmph,” Hoda-auntie said. Somehow she managed to make it twice as disapproving when she told Ashar, “I do hope you are not that shameless.”
“I confess I am not,” Ashar admitted, bowing slightly with a hand over his heart. “It is a weakness in my character.”
“Hrrrrmph,” Hoda-auntie said, and Ashar bit his lip to keep from smiling too broadly at how much she sounded like Kamil.
“But after that, what would you do next, Mreret?” Sami asked hopefully.
“Then I’d come home to my own territory, obviously,” the calico told him. “If they’ve kept the cats out of the haveli for so long, their rats must be the size of camels by now. We have much easier hunting down here.”
Shai Jyoti coughed this time, and waved his hand vaguely: “The smoke, beg pardon.”
“There is nothing you wish from the haveli or those who live in it?”
“I wish for them to keep ignoring us,” Mreret said. “Because there’s nothing I want badly enough to risk the God-Emperor noticing how much we ignore him.”
Geeta-auntie made a mudra to let bad luck overlook them all, and said, “Pray to all the little gods for all the little mercies.”
“I am compelled to note that no one has ever called Upaja little,” Shai Vishal said.
“But we have called Him merciful.” Ashar let himself lean into his sweet treasure’s side as he reached for another leaf to fold. “The God-Emperor’s brother also seems a kind and gentle man,” he said, “and his prophecies have spared many lives and livelihoods from disaster.”
“Oh, we all know his brother wants to be ignored as much as we do,” Mreret said, with unassailable feline confidence.
“You don’t take a gift of prophecy and hide it away in the Tel-Bastet Archives unless you’ve foreseen what a hissing, clawing dominance-spat you’d have to fight in the great palaces.
The rats in the haveli might be camel-sized but no one around here has bred them for venom. ”
“I suppose one might call such hiding cowardice,” Sami murmured.
“I call that good sense,” Hoda-auntie said. “A prophet who warns our city of disasters would scarcely wish to call down a disaster like the God-Emperor’s fist upon us.”
“He’s dutiful, he’s obedient, he’s never troubled anyone’s daughters,” Geeta-auntie said. “I quite like him.”
“I believe I would quite like him too,” Ashar said, smiling.
“You have the morals of an alley cat,” Hoda-auntie sniffed, scrubbing a broadleaf rather too vigorously. “Leave all of these kind, well-mannered gentlemen in peace, you shameless rogue.”
“Ashar does not have the morals of an alley cat. He wouldn’t hunt his own meal if his life depended on it. Now, I have the morals of an alley cat and I consider them quite fashionable,” Mreret purred.
“I nearly have the morals of an alley cat,” Ashar protested, hands on his hips. “Hira sets the prices for every service we sell.”
“You have borrowed the morals of an alley cat,” Mreret told him loftily.
“Then I had fewer morals than an alley cat to begin with, to need to borrow them.”
“This is not a GOOD thing,” Hoda-auntie huffed. “Sami, beta, if he is too free with his liberties, tell me and I will avenge your slighted honor immediately.” She twisted the damp hand-towel into snapping shape, eyeing Ashar with a significant glare.
“How kind of you, Hoda-auntie, to lend your strong arm to protecting my modesty,” Sami said, with a diplomat’s earnest grace. “But I assure you I am most deeply flattered by Master Asharan’s attentions.”
“He was attending to a priest not three days ago!” Geeta-auntie protested. “A very nice priest who feeds kittens! I wanted to matchmake— uh, never mind—”
“Geeta,” Basima-auntie groaned.
“And so…?” Sami asked.
Sputtering, Basima-auntie said, “What do you mean, ‘and so?’”
“I… I mean… why should it trouble me? What is between them is theirs to explore, and what might come to pass between us I have scarcely begun to consider, from a brush of hands in the Temple beneath the eyes of a High Priest,” Sami told her.
“But — but he — but you —”
“But we want our daughters to inherit his bath-house,” Geeta-auntie said, looking at Hoda-auntie and Basima-auntie for approval, because this time she had remembered the goals of the aunties’ coalition. Basima-auntie buried her face in both hands.
“Honored aunties, I am very sorry to disappoint you,” Sami told them. “But I have not the slightest concern over Master Asharan’s morals.”
“Truly?” Ashar asked, feeling his heart quicken again.
“You should be more concerned with mine,” his darling told him, and there, that was the delightful crinkle at the corner of his eyes that matched the dimpling of his cheeks when he truly smiled.
“I have recently been introduced to a charmingly opinionated queen among cats, and she has already taught me so much about the delights of disobedience.”
“Verrrrrrrrry good,” Mreret purred, licking her chops as though she smelled a tasty mouse to pounce upon.
“How scandalous! I may swoon,” Hoda-auntie declared, fanning herself with a broadleaf. As Basima fussed about laving Hoda-auntie’s wrists and brow, interspersed with incoherent sputterings of disapproval, Mreret’s ears and whiskers pricked forward.
“So, about the disobedience. Impress me, human.”
“Um.” Sami twisted a ring about his finger nervously, and left the God-Emperor’s sigil hidden between his fingers. “I have considered some unheard-of alterations to the tax structure?”
“Boring,” Mreret declared with a yawn. “Catfolk don’t pay taxes unless they’re too dim to go small and scamper off when the tax collector comes knocking.”
“Which leaves us poor women scraping together twice the taxes from whatever the uncles haven’t taken gambling and drinking,” Hoda-auntie sniffed. “And you’re not going to tell me you plan to lower the taxes, are you. No Imperial ever lowers the taxes.”
“Supposing we were,” Sami said, “which services should we reduce accordingly? The maintenance of the aqueducts and the qanat that ensure clean and fresh water? The provisioning of the fire watch? The records of contracts that must be kept in triplicate, so as to verify which copy is true in the event of a dispute?”
“So you’re not planning to lower the taxes,” Basima-auntie said dryly, stabbing twigs to pin her bowl in shape with extra vehemence.
“At the level of the Empire, no, but at the level of your individual household, yes, actually,” Sami said.
“With some sort of gambler’s shell-game?” Hoda-auntie asked suspiciously. “I had thought better of you before you declared yourself of such questionable morals.”
“In a manner of speaking, I suppose,” Sami said, glancing up at Shai Vishal beside his cauldron. “Your Reverence, what percentage of the goods donated to your Temple for tithed tax relief are unusable by the time you receive them? Fifteen percent? Twenty?”
“It depends on both the goods and the donor,” Shai Vishal said, leaning into his palta to stir all the way to the bottom of the cauldron. “But in that vicinity, yes.”
“Suppose that percentage holds true for other endeavors as well,” Sami said, “and that a fifth of taxes levied are never received to apply to the services needed. Whether they were never paid or waylaid in transit or a dishonest soul falsified the records, the resources are predictably lower than the number expected on the page. And the Empire has calculated this into its levies, just as I am certain his Reverence Shai Vishal has calculated this into his cauldrons.”
“Your ‘disobedience’ stinks of spying on our neighbors to make them pay more to the Empire,” Mreret growled.