Chapter 14 Dreams, Omens, and Portents #2
Kamil? he asked, as soon as he could focus the direction of his thoughts suitably. Where is Sahar now?
You can’t see her? Or foresee her?
She is gray, and she’s found somewhere dark and safe, and I can’t see in the dark the way you can.
Kamil didn’t visibly sigh, but the tip of his tail flicked. Dark and safe is her best choice, he said. If even you don’t know where she is, then no one can make you reveal her location under oath.
I’d wanted to be with her, Faraj thought, wistful.
Better for you to protect her and distract her hunters than to draw attention at her most vulnerable, Kamil replied. And if she has difficulties, I’m sure she’ll let you know.
Faraj shut his eyes against the visions his worries conjured of Sahar having difficulties while he was giving testimony before the High Priest’s judgment in the Temple of Bastet.
Surely it will be more than troublesome enough if her kittens come perfectly smoothly while I am giving testimony beneath Shai Vishal’s judgment, he told himself. Surely that will be enough trouble for one day. Even for a cat who delights in mischief.
“Your Highness?” Irfan asked, concerned.
“Just a twinge,” he said, and kept to himself whether it was a twinge of his fictional backache or of his anxieties.
Once the guards had clomped their heavy-booted way out of the bedroom, Irfan saw to directing the khadimuna in a hastened, up-tempo variation on the usual morning dance of bathing and dressing and jewels and kohl and hairstyling, excruciatingly perfect about every detail.
Irfan brushed aside Faraj’s attempts at apologizing for the rips in his night-clothes, sticking firmly to the importance of retrieving the dropped sigil-ring in the tales told in front of the gathered khadimuna.
He also found a walking-cane among the historic artifacts on display in Faraj’s study, and offered it to him on bent knee, with full respect.
Faraj took it gratefully, because he didn’t know if his knees would hold him without something to cling to when Sahar’s next kitten came, and because he needed the reminder of Kamil’s excuse.
He usually had a difficult time keeping layers of falsehood straight among the might-bes and might-have-beens of his visions; he reminded himself that Irfan knew of Sahar, but not that his distress hadn’t been from a back injury.
Still, as the khadimuna bundled up their brushes and paints and an armful of torn silks, as he walked with Irfan toward the balcony where Shahin would fly them down to greet the priests and perform the morning prayers in honor of their holy visitors, he lowered his voice to ask about the matter that surprised him the most.
“I would have thought you would find it helpful to your case, should I appear a disheveled madman suffering through the infernal caprices of mischievous chaos incarnate.”
Irfan looked honestly shocked. “You represent the stability of the Empire,” he murmured.
“You embody the rightness of our God-Emperor’s rule.
You speak prophecy in His name, under His aegis.
You and I have been allied against those who would make a mockery of you for their own ends for so many years, your Highness…
I would never have imagined you would willingly make such a mockery of yourself. ”
My brother’s clothes, Faraj remembered saying to Ahmed over a spilled cup of chai, fitted to my measure by servants of my brother’s household, in the colors of my brother’s heraldry, in the styles appropriate for my brother’s kindred, as dictated by my brother’s ministers of protocol.
A week ago, he would never have dreamed to protest any of it. Not until a bright-eyed courtesan had wrapped him in the semblance of a different faith, and children and kittens had run to him so eagerly to claim sweets from his fingers.
It wasn’t Irfan’s fault that Faraj had briefly tasted a life outside his brother’s prescriptions and proscriptions and found it sweet and wild and intoxicating.
And it was still Faraj’s duty to serve, to the best of his ability, in respect for the honors and the luxuries he had been granted as the God-Emperor’s prophet and His living representative in Tel-Bastet.
Faraj still owed the best of his service to his people, to all of his people, no matter how distracting his new lover and his new cat might be. (Especially his new cat, at this particular moment.)
With a sharp sideways glance, Irfan added, “I have disposed of the commoner’s mess in the jharokha that a laundry-maid tells me was stolen from her drying pole by a large tawny cat yesterday.”
“Really? You had told me that you could not procure such garments on such short notice,” Faraj said, clinging to the handle of his cane.
“I could not procure garments fitted to you and suited to your dignity on such short notice, your Highness.”
“They were not well fitted, it’s true,” Faraj agreed. “Perhaps we should prepare some for the next time.”
“I shall take it under advisement, of course,” Irfan said, staring straight ahead as Shahin swooped in for a dashingly dramatic landing at the balcony.
The impending necessity of Sahar’s next kitten caught him on a sustained note amid the singing of the morning prayers. He wobbled the note, held on desperately for the full measure, and steeled his spine to finish the verses somehow.
Even after the physical pressure had relented, the theological pressures remained overwhelming.
The Priests of the Assessors of Maat swarmed like sharks that smelled blood in the water.
For the God-Emperor’s own prophet to falter in a daily song of praise that he had sung a thousand times before, and ten thousand times before that?
What were the omens? What were the implications?
What chaos troubled the order of the Empire, and was the flaw in the prophecy or in the God-Emperor’s righteousness or—
Faraj somehow managed not to snap as he said, “I wrenched my back retrieving a fallen ring this morning, gentlemen. Over that thousand and ten thousand days of song, I have not grown any younger or fitter.”
“Which ring did you let fall?” the youngest of them asked, avid for any hint of symbolism.
“I don’t recall,” Faraj said blandly, because if they would challenge him on a falsehood, he would rather it be a falsehood he could cling to. A fallen sigil-ring was a falsehood they would seize too much symbolism from. “Are we who are mortal not permitted even a moment of mortal frailty?”
“Not when you are the God-Emperor’s prophet,” the eldest Priest of the Assessors said. “Surely you would have foreseen anything that would disturb the order of your prayers, if you were so rightly guided.”
“This reeks of deception,” another young priest put in. “Why else would you hide your truth from the priests of Order?”
Faraj couldn’t sigh. But the priests weren’t wrong about the effect, only about the cause. He glanced at Irfan, who could have recruited persistent and noisy allies if he let slip that a feline agent of chaos had dared bind itself to the soul of the God-Emperor’s prophet.
Instead, Irfan said calmly, “Surely his Highness’ foresights have many matters of greater significance to attend to than a misplaced bauble on the bedside of a night.”
Oh, Faraj realized. Oh, yes. Neither of us wants them sticking their inquisitive ears into the hearing we are about to have, if they seize so eagerly on the happenstance of a dropped ring.
They were most stickily persistent, insisting over breakfast that if his Imperial Highness had nothing to hide, then surely he, a dutiful bureaucrat, would understand that the presence of interested auditors could not be a threat to those who were entirely honest and truthful.
Faraj understood entirely. If they had spent any amount of time investigating corruption among the great powers of the palaces, temples, or marketplaces, of course they would have both well-honed instincts for any hints of falsehood and a practiced claim to authority.
It was terribly awkward that his own poorly-concealed sins had nothing to do with financial malfeasance or power or profit, and everything to do with an enchanted and enchanting chaos-cat who would be just as much of a scandal to order-priests as embezzlement.
And all that was before they got into digging into the fateful symbolism of any misstep in a ritual performance.
Irfan made a masterful show of portraying the noble-born servant of order who still felt some matters to be beneath his interest, including the monthly cataloging of the non-cash equivalents that merchants and farmers had donated to the Priests of Upaja for tax forgiveness in exchange for community nourishment.
They had completed that monthly reckoning four days ago…
but Faraj was almost certain the Priests of the Assessors didn’t know that.
“Surely you cannot actually care how many heads of cabbage were damaged in transit, and what percentage of damage per head?” Irfan asked them, flicking an imaginary speck of dust from his sleeve.
Unfortunately, the Priests of the Assessors of Maat were most avidly interested in organizational matters such as shipping, accounting, and waste due to chaos’ depredations on an orderly process.
They even insinuated two of their number into the royal carriage for the journey from the haveli to the Temple.