Chapter 15 The High Priest’s Judgment
The High Priest’s Judgment
FARAJ
Possibly because of Najra’s ferociously crackling warding, Faraj’s foresight had not given him so much as a glimmer of her…
but of course, he’d been trying to ignore the looming chance-shadows of the many ways this day could go badly.
He couldn’t tell whether Najra was truly not intending to make disasters, whether the wards were meant to contain the disasters, or whether she was planning to make disasters with an outward-facing blast pattern.
Knowing Najra, though, a wise man would bet upon the latter.
“‘A woman of the community with a crisis of faith,’ you said,” the Chamberlain said to Shai Vishal, very straight and very still.
“I am comfortably certain every word of that is true. You will note I did not mention whose faith would find itself in crisis after the Archivist was done with it,” Shai Vishal replied, just as calmly.
“Who invited her?” Irfan said, with frustration glittering at the corners of his hastily-reassembled facade of control. “I might have looked to you, your Highness, except that you are as shocked as I am. Why would any of you invite a heretical witch to a matter of faith and the soul?”
“I was standing right there when you rejected his Highness’s appeal to the Convocation and insisted on Shai Vishal alone,” Najra reminded him. “And I know his Reverence’s birth-name from the dynastic records in the Archives. Make your cypher more of a challenge next time.”
“Oh, please don’t,” Shai Vishal said, briefly cupping both hands to his brow in a plea for his god’s bountiful mercy. “The cypher was more than enough of a challenge, and I sincerely hope we do not need a next time.”
“How did you even see the cypher?” the Chamberlain demanded. “Did you waylay the courier, or infiltrate the Temple, or scry through your witchery somehow?”
“You don’t honestly think I’m going to tell you that, do you?” Najra scoffed. “Kamil, there’s a pile of pillows under the table. I needed the floor space when I was getting all the spellbooks and scriptures out.”
“Thank you,” Kamil said, and hooked his back claws into some of the pillows to drag them out.
He settled onto the pillows with Faraj still in his arms. When Faraj tried to shift himself out of Kamil’s lap onto a pillow of his own, Kamil sank his teeth into the scruff of Faraj’s collar as though he was a wayward kitten.
“Oh,” Faraj said, a bit startled, and gently smoothed the fur on Kamil’s muscular forearm. “I’m fine now. You can set me down.”
I can, Kamil told him, but I’m not going to. His breath was very warm and his whiskers were very ticklish against the nape of Faraj’s neck, and Faraj suspected only a heroic effort of will kept Kamil from putting a big paw on the top of his head and grooming him protectively.
“Truly, Kamil, I’m fine now.”
“You’re fine until the creature sinks its claws into your soul and makes its next excruciating demand that your love and your courage leads you to deny,” Irfan murmured. “Your Reverence, as you can see, it is already as I feared.”
“It has nothing to do with demands, Irfan.” With a sigh, Faraj admitted, “I’m fine until she bears her next kitten. She has, I presume, a limited number of them.”
Shai Vishal passed a hand over his mouth and beard to hide any hint of his expression. Irfan crumpled onto one of the floor-pillows and buried his face in both hands.
“I admit that’s a scenario I hadn’t thought to test,” Najra mused, rubbing her chin with the tip of her silverpoint.
“But then we couldn’t really mimic the situation, could we.
And the experiment is currently performing itself, so I should catch up with the observational notes! When exactly did you realize—”
“Not right now, Najra, please?” Faraj begged.
“But there’s no better time to record the most accurate observations of—”
Kamil hissed, even around his mouthful of Faraj’s collar.
“All right,” Najra said, holding both hands up. “Because you asked so nicely. But you don’t need to worry, either of you. I’m already sure I’m going to win.”
“Even aside from the unutterable arrogance of a heretic witch daring to lecture two sworn priests on matters of theology,” Irfan told her through a tense jaw, “the last I inquired, you were not the prophet among us.”
“Of course not,” Najra said, cleaning up one of the lines on her diagrams. “But I have absolute faith in the one of us who is a prophet. And if his Adorableness had foreseen the need to stop me, he would have done so at least by yesterday.”
Faraj swallowed hard. “Najra,” he said unsteadily, “I’ve been trying not to look into today, or beyond. I… I didn’t want to foresee… what might be said, what might be done, what harms we might do to each other along the way… what Sahar might… um.”
“Ah. Well, still don’t worry,” she said, with a smile that showed nearly as many sharp teeth as a river crocodile.
“We should let the Chamberlain make his case first, so that I don’t need to blast too many holes in the foundations of the Empire’s theology in the rebuttal.
It’s easier to aim when I know where to target. ”
“Ya rahmat,” Irfan sighed, pressing both palms together over his heart. “If the word of the scripture holds no defense for his Highness’ surrender to infidel heresies, then you will strike against the very heart of the faith itself?”
“Exactly!” Najra said brightly. “See, I always knew you were clever. If the scriptures’ prohibitions are absurd, I might as well poke holes in the cult to deflate all the windbags, and then the scriptures’ prohibitions don’t matter anymore.
It’s not like we have a shortage of other gods to choose from around here, for those who feel compelled to hand over their moral compass. ”
“How dare you?” Irfan breathed.
“He-re-tic,” Najra enunciated, pointing a fingertip toward her nose. “It means ‘doesn’t give a damn about the scriptural proclamations of a God-Emperor whom I can document was most likely a magically-assisted fraud from the start.’”
“Najra, please,” Faraj said, utterly miserable. “There are lines I will not cross. Not even for my own life. The Empire is stable under my brother’s reign, and we have not seen the armies of the five realms march against each other for hundreds of years.”
“Oh, for mercy’s sake,” Shai Vishal said, rubbing at the headache-point at the bridge of his nose. “All of you back off for a moment. Save the threats of the destabilization of the faith, the throne, and the five realms for the last resort, not the first. We are talking about one cat-familiar.”
“We are talking about one cat-familiar and her kittens,” Najra said. “And we are talking about a cat, her kittens, and purely political threats to them all, inside the Temple of Bastet. I’m still fairly sure I’m going to win this one, your Reverence.”
“I thought you had just proclaimed yourself a heretic,” Shai Vishal observed.
“If you ask the God-Emperor’s priesthood, certainly,” Najra said. “But there are thousands of gods out there, and even I haven’t managed to offend all of them yet. Besides, I like Bastet. Curiosity, pleasure, prowling around sticking your nose in, and all those kittens? What’s not to like?”
“Ya rahmat,” Irfan said again. “Your Reverence, we have heard from her own lips that she eagerly desires to strike against the God-Emperor’s faith, on behalf of rival gods.
Whatever testimony she may provide is stained by that heresy, while you and I seek only to shelter his Highness’ gentle heart from invasive corruption, to support him in the faith to which he has sworn his soul.
Pray dismiss the avowed heretic from this hearing. ”
“Are you sure you want to do that?” Najra asked, twirling her silverpoint between her fingers with the crocodile’s sharp smile.
“Because while I’m in this room, you still have a chance to persuade me it’s not worth commissioning a thousand broadsides from eighty vassal cities’ scriptoria, documenting the questionable origins of Rashid’s claims to godhood.
While you’re in here dickering over theology, if you have me dismissed, then I’m out there unsupervised.
And I correspond with so many scribes in five realms’ worth of archiving. ”
“No one of sense would describe this as backing off,” Shai Vishal said wearily. “Your Highness, you have often seen the world through different eyes than the rest of us, and this hearing could certainly use another perspective. What have you to say?”
“I am most humbly sorry for the difficulties I bring you, your Reverence,” Faraj said, “but I would like to speak on behalf of many more cats and catfolk than my own dear ones.”
“What?” the Chamberlain said.
“We’re going to need a much larger pot of chai for this, aren’t we,” Shai Vishal said, resigned. “Give me a few minutes. Nobody claw each other’s faces off or destroy an entire religion in my absence.”
As he stalked out, he did not entirely slam the door closed behind himself, but Faraj suspected that had much to do with avoiding the attention of hundreds of curious cats and two nosy Priests of the Assessors.
“Your Highness,” the Chamberlain said, shifting from Shai Vishal’s stubbornly common speech to the highest register of the court language.
“Most noble, most serene, and most visionary among the pillars of our faith. Can you not hear how your mind has been twisted out of true from the compass of the Sun’s Glory?
Kamil, most devoted of protectors — can you not hear it? Or were you bewitched as well?”
“You say bewitched, I say enlightened,” Najra said, choosing one of the dialects of the scholars who found their passions in the word-tangles among logic and philosophy. “Have you ever read a single book that opened your mind beyond the proscribed boundaries of your holy walled gardens, al-Sadiq?”