Chapter 15 The High Priest’s Judgment #2
“I have never wished to read those prohibited books to curse or compel an innocent soul. His Highness is the God-Emperor’s prophet, and in love and faith, I have sworn my life to the support of his Highness’s every need,” the Chamberlain said.
“And, your Highness, I am so terribly sorry that I have failed you.”
“None of you have failed me,” Faraj said, finding a certain comfort in smoothing Kamil’s fur as though he were a much smaller cat.
“I know you speak from love, all of you. Surely in all this time you have seen in each other why I treasure each of you. Can we not begin there? In the acknowledgment that each of us feels love and concern, and have for many years, and that right now we simply disagree on the best way to protect what we love?”
The Chamberlain and Najra glanced at each other, and then at Kamil.
“If you expect me to say something mushy, you’re all in for a long wait,” Kamil said, with the tip of his tail thumping a metronome of irritation on his pillow.
“None of us have ever questioned Kamil’s dedication,” the Chamberlain said.
Then, with a diplomat’s courtesy, he placed a palm to his heart and bowed to Najra.
“For years your keen intellect and your devotion to scholarship have supported his Highness in everything from the avid hunts for tax fraud to the joy in knowledge that you share freely. The blade you hold now must have been forged some time ago, or you would not be so confident of its edge. O Most Learned, I do appreciate your forbearance in not baring this blade until you felt that you must arm yourself in his Highness’s defense. ”
Najra sighed and set down her silverpoint.
“It’s a good thing you’re the head of his household, and not me,” she said.
“I would have set off at least a trade war if not a full blown diplomatic crisis by the third formal dinner. Someone needs to smile and nod through the duels of all the social and religious and political power-plays, I would be disastrous at it, and I’m grateful that his Cuddliness has had your skill and your grace to rely upon.
” She took another breath, visibly thought better of what she’d been about to say, and managed, “Thank you, your Eminence.”
“For my part, I have been honored and humbled by your years of friendship and support,” Faraj said.
“And I know it cannot be easy to manage a fretful prophet who sees a hundred ways anything could go wrong, and who staggers toward something like hope while careening from not-that to not-that-either. I have rarely reached toward something. Please guide my stumbles as gently as you may, for I am newly learning.”
A sharp-edged shimmering shadow like shattered pottery pricked at the edges of his vision, and he added, “Kamil, if you would permit me a moment of liberty, his Reverence will need assistance with the door?”
The Chamberlain was the least encumbered among them, because Najra had at least three books in her lap in addition to the piles on the table and the floor around her.
He rose with a grace Faraj had sometimes wistfully envied, and moved to open the door with unquestioning confidence in his prophet’s foresights.
On the other side of the door, with his arms full of a heavily laden tray of chai and kulhad and more hastily assembled snacks than anyone but a marketplace cook or a priest of Upaja could have gathered so swiftly, Shai Vishal blinked several times.
“I had just begun to wonder whether the quiet within was fortunate or whether I should kick down the door. Thank you for more than one mercy, your Eminence.”
Najra looked at the book-strewn table, and began to tuck a dozen colored ribbons into books she closed and stacked in a pattern known only to her.
Shai Vishal set the tray down in the first available clear patch of tabletop, and began to dish up leaf bowls of kheer and kulhad of chai for each of them.
The Temple certainly had sets of richly gilded porcelain that they brought out for the Councils, but Shai Vishal’s hands must have sought out the humble (and less breakable) leaves through some combination of haste and prudence.
Irfan gathered two of each and knelt beside Kamil’s protective grumbling to offer them as elegantly as though the leaf bowls and unglazed kulhad were to be served at the grandest of formal palace dinners.
“You can ease your vigilance among us, Kamil. Nothing of danger would lurk in Bastet’s Temple, no matter how the Priests of the Assessors fuss over the dire portent of a dropped ring,” he said.
“You do seem to misplace your rings,” Shai Vishal agreed, arranging dried fruits and nuts and small round herbed cheeses on a leaf at the center of the table.
“If you found those rings when you had need of them, your Reverence, then they were not misplaced,” Faraj said softly, hoping the warming of his cheeks was not too noticeable.
“And, Kamil, I promise I shall not seize my liberty and flee as swiftly as a startled antelope.” He kept to himself how tempting the thought would have been if he were capable of it.
“Hrrmph,” Kamil huffed, and released his kitten-scruffing mouthful of Faraj’s collar, which was now somewhat damp. “It’s been a while. Do you think she’s finished with her kittens?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Faraj said.
“Neither Sahar nor I have had kittens before.” He closed his eyes and tried to feel for a soft warm gray-velveted presence, despite the distance.
He felt a deep rumbling purr of reassurance, with a sensation very like being licked behind the ear by a raspy tongue.
He was certain that it was much more comfortable and soothing for a cat than for a human.
Tentatively, he thought about the sweet, creamy-soft texture of the kheer in the direction of that raspy mama-tongue, and the purring redoubled. “She seems content, wherever she is?”
“You don’t know?” the Chamberlain asked.
“Don’t answer that, your Adorableness,” Najra said, and slurped her chai noisily. A tense muscle in the Chamberlain’s jaw twitched.
“If we can manage to maintain civility around both the shared meal and the books, I would greatly appreciate it,” Shai Vishal said. “Your Highness, yesterday’s testimony notwithstanding, I must ask why you feel compelled to further complicate a politically fraught situation with even more cats.”
“Yesterday’s testimony?”
“Ah,” Shai Vishal said. “You hadn’t mentioned it.”
“I had not,” Faraj admitted. “I do thank you for the inspiration, Irfan. And I will not apologize for the discretion. The court of common opinion would not have spoken so freely before us had we appeared beneath the aegis of our brother’s holy name, in silken robes of state and Imperial majesty.”
“The catfolk wouldn’t care,” Kamil said. “The others… eh.”
“The catfolk might have shredded my silks for the mischief of it,” Faraj agreed, with a wry smile.
“And they did inform me that some of them don’t care for human notions such as justice and fairness.
But, being human, and being responsible for foreseeing troubles that may impact our Empire, I care about justice and fairness much more than cats do.
And in some matters we have been unjust and unfair for a very long time now.
Just because an injustice has become traditional does not make it right. ”
Najra whistled through her teeth. “And you tell me I’m blunt.”
The kulhad trembled in Irfan’s hands as he bent his head to breathe in the scent, to buy himself a moment to center himself. He sipped at the chai, set it down carefully, and folded both hands atop the table to steady his presentation.
“Your Highness, how many of your God-Emperor’s edicts do you now claim to be unjust and unfair, after the witch-crafted servant of another goddess has embedded itself so deeply into your soul that you suffer its pains?”
“Oh, these were never Rashid’s edicts at all,” Faraj told him, in all sincerity. “Rashid had nothing to do with designing the cat-wards of the haveli.”
Irfan breathed a sigh of commingled relief and fatigue. “So you merely seek to carve more cat-shaped exceptions into the security we have maintained for generations?”
“I’m not certain that’s much of a loss,” Faraj said, holding his warm leaf-bowl of kheer and considering the statement Shai Vishal might have made with such a quiet reminder of the afternoon before.
He wondered if he dared be so bold as to consider it a gesture of support, but thought it more likely the leaf-bowls were merely the nearest practical objects to hand in a rush.
He smoothed a fingertip along the veins of the leaf, and thought about structures, and support, and a cat’s sharp claw slashing through the leaf-veins to make a new, different, differently helpful shape, but knowing the leaf would never again grow as it had before it was put to such use.
“Our guards would be most distressed to hear you think so little of their worth.”
“Not the guards,” Faraj said. “The cat-wards. When a bookish junior Archivist with a knack for charmcraft can pierce holes in the supposedly inviolable wards with only a few minutes’ enchantment of ribbons and bells, because the God-Emperor’s brother is the one who asked it of him?
When he can make that exception for me, because I am the shahzada, but he cannot dare to make such an exception for any other dear familiar, here in the city of the cats?
None of that is fair. None of that is equitable.
And I have slept less well since realizing how many of our unquestionable prohibitions I had simply never thought to question. ”
“You have also slept less well since deciding to contort yourself around Sahar’s cat-basket in the jharokha at night, or to crawl under your furniture at the sound of mews,” Kamil pointed out dryly.