Chapter 15 The High Priest’s Judgment #3
“Well, yes, there is that,” Faraj admitted.
“But the unasked questions are more relevant here. If such exceptions can be made for me, simply because I am the one who asks, then those same exceptions could be made for anyone with sufficient leverage to hold over a ward-guardian. And it is sheer good fortune that the guardians here have made such a habit of relying on my foresights to forewarn us all of threats. It gives our guardians counterpressure if they can say to a would-be blackmailer that obviously their schemes would be caught. But how on earth was that haveli kept secure before a known nadhir prophet came to be in residence?”
“The usual, I expect,” Najra said, twiddling with her silverpoint again. “Strategic applications of some combination of blazing righteousness, cursed spellbooks, and well-lubricated bribery. We still have several of the relevant spellbooks under containment in lead boxes in the Archives, in fact.”
“I fail to see how adding more cats will in any way improve the orderly functioning of our Imperial security, your Highness.”
“Oh, that is a question of fairness, not a question of order,” Faraj assured him.
“But if our illusion of security depends upon an unjust fiction that everyone pretends is inviolable, then who better to sniff out the unexploited flaws in the system than a dozen gleefully irreverent mischief-makers?”
Najra whistled again.
“If you have need of a cat’s instincts, you have Kamil’s service, and his loyal heart,” Irfan said.
“Kamil has never been the sort of cat to knock the glassware off the highest shelf just to see it shatter. But I imagine several of the Priestesses of Bastet and Pakhet would be delighted to indulge.”
“I suspect they could be persuaded to do you such a great favor, yes,” Shai Vishal agreed, with an admirably straight face.
“I’m sure they could,” Irfan said, grim. “Which is why we have not given such license to the priestesses of rival goddesses in a fortress that upholds the power and majesty of the God-Emperor’s throne.”
“How convenient, then, that we are soon to have Sahar’s curious little kittens bonded to their mother, who is in turn bonded to me,” Faraj said, as pleasantly as he could manage.
“That has not been decided,” Irfan reminded them.
Najra said sourly, “Then I suppose it also hasn’t been decided how many copies to distribute of the spellbook I’m certain Rashid had in his hands when he—”
“His Highness has had a spell embedded into his soul!” Irfan cried.
“A demanding, imperious thing in the seeming of a velveted charmer, placed there by a power foretold in the dreams of a prophet who is nadhir. Whose dreams foretell disaster in the making. If you had asked me to design a more perfect method of infiltration into the heart of the Empire, I would be hard pressed to improve on this. And we now know that regardless of whether the sorcerer who bound him was malign or benevolent, his Highness will suffer when the spell-creature suffers. He has already suffered much for its sake. How much more will you ask him to endure while you take notes, Archivist? If you have ever dared claim to love him, if you have ever thought his heart and soul of greater import than your analysis— help me set him free. Please.”
“Love hurts sometimes,” Kamil murmured. “Any love has claws and fangs to prick with. Have you loved anyone deeply enough to share their pain, hajib?”
“Yes,” Irfan said, eyes closed tight. “I have. I do. And I would remove the thorn from his heart before the wound begins to fester in us both.”
“That’s his choice to make, not yours,” Najra said.
“Not if he has been charmed by an enchanter who has left claws embedded in his heart and soul, and persuaded him that he feels only delight.” Irfan clasped both hands in front of his face, head bowed, part a prayer and part a plea.
“There is a reason soul-binding is heretical. There is a reason charms that fuddle the mind and heart and override the will are prohibited. But I suppose you dabble in those as well.”
“If I did, we wouldn’t be having this argument,” Najra said dryly, “because you would have had the fight sucked out of you already.”
“You would truly do that?”
“Ya bir Enayat, sometimes you make me understand why cursed spellbooks are so bloody tempting. I wouldn’t do it. But I’d certainly fantasize.”
“Not every mage has your morality, Archivist.” The lamplight glittered in his eyes like molten gold. “And if it were any other mage, the harm a soul-bonding could wreak would be bounded by the limits of a common man’s reach. But for his Highness—”
Faraj couldn’t strike his fist onto the table. The chai would splash, and there were too many precious old books nearby. But his voice trembled on the border between shouting and tears.
“I am so damned tired of the rules being different only for me,” he rasped.
“No one else can bring a cat into the wards, for fear that it might be a spy or an assassin or a sorcerer’s familiar, but I had merely to ask for my familiar to be admitted.
Except that I can’t keep her, because anyone that approaches me must be too dangerous and too deeply scheming to trust!
I am dull and fat and predictable and boring.
And when I bring home one soft, purring bundle of chaos, my own people are horrified that I must have been ensorcelled.
Because I have never been impish or rebellious or — or charming.
Obviously I must have been ensorcelled. Everyone knows I am a quill-pushing accountant, not a witty, sparkling courtier.
I am much too dull to have reached for such an impulsive delight on my own. ”
“Your Highness,” Irfan said, trembling, “you have delighted in books and in scholarship. You have devoted yourself to prophecies that have averted suffering and death, and been glad of the lives and livelihoods you have spared. You have delighted in the bringing of order to chaos. But after you walked into the grasp of a gutter-witch who has bound a chaos-spirit to your soul, after you and Kamil both walked into the grasp of an enchanter who can bend minds and hearts to his will? And then for the first time in your life you wake every day in chaos and frighten your servants, and you propose cat-minded alterations to the foundations of our security and our society? It would be remiss of your loyal servants not to question the suddenness of that change in a man whose steady, thoughtful heart we have known for years.”
“You’re right, of course,” Faraj said, blinking hard at the blurring of his vision, trying not to allow himself tears.
“Of course you’re right. Of course you would have to question it.
But how can I ever prove that my new thoughts might simply be my own?
When else but now can I speak for those who have had no voice in the halls of the haveli, who are so accustomed to having no voice that the best they dare hope for is to be ignored?
How could I even fetch my own cup of chai from a market-vendor without provoking a crisis?
Because everything around the God-Emperor’s brother must be a thorn-snare of tangled powers and calculations.
No one could look at me and simply think of — of whimsy, or playfulness, or love—”
He stopped short, head bowed, clutching at the edge of the table. He was his brother’s nadhir, the prophet of disasters. So of course the next kitten would make its appearance precisely when he most needed his wits and his eloquence in their defense — and his own.
“This isn’t just about the cat, is it,” Irfan murmured.
“Of course this isn’t just about the cat,” Najra said, poking him in the shoulder with her silverpoint.
“I wouldn’t kick the legs out from under the God-Emperor’s throne for a cat.
But I’d do it to defend his Highness’s right to choose his love and his joy for himself, whether or not it’s expedient or charm-suspicious or anything else. ”
“You have the delicate political sensitivity of a scouring sandstorm, ya ustadha.”
“Surely that’s not news.” Najra threw back the last of her chai and thumped the empty kulhad on the table.
“If our wants and needs were diplomatically impossible, we could retire, you and I. But his Highness will never not be the God-Emperor’s prophet.
He can’t step down. He can’t push his foresight into a ring or a charm and hand it over and walk away.
And that ‘ensorcellment bound to his soul’ is a soft little bit of charmcraft who’s only alive and embodied because she loves him and he loves her.
Yes, that’s a hell of a vulnerability. Love always is.
That doesn’t mean you get to take her away from him like a toddler about to burn himself on a candle-flame, Irfan.
We’re all old enough and tired enough to know how love burns. ”
“And you dare to speak of love.”
“I dare to speak of anything,” Najra said, with a toss of her head. “But I dare you to tell me I’m wrong.”
With an unsteady waver in his voice, Irfan asked, “Your Highness…?”
He’d really hoped Irfan and Najra would have spent just a couple more minutes arguing with each other.
“Kitten,” he managed, still clinging to the table.
Najra hastily scrabbled among her diagrams for a sheet with a blank back side and flipped it over.
“Tell me everything,” she said, silverpoint poised at the ready. “Do you get a sense of direction? A distance? You don’t have the same anatomy, so what would you say is—”
“Not right now, Najra,” Irfan sighed. He moved to kneel at Faraj’s side, and silently offered his hands to hold.
After a moment’s hesitation, Faraj took Irfan’s hands, and held on, and tried to breathe through it.
(The deep rumble of Kamil’s purring was a comfort beyond compare. But even as dearly as he loved Kamil, those claws were much too sharp for soft human hands to cling to.)