Chapter 15 The High Priest’s Judgment #8
His hand was given to another — to Irfan, from the rings; Shai Vishal’s hands were bare, and Najra’s hands were smaller. He couldn’t speak to protest that he hadn’t intended that, not without hurting one of them. Not when he’d be lucky not to moan.
He held on to Irfan’s hands, and couldn’t tell whether he was more grateful or more distressed. Angry footsteps stormed down the hall, despite an indignant cat’s yowl. Even with his eyes shut tight, shadows flickered an umbral blue across his vision.
The Priest of the Assessor of Maat’s voice was so raspingly incredulous that Faraj didn’t need his eyes to picture the poor man’s expression. “You say that that woman is a priest, your Reverence? You ordained that woman?”
“That woman is a former caravanserai cook, and Upaja Himself has called her,” Shai Vishal said. “I simply acknowledged that.”
“Get back here this instant, young man!” Shai Nanda hollered from the hall. “You’re not done counting!”
“You — this place — all of you—!”
“First time in Tel-Bastet?” Najra said dryly. “Whose priest are you anyway?”
“I advise you not to tell her that, your Excellency,” Irfan told him. “She enjoys breaking priests.”
“Someone ordained this one too?”
Najra threw her head back and howled with laughter.
“No one has ordained this one,” Irfan said, still holding Faraj’s hands. “More the opposite, really.”
“And you consort with them both?”
“Try keeping them out of your business,” Shai Vishal said. “Like Bastet’s cats. Or else you might trade pointers, given your persistence.”
“You consort with women and cats, you bar auditors from your presence while you alter the books of record—”
“What?” Najra said, outraged. “You take that back!”
“—you mask the evident infirmity of the God-Emperor’s prophet—”
“No, we’re not letting the books go,” Najra said, taking books off her lap so that she could get into a priest’s face.
Or at least into his collarbone; for all her ferocity, she was not very tall.
“I. Am. An. ARCHIVIST. If you intend to start slinging accusations, you had damn well better bring your receipts.”
“Najra,” Faraj tried, but his voice broke embarrassingly.
“What is his problem?”
“He is not your problem, she is,” Kamil pointed out.
“Thank you, Kamil.” Najra thumped her rolled-up notes against her palm. The motion caught the priest’s eye and he grabbed it out of her hand.
Unrolling the sheaf of notes, the priest turned them sideways, bemused. “What…?”
“That is how you cypher,” Najra said, with a particularly sharp grin. Her notes looked like stylized rows of cats and kittens and yarn-loops and the occasional fish part. “That is also, you will note, not how to falsify records. And it’s in silverpoint. I don’t have ink here.”
“What on earth are you people hiding?” the poor priest wailed, knotting a hand in his headscarf.
“I’m sure the cats would love to know as well,” Shai Vishal said. “It was a crisis of faith, as I told you earlier. In ordinary circumstances, that entitles a person to privacy.”
“You cannot possibly persuade me these are ordinary circumstances.”
“Well. With your permission, Most Learned?” Shai Vishal asked Najra, with a shift in his posture that hinted of an old, courtly bow.
“Oh, be my guest.”
“We were discussing how to persuade Archivist Najra that kicking the theological foundations out from under the God-Emperor’s faith was not advisable for the stability of civilization, regardless of how entertaining she might find it.”
It was perfectly true, however incomplete. The poor priest looked so bemused Faraj was almost certain he wouldn’t question whether there was more to it than that.
“Whose priest are you, again?” Najra asked, grinning. “If you’d like to be relieved of all that pious duty, give me a god’s name and I’ll get right on it.”
“I’m sure that won’t be necessary, ya ustadha,” Irfan said, valiantly trying to ignore the kitten who had climbed his sleeve and was sniffing at the sensitive nook behind his jaw.
“Who said anything about necessary? Hilarious, though. I’m sure it’ll be hilarious.”
The poor young priest looked as though he was giving serious consideration to fleeing back into Shai Nanda’s hands as a less dangerously sacrilegious alternative to staying in a room with Najra.
To be fair, Faraj was almost entirely certain he’d judged the relative risks appropriately; Shai Nanda was at least a priest herself.
But some utter dedication to the righteousness of order steeled his spine; he bent close enough to study Faraj’s hands, murmuring numbers under his breath.
And then he said in something almost like betrayal, “You haven’t lost a ring.”
For once, the kitten-pressure eased at the perfect moment. Faraj tried not to gasp, and leaned on every elocution trick he’d ever been taught to keep his voice mild and calm. “Should I have?”
“I — but— that woman said—”
“Can you first decide whether you should believe her or you should disbelieve her?” Shai Vishal asked. “It will make the rest of this easier to follow.”
The priest ran both hands over his face. “She said that everyone in the Temple knew you would lose a ring half the times you visited, your Highness.”
“And did Shai Nanda say why?” Najra asked. “I’ve got at least four theories myself.”
“Uh.” The young priest glanced at Shai Vishal in a way that suggested Shai Nanda’s description might not have been entirely flattering. “There was a mention of underthings in a wad, which of course I dismissed—”
“But how can you dismiss eyewitness testimony?” Najra’s eyes had a dangerously mischievous gleam.
Irfan said firmly, “No, we will not ask his Reverence to provide evidence of the state of his undergarments.”
“But historic record—”
“No, Najra.”
“In any case, what else did she say?” Faraj asked quickly, before it could escalate further. “I admit I have never asked Shai Nanda about her guesses.”
“Then you confess, your Highness?” the young priest cried, shocked.
“That I have left rings and jewelry here more intentionally than one would describe as ‘lost’? It is a poorly hidden secret, if it was ever secret.”
The young priest looked utterly horrified. “Why would you — how could you—”
“You will not believe me when I tell you it was for mercy’s sake,” Faraj murmured.
“Let me attempt a more calculated explanation. A ring donated to the Temple by its craftsman is valued not only by the raw material, but also by the craftsman’s name and skill.
A ring given to the God-Emperor’s brother accrues a certain patina of renown among its layers of provenance.
Those with wealth and power will regularly pay a premium for that. ”
“I know,” the young priest said, looking sick. “The only part I don’t understand is where you take your profit from this embezzling chain.”
“I don’t,” Faraj admitted.
“…what?”
“Rings and jewelry and tokens come to my hands steeped in others’ wishes,” Faraj said.
“A nobleman’s wish for consideration, a craftsman’s wish for attention, even my brother’s desire for a symbol of His power held in distant realms. The tokens are not for me, not for my own sake; they are a conveyance.
I understand what they convey. I hold my brother’s sigil because it is my responsibility, but the others — once the wish has been conveyed, their purpose in my own hands has been completed.
So I wear them for a time, long enough for their provenance to be established.
And then if they are found in the Temple, after having been seen upon my hand or about my throat?
I was neither the craftsman nor the buyer nor the seller.
If they are more greatly valued for having touched my hand, it is not my name that raises the value, but my brother’s.
It would be crass and unworthy to sell them myself.
But if my brother’s Empire benefits from that difference in value?
If a ring I have worn sells for more than a ring straight from the craftsman’s bench, and that difference in value returns to the farmers who raise the crops that feed our people through the cauldrons of Upaja’s priests… you see?”
Incredulous, the priest asked, “What even is this? Anti-embezzling?”
“Some people would call it charity,” Shai Vishal said.
“But the accounting,” the young priest moaned. “How can you properly calculate the tax differential on a matter of estimated prestige?”
“That is among several reasons I prefer to quietly donate them,” Faraj admitted. “If I estimate the value from the craftsmanship alone, it is far less embarrassing than if I must learn exactly how the merchants calculate the financial value of my reputation.”
“We will have to look into this.”
“If you absolutely must,” Faraj sighed. “Please don’t tell me what you learn.”
“What kind of accountant doesn’t want to know a full and fair valuation?”
“One who is excruciatingly aware that he is not the most fashionable of the God-Emperor’s brothers,” Faraj admitted wearily.
“I know what the less honest servants at the Summer Palace charge for a goblet Ziyad’s lips have touched, let alone Rashid’s.
I truly don’t wish to know the difference. Please.”
“…You are a most peculiar prince.”
“Yes,” Faraj said, “yes, that would be the problem precisely.”
“How many princes have you known well enough to compare?” Najra asked him.
“I advise you not to answer that,” Shai Vishal said, dry as dust. “If you indulge her insatiable curiosity, eventually you will find yourself defending the state of your undergarments.”
“Shai Nanda started it,” Najra pointed out.
“Good news, everyone!” Shai Nanda called brightly from the doorway, speckled in grain dust from the crown of her braid to the straps of her reed sandals, with her arm firmly around the shoulders of a stunned-looking and even more dusty young priest. “Pijimi here has confirmed that a twenty-five-pound sack of wheat can have as many as— what was it again, Pijimi? Thirteen thousand…?”