Chapter 15 The High Priest’s Judgment #9
“Twelve thousand eight hundred and seventy-three,” he reported numbly. “Median, not mean.”
“—That many grains too much, or too few, depending on how old the sack is and how dried out it has gotten since it was first weighed!”
Shai Vishal blinked. “So, roughly plus or minus seven and a half percent?”
“Yes…?” Pijimi said warily.
“I would have told you that if you’d asked.”
“Ah, but now we have been audited,” Shai Nanda said, with relish. “We have been audited down to the dust, haven’t we, Pijimi?”
“Less than one percent of your grain storage has been audited—”
“Are you telling me you want to personally audit the other ninety-nine percent? What devotion! What dedication!”
“No,” Pijimi cut in desperately. “No, I am — I am not telling you that, Shai Nanda. But I am the priest of Neha-her whose domain is the theft of grain, and Kellouj is the priest of Neba whose domain is the speaking of falsehood. And the Greater Convocation is to be held in this temple in two weeks. And the foundation must be built upon Order, upon Truth, and upon the principles of Maat. Otherwise the Convocation itself will fail beneath the strain of so many conflicting faiths. The agents of Chaos cannot be allowed to foment war among the gods because we neglected to root out corruption at the base.”
“I understand, I truly do,” Faraj said. “I share those goals with you. But, your Excellencies, you are in the Temple of Bastet, amid shrines to many cat-goddesses and mischievous kittens of many stripes. A certain amount of chaos…”
“We must hold the line,” Kellouj said. “We are not gods to judge the full depth of the chaos-pit from whence Isfet’s spawn may spew forth. We are human, and we hold the line.”
“Good luck with that,” Najra said dryly, tugging her silverpoint back and forth with a wild-eyed kitten whose fangs and claws were embedded in the wooden shaft.
With a mighty tussling, the kitten wrenched its prize from her hands and streaked off, a triumphant victor about to gnaw its prey into submission.
“Well, I suppose that’s all for my heretical cyphers today.
So if you lot entirely refuse to let me kick the propaganda out from under Rashid’s self-important arse-prop… ?”
Shai Nanda was grinning from ear to ear. Irfan looked as though he might be ill. Both of the young order-priests’ eyes were as wide and white around the edges as startled racehorses.
Faraj said, “I would take it as a great personal favor if you would resist the temptation, Najra.”
“Because you asked so nicely, your Highness,” Najra told him, with a hand to her heart in a fashion more popular among men of the court. “Will you take the book-chests back up the road with you in the carriage? I need to gossip with some market-witches before they close up shop.”
“You allow her to converse with the common people? Unsupervised?” Kellouj asked.
“He’s much too wise to try to stop me,” Najra said. “You, though? You’ll demonstrate my point nicely. Come with me to the market-witches, priest of Neba. I’d love a sworn priest’s testimony as to how much I absolutely believe every word I say to them. In public. Loudly.”
“Oh, I want to see this,” Shai Nanda said, delighted.
As much as he wished he could have permitted them to distract the Priests of the Assessors of Maat from his own secrets, the shadows flaring across his foresight were vividly clear that no one would enjoy the disasters to come if two order-priests watched Archivist Najra and Shai Nanda gossiping with the market-witches about openly relished heresies.
“I do apologize,” Faraj said, “but if we are to soothe the priests’ concerns about any portents facing the Empire, I must bring them to the haveli with me instead.”
No sworn priest of another god would prostrate himself at the feet of the God-Emperor’s prophet, but these two looked as though they were at least considering it.
Najra had somehow brought three whole chests of books from the Archives and from her personal collection, in addition to the cross-references she’d been looking up in the Temple library.
Faraj suspected unholy sorcery must have been involved in the transportation, because there was no way she could have carried them all herself.
She pressed Irfan and the order-priests into helping her re-crate her books while Shai Vishal reshelved the Temple’s books and Shai Nanda distracted as many cats as she could with feathers and ribbons, because open boxes were open boxes.
Several of the cats snuggled drowsing into Faraj’s lap and climbing his shoulders were pointedly resistant to being moved.
Thinking guiltily about the dyers and the embroiderers who had put such efforts into the saffron silks the God-Emperor’s prophet wore, Faraj hoped that somewhere among Najra’s spellbooks they might be able to discover a claw-proofing spell, or at least a snag-smoothing spell.
And if such an enchantment could be bound into a ring or a necklace, so much the better.
In the meantime, he was as gentle and as careful as he could manage in extracting claws and moving soft purring bundles of impending silk destruction.
The sleek little black tom who looked like Nehal rubbed his cheek against Faraj’s, before he leapt down and sauntered off.
The book-chests wriggled disturbingly as they glided across the Temple floors like oddly-shaped snakes.
Cats bushed their tails with wide black pupils, unsure whether to pounce or to flee.
And as they followed the wriggling book-chests through the Temple, Shai Nanda invited Najra to go drinking with her the next time they had a rest-day in common, which Faraj found even more unsettling to consider than the serpentine writhing of wood and iron.
Leaning on his cane while Najra and the priests argued about whether the writhing chests were too unholy to put into the carriage with three sworn priests and a devout man of faith, Faraj felt the shadow of warmth, and turned to find Shai Vishal standing just behind his shoulder.
“Your Highness,” Shai Vishal murmured, “I must apologize. It was beyond preposterous of me to imagine that on a day such as this, with such pressures upon us both, that I could offer what I had vainly hoped might be taken for comfort. I am sometimes a clumsy man, but I am rarely such a thoughtless fool. Please believe that I had not intended to wound you, regardless of the result. And I am most deeply sorry to have caused you further distress.”
“But — you — oh, no, that’s not— I didn’t mean to—”
“To flinch from the uninvited touch of a man who weighed a judgment you have dreaded with all your soul? To the point where you have denied yourself even foresight of this day?” Shai Vishal’s words sometimes held a keenly honed edge, but Faraj had never heard him turn the blade against anyone so bitterly as against himself.
“I held that power over you today, and while I never intended harm, it was still inexcusably thoughtless of me.”
Faraj was suddenly glad of his cane’s support. “Your Reverence… truly, I was, I am, grateful for your compassionate hand. It’s just that this has been… well… not my best day. If I happened to flinch at that particular moment, it was certainly not your fault.”
“You are a deeply kind man, and well aware of your power,” Shai Vishal told him. “As a result, you are on occasion excessively gentle with those who have hurt you. I believe you will understand if I tell you that in this one matter, your Highness, I find your word less reliable than usual.”
He couldn’t possibly explain that it had never been Shai Vishal’s fault if, many years ago, a lonely prince had once had fantasies that of course a priest of a different god would not, could not share with the God-Emperor’s prophet.
The shadows of Shai Vishal’s shock and distress and guilt-staggered recalculations of politics and power flared like dark fire in the corners of his eyes.
With a sigh, Faraj said, “I swear upon my brother’s holy name that I am most sincerely grateful for every compassion you have shared with me. I would invite you to grant yourself such compassion as well.”
“Your Highness, you have not convinced me that you would not offer a surfeit of kindness to one who has hurt you, even unwittingly. But in honor of the kindness you offer…” Shai Vishal cupped his hands at his brow in invitation of his god’s generous mercy, and murmured, “Tathaastu aur ‘amiin.”