Chapter 16 Proclamations and Yowling #2
“And so no one has seen Sami since his inquisition?” Ashar asked the leaf-folding aunties gathered at the entrance of Bastet’s Temple. His own hands were less steady than he might have wished, and folding leaves gave himself a way to busy his hands until Shai Vishal’s shift at the cauldrons ended.
“No, and it’s a good thing too, because I would kick sand all over him,” Mreret grumbled, ears flattened. “Collars. He got the shahzada to write COLLARS into a proclamation.”
“More to the point, my husband heard about the tax refunds,” Basima-auntie said gloomily, stabbing a bowl with a twig-sliver with particular vigor. “He is already scheming up an assortment of ruts to dig into the farm roads and jammed qanat filters he can clear.”
“Basima-auntie,” Ashar said, “I am entirely certain that the shahzada would not provide tax refunds for averted disasters that your husband caused. There were five separate sections specifying that artificially induced disasters did not count.”
“You try telling my husband that, beta, because he surely won’t listen to me.”
“Even more to the point,” Hoda-auntie said, “what about his sweet little cat and her kittens? Tell me where to aim my fire-poker.”
“Oh, they’re fine now,” Shai Nanda said comfortably, stacking up a pile of the folded bowls. “The Council smoothed out the various factions’ riled-up fur before the shahzada sent that proclamation.”
“And if he hadn’t settled their fur?” Mreret asked, suspicious.
“Then every market-witch who knows Archivist Najra’s name would have received the text of a very different proclamation,” Shai Nanda said. “And every hungry scribe whom I’ve ever fed would have gotten a brand new sheaf of papyrus with their next bowl.”
To Ashar, who still had to duck into alleys and beneath market-carts to avoid the pursuit of avid matchmaking aunties, the rousing of a scandalized city-wide gossip network sounded like one of the most dire threats short of bloodshed that he could imagine.
Shai Nanda stacked her heap of leaf-bowls on the top of the pile.
Two of the mendicants, Tarikku and Shai Rahim (whom most of the children of the Catsprowl still called Rahat-sahib thanks to Hira’s mischief), carried an enormous kettle of vegetables up the Temple’s front ramp to refill the cauldrons, so that everything could simmer together through the afternoon.
Hoda-auntie had just rewetted her towel to keep wiping the travel dust from the broadleaves, and she gave Ashar a significant look: “Don’t you pester any priests, young man. They are working.”
“I understand, Hoda-auntie,” Ashar assured her, smiling. “But they’re so irresistible, how can I help myself? Kindness and dedication and generosity, and they nurture everyone they meet…”
“You’re not escaping a wife that easily, beta.”
“Oh, believe me, I would never suggest escaping a wife has been easy,” Ashar said.
“Sure it is,” Shai Nanda said, settling next to Hoda-auntie again and reaching for another cut leaf to fold. “Just look at me. I decided I was done with husbands twenty years ago but I still haven’t found a woman who’ll put up with me. In other words, I am the perfect role model.”
Standing beside them with the next heaping pile of broadleaves in his arms, Shai Vishal cleared his throat, and Ashar flinched guiltily despite himself.
“Somebody’s in trouble,” Shai Nanda sing-songed, grinning. “I’m so proud! Quite the troublemaker you’ve grown into, haven’t you. Keep that up and you’ll never get a wife!”
“I meant that reproof for you, Nanda,” Shai Vishal said, and she chortled.
“Still a point for me, then! See there, sweetie, you just do like I do, and no self-respecting woman would saddle herself with either of us.”
“Stop encouraging him,” Hoda-auntie groaned.
“Asharan,” Shai Vishal said, very much on his dignity. “If you would come with me for a moment.”
“Yes, your Reverence,” Ashar said, and barely kept himself from saying yes, please.
He followed Shai Vishal through the Temple, trying to look as though he belonged.
Trying to walk with confidence, rather than the awkward tangle of owed penance and concern for the man whom he could not think of as Rahat, could not think of by the title he ought not know, and could not speak of too revealingly under Sami’s name, in case Shai Vishal had not gazed as lingeringly into those glorious gazelle-soft eyes as Ashar himself had.
He bowed to each of the cat-goddesses’ statues in their lamp-lit, incense-fragrant nooks, and washed and dried his hands at the door to Shai Vishal’s study.
Two cats looked up from the sunny window ledge Ashar had been drawn to during his previous visit.
One of them yawned and stretched and leapt down; the other looked like quite an old cat, and she curled back up with supreme confidence that no young whippersnapper would dare lay unwelcome hands upon her.
Shai Vishal had also come into possession of a jasmine plant that appreciated the sunbeams just as avidly as the cat, and Ashar wondered what he meant by it, because Shai Vishal never presented symbolism accidentally.
“Where should I offer my penance?” Ashar asked as lightly as he could. “And which temptation to sin would you prefer I embody for you?”
Shai Vishal blinked, his hands hesitating by his brushes, and so Ashar realized he had misstepped again.
“I’m sorry,” he sighed. “I don’t know why I can’t put a foot right for you, your Reverence. But I am here to embody a sinner’s penitence; clearly I am not a model of virtue.”
“You are here to experience a penance, for your heart’s ease,” Shai Vishal said.
“You are here to practice how to embody your devotion in stillness, rather than in frenetic service. But this book is The Devotions. Every devotion is a virtue. Every devotion is an offering of love, enduring. Your love for your community, for your neighborhood, for the children and kittens who drink a sweet cup of chai before their daily lessons. Your love in compassion, in your hands’ easing of pain and your heart’s soothing of spirits.
Your love in faith, when many other young men of your generation claim to have outgrown such matters. ”
“Your Reverence,” Ashar said, a bit uncomfortable, “when I have a bad day, I hang out a sign and close the door, or I ask Kalyani and Hira to cover for me.”
“In other words, you are human?”
“Well, yes, but so are you. And still your cauldrons are filled every single day.”
“In other words, you are one human with two assistants. Rather than, for example, a centuries-old faith with a dozen sworn priests in this Temple alone, and devotees across the Empire to call upon when more support is needed. As it will be needed for the Greater Convocation.”
Ashar was not a child to squirm at a scolding from an elder, but somehow he couldn’t stop squirming at a gently reproving word of understanding. Shai Vishal studied him with both a priest’s eye and an artist’s.
“Your heart still troubles you.”
“Since the inquisition, have you seen—” He couldn’t say Rahat. He couldn’t say my heart’s treasure. He couldn’t even think of that lofty title. And in his panic, he suddenly couldn’t remember the other name his sweet treasure had used in the Temple.
“Sami and his cat are both safe and well,” Shai Vishal said, and Ashar couldn’t help his sigh of relief.
“I understand that his cat has safely borne her kittens, and the bureaucrats in the haveli are in thrice the uproar between the kittens, the proclamation inviting yet more cats, and some impressively failed attempts at artifact-guarding witcheries.”
“Thank you, your Reverence. I’m sorry.”
“Whatever for?”
Despite the penance of stillness, Ashar needed something to do with his hands, and some way to hide his face.
He busied himself with the jasmine plant, plucking off faded blossoms and brittle leaves, turning the pot to investigate the other side, as he thought through what he could and could not admit aloud, even to a priest.
“The one whom my heart holds dear is as far beyond my reach as Sami,” he murmured.
“You can ask after Sami, your Reverence, and you will be answered. You speak the languages of power. You could walk with him among those halls, if you wished. You are a man that anyone would be honored to stand beside. But someone like me… how could I be anything but a distraction at best, and an embarrassment at worst? I cannot so much as ask after his well-being. I don’t even speak his language.
I have no place in his world, and I know it. ”
“Don’t be absurd,” Shai Vishal said firmly. “It doesn’t suit you.”
Startled, Ashar spilled the palmful of leaves. “Your Reverence?”
“You have also told me that you are somehow too sullied for Madhur’s company, when I know how dearly he treasures both your friendship and the relief of pain he finds in your attentive hands,” Shai Vishal said.
“Your place in his world is right here. In the Temple of Bastet who loves mischief and kittens and all manners of pleasure. And your place in his world is at Upaja’s cauldrons, where all are welcome.
If anyone says to you that either of you are not welcome in Bastet’s Temple or Upaja’s shrine, send them to me for a swift re-education. ”
“Oh,” Ashar breathed, and sank carefully onto the pillow while his knees would still hold him.
The elderly cat gave him a gimlet eye, then huffed and settled back into her drowsing.
“Oh, might we…” But he stopped himself short at the thought of asking his Reverence Shai Vishal if he could arrange to share a private place with his treasured one.
The places where people made such arrangements were in brothels and bath-houses, not the Temple.
“Go on,” Shai Vishal said, gently.
“You have many books here, in many languages,” Ashar said. “I don’t… I’m not… good with writing. Words or numbers. But if I might listen while someone studies their scriptures, perhaps I might learn more of the sound of his speech…?”