Chapter 16 Proclamations and Yowling #5
Priye’s purring was loud enough to rival even the marching of the guard.
As he carried Priye toward the imposing door to the Archives, she tucked her face against the crook of his neck and held on tight to his night-clothes. Her little claws were still quite sharp.
“Would you prefer we stand out here in the sunbeam for a time?” he offered.
“Your Highness,” Irfan said, rubbing his brow. “We have a schedule and Priests of the Assessors of Maat to appease.”
Priye shook her head a little, and poked at book book. But then she tucked her face into his shoulder again.
Standing just inside the door of the Archives, Kamil said, “She trusts you, shahzada.”
“Oh! Oh, wonderful timing. You see, Priye, our valiant Kamil will keep us both safe and sound even if it is a very large door.”
“She trusts you, shahzada,” Kamil said. “I am just your sharp-clawed and irritable accessory.”
“You are a great deal more than that,” Faraj told him, “but still, I am honored by such trust.”
He carried Priye over the threshold to the Archives, under the gaze of astonished guards, his wearily resigned Chamberlain, and his amused bodyguard.
Archivist Najra looked up from a table full of notes. “Well, hello there,” she said. “Whom have you brought us today, your Highness?”
“This is Priye,” he said. “She doesn’t speak, but she is quite fierce in her insistence that she wishes to pounce upon all the books and gnaw all the words into submission as she conquers them for her own.”
“Oh, we’re going to get on splendidly,” Najra said.
Priye peeked out from Faraj’s shoulder and studied Najra for a moment.
tall? she wrote, with a very skeptical crinkle in her nose.
“Archivist Najra can make stacks of books even taller than Kamil,” Faraj told her.
He was certain that hadn’t quite been what she’d meant, but it seemed to satisfy her well enough.
With a satisfied nod, Priye wriggled until he set her down, and then trotted over to sniff at Najra’s papers, ears and whiskers avidly fixed on the collection.
“Just making sure, we’re talking about devouring books by reading them, not with holes gnawed in parchments?” Najra asked.
“She, er, she did mention breakfast?” Faraj offered guiltily.
Priye sneezed a giggle, tail lashing in impending mischief, and crouched down for a pounce.
“If you bite holes in my books I splash you in the nose,” Najra said. “Fair warning.”
“Hrrrrrmph,” Priye said, and stretched elaborately and casually as though she had never thought of any more puncturing methods of book consumption.
Najra, who had younger siblings in her family, was clearly not fooled in the slightest. “You’re old enough to know how to handle books,” she said. “So which of the books do you want to fill your head with first?”
Priye stared at her with huge black pupils. Apparently she had not thought beyond book book all book to specific book first. Then she looked up at Faraj hopefully.
“When I was about your age,” he said, “my favorite book told a thousand and one stories over a thousand and one nights? So many different stories, and all of them captured in one book!”
Priye nodded eagerly, and looked at Najra.
“I’m sure we can find at least three copies,” Najra told her, grinning. “Which language and which alphabet do you like best?”
Watching them together, Faraj thought ruefully that it wasn’t easy to make a place for catfolk in a fortress that had guarded its treasures jealously for centuries. And the catfolk were not beating down the gates with their eagerness to come in and sniff everything, either.
But he had tended the garden on his balcony for years, and he remembered the tiny seeds and saplings that he’d planted with such hope, further apart than the royal gardeners had suggested, because he could foresee the shadows of the towering trees they would become.
He’d always known that the man of his dreams would bring trouble with him, carried gently in the hands that plucked fragrant jasmine blossoms from the plant in his window.
…He had to admit he hadn’t foreseen the cats.
But then, Sahar was clearly quite adept at choosing her favorite shadows to lurk within, including places to hide herself from his foresights when she wished.
He hoped that with time and patience and gentle tending, he could also coax the new kittens to come readily to his hands, even if they brought mischief with them.
He hadn’t dared to dream that the man of his dreams might truly desire him as well — for himself, not for his brother’s name or his wealth. But as he’d written to Shai Vishal, he found his dreams more daring of late.
And if he could persuade the haveli, the Chamberlain, the Ministry of Finance, and the city at large that it was worth both the risks of cat-shaped espionage and the exasperations of collars to permit a more just and equitable access to the halls of power, no matter whether you went on two legs or four, then how much more trouble could a lover be?
…Well, he knew better than to say that aloud. Especially in front of Kamil and Irfan.
But for once in his life, Nur-ul-Shuruq Faraj al-Nadhir was looking forward to learning how much trouble he could cause.