“He wascovered to the eyes,boy.” Hoda wrung her towel out with extra vigor. “All your life you have been discreet about questions of your own heart, until this sudden foolishness with Hamda and Ishta and their daughters. And now suddenly you will throw yourself at every large gentleman in sight for the sake of your gossip-spat? He knows nothing of our neighborhood gossip. To toy with his heart? To use him to score points in your personal quarrel with women he has never even met? He could have thought you truly meant your advances! You were always shameless, but you were never cruel. What has come over you?”
“I was still planning to matchmake you with your poor mendicant priest,” Geeta-auntie added wistfully. “Even if Ishta would have scolded me for it.”
Ashar opened his mouth, closed it again, and realized,I can’t explain, can I. There’s no way I can explain. Sami has to be a different man than my Rahat, and both of them must not be the God-Emperor’s brother.
He sighed, and knelt to touch Hoda-auntie’s feet. “I’m sorry not to have considered matters from that perspective,” he said. “And the next time he comes to fold bowls with us, I will clarify any misunderstandings we might have between us, and I will apologize if I have hurt him.”
All of it was true, even if he hoped that his sweet darling would smile at Hoda-auntie’s fierce defense of his heart.
“Well, good, then,” Hoda-auntie said, lifting him from his kneeling. “But whathascome over you? If you felt so compelled to advertise your charms, Geeta and Basima and I are right here.”
Ashar couldn’t help a sigh. “Hoda-auntie, I am already squabbling with half the aunties of the neighborhood overwhether I have the right to choose not to marry any particular daughter. I have no desire to add another squabble with every uncle over insupportably public liberties with their daughtersandtheir wives!”
“That’s sensible,” Basima-auntie admitted. “But if you ever do want a squabble, some of us wouldn’t mind some attention.”
“Basima!”Hoda-auntie gasped.
“What?” Mreret yowled. “Everyone should feel as desirable as they want to feel. If her husband isn’t up to the job, why shouldn’t she ask around? And that one hasverygood brushing-hands.”
They all kept cutting and folding broadleaf bowls, even through the sputtering and the squawking and the yowling about the different notions of propriety and whose propriety should be heeded in a Temple that was, after all, Bastet’s. Ashar kept his head down and his hands busy with folding and pinning.
He hoped that Shai Vishal would not judge him too sharply, or choose a pose for his penance that was particularly arranged for an uncomfortable reproof. Because now he needed to ask Nehal to lurk about the Temple listening for any hint of an upcoming Imperial heresy-trial, or when and where it might be held, and if Nehal were caught in that act, Ashar would owe many more penances.
And catfolk did enjoy playing with their hapless prey.
Perhaps he should keep his belt-pouch full of catnip toys just in case. You weren’t often given warning when a cat-priestess summoned you, given their precepts of stalking and prowling and leaping from the shadows on whatever they wanted to seize.
So, he needed some way to cover Nehal’s prowling for trial-gossip, more treats for Upaja’s priests to give the children, and more catnip for appeasing cat-priestesses or at least distracting them. And another month of dealing with Chetan so thatCamellia would not need to. Along with the purchase of a few more subtle garments that were not so clearly marked with the blossoms of the House of Jasmines, and also not known to belong to any of his patrons who had left a garment behind. Plus some sort of distraction to cover when Sahar’s kittens had arrived… oh, and some way of learning living illusions without entrusting a powerful mage with the knowledge that Asharan bir Chameli had particular interest in that skill. Or a bookseller — not that a spellbook would have helped him anyway; even aside from how forbidden most of them were, spellbooks were usually written in the court script, without vowels, and encoded in poetical references Ashar himself didn’t have the expensive education to disentangle.
Every time he blinked, some new complication had wriggled its way into the mewling pile of attention-demanding gossip-kittens climbing his sleeves with pointy little claws. And that was evenwithoutmentioning that Rahat-sahib had such a well-known name behind the pseudonym.
The next time they met, Asharan would somehow have to ask hisrahatifor a bit of foresight’s guidance. Because foresight was clearly not hisownstrong suit.
14
Dreams, Omens, and Portents
FARAJ
Faraj was almost entirely certain he was dreaming, except that it was nothing like any dream he had ever had, nor anything like the shadow-and-starfire-flares of his foresights. The world was blue-gray and hazy, and something was just wrong about the shape of everything. And something had pinned him, or was squeezing, or…
Something needed to move, or to be moved.
Someone was snoring, or purring.
Tiny mews caught at his heart, and Faraj tried to wriggle further into the shadows, where everything was dark and safe and smelled comfortingly familiar, except that he was pinned, or squeezed, or something.
Akhadim’sshriek startled him fully awake; Faraj yelped, flinched, and hit the back of his head against the underside of his bed’s mattress.
“Your Highness— what —why?—?”
He couldn’t exactly call it sleep-walkingif it had been sleep-crawling.And either way that seemed like an unfortunate thing to say to a distressedkhadimwho had just found him halfway under his bed and — Faraj tried to wriggle somewhat vainly — and very definitely stuck.
“Um,” Faraj said, “I’m terribly sorry to be a bother, but I don’t suppose you and Kamil might be able to lift the bed-frame a few inches?”
“I’ll go and bring the Chamberlain,” thekhadimsaid, and fled before Faraj’s still sleep-muddled mind could find a more diplomatic thing to say thanoh please don’t.
“Kamil?” he called, hopefully.
