Irfan looked honestly shocked. “You represent the stability of the Empire,” he murmured. “You embody the rightness of our God-Emperor’s rule. You speak prophecy in His name, under His aegis. You and I have been allied against those who would make a mockery of you for their own ends for so many years, your Highness… I would never have imagined you would willingly make such a mockery ofyourself.”
My brother’s clothes,Faraj remembered saying to Ahmed over a spilled cup of chai,fitted to my measure by servants of my brother’s household, in the colors of my brother’s heraldry, in the styles appropriate for my brother’s kindred, as dictated by my brother’s ministers of protocol.
A week ago, he would never have dreamed to protest any of it. Not until a bright-eyed courtesan had wrapped him in the semblance of a different faith, and children and kittens had run to him so eagerly to claim sweets from his fingers.
It wasn’t Irfan’s fault that Faraj had briefly tasted a life outside his brother’s prescriptions and proscriptions and found it sweet and wild and intoxicating. And it was still Faraj’s duty to serve, to the best of his ability, in respect for the honors and the luxuries he had been granted as the God-Emperor’s prophet and His living representative in Tel-Bastet.
Faraj still owed the best of his service to his people, toallof his people, no matter how distracting his new lover and his new cat might be. (Especially his new cat, at this particular moment.)
With a sharp sideways glance, Irfan added, “I have disposed of the commoner’s mess in thejharokhathat a laundry-maid tells me was stolen from her drying pole by a large tawny cat yesterday.”
“Really? You had told me that you could not procure such garments on such short notice,” Faraj said, clinging to the handle of his cane.
“I could not procure garmentsfitted to youandsuited to your dignityon such short notice, your Highness.”
“They were not well fitted, it’s true,” Faraj agreed. “Perhaps we should prepare some for the next time.”
“I shall take it under advisement, of course,” Irfan said, staring straight ahead as Shahin swooped in for a dashingly dramatic landing at the balcony.
The impending necessity of Sahar’s next kitten caught him on a sustained note amid the singing of the morning prayers. He wobbled the note, held on desperately for the full measure, and steeled his spine to finish the verses somehow.
Even after the physical pressure had relented, the theological pressures remained overwhelming. The Priests ofthe Assessors of Maat swarmed like sharks that smelled blood in the water. For the God-Emperor’s own prophet to falter in a daily song of praise that he had sung a thousand times before, and ten thousand times before that? What were theomens?What were theimplications?Whatchaostroubled the order of the Empire, and was the flaw in the prophecy or in the God-Emperor’s righteousness or?—
Faraj somehow managed not to snap as he said, “I wrenched my back retrieving a fallen ring this morning, gentlemen. Over that thousand and ten thousand days of song, I have not grown any younger or fitter.”
“Which ring did you let fall?” the youngest of them asked, avid for any hint of symbolism.
“I don’t recall,” Faraj said blandly, because if they would challenge him on a falsehood, he would rather it be a falsehood he could cling to. A fallen sigil-ring was a falsehood they would seize too much symbolism from. “Are we who are mortal not permitted even a moment of mortal frailty?”
“Not when you arethe God-Emperor’s prophet,” the eldest Priest of the Assessors said. “Surely you would have foreseen anything that would disturb the order of your prayers, if you were so rightly guided.”
“This reeks of deception,” another young priest put in. “Why else would you hide your truth from the priests of Order?”
Faraj couldn’t sigh. But the priests weren’t wrong about the effect, only about the cause. He glanced at Irfan, who could have recruited persistent and noisy allies if he let slip that a feline agent of chaos had dared bind itself to the soul of the God-Emperor’s prophet.
Instead, Irfan said calmly, “Surely his Highness’ foresights have many matters of greater significance to attend to than a misplaced bauble on the bedside of a night.”
Oh,Faraj realized.Oh, yes.Neitherof us wants them sticking their inquisitive ears into the hearing we are about to have, if they seize so eagerly on the happenstance of a dropped ring.
They were most stickily persistent, insisting over breakfast that if his Imperial Highness had nothing to hide, then surely he, a dutiful bureaucrat, would understand that the presence of interested auditors could not be a threat to those who were entirely honest and truthful.
Faraj understood entirely. If they had spent any amount of time investigating corruption among the great powers of the palaces, temples, or marketplaces, of course they would have both well-honed instincts for any hints of falsehood and a practiced claim to authority. It was terribly awkward that his own poorly-concealed sins had nothing to do with financial malfeasance or power or profit, and everything to do with an enchanted and enchanting chaos-cat who would be just as much of a scandal to order-priests as embezzlement. And all that was before they got into digging into the fateful symbolism of any misstep in a ritual performance.
Irfan made a masterful show of portraying the noble-born servant of order who still felt some matters to be beneath his interest, including the monthly cataloging of the non-cash equivalents that merchants and farmers had donated to the Priests of Upaja for tax forgiveness in exchange for community nourishment. They had completed that monthly reckoning four days ago… but Faraj wasalmostcertain the Priests of the Assessors didn’t know that.
“Surely you cannot actually care how many heads of cabbage were damaged in transit, and what percentage of damage per head?” Irfan asked them, flicking an imaginary speck of dust from his sleeve.
Unfortunately, the Priests of the Assessors of Maat were mostavidlyinterested in organizational matters such as shipping, accounting, and waste due to chaos’ depredations on an orderly process. They even insinuated two of their number into the royal carriage for the journey from thehavelito the Temple.
As the turning carriage-wheels bumped and jostled them down the road from the fortress to the river plain, Faraj took refuge in bland chatter about the intricacies of the Ministry of Finance’s tax assessments, fully expecting to see the priests’ eyes glaze over. But the youngest one actually leaned in, asking detailed questions about comparative valuations and loss estimates. Faraj felt quite a surprise to discover a truly interested audience — and when he began tentatively to explain his hypothesis about the estimable financial value of disaster aversion through a touch of prophecy, both of the order-priests lit up in eager enthusiasm.
Watching Kamil and Irfan silently commiserate with a single glance was entertaining in its own way; if his Chamberlain could have flicked ears or whiskers, he would have.
Faraj would gladly have spent the day up to his elbows in books of tax law analyzing what percentage of the past forty years worth of post-fire or flood or infrastructure failure’s cleanups and repairs might have been averted with warnings a few steps further upstream than his own disaster-prophecies. It would have been much less stressful… well, at least forhim,though he understood his interests in both disaster prevention and financial recalibrations were not always shared. He did truly appreciate the young priests’ devotion to the value of Order. He admired their insistence that worldly power and influence could not be permitted to disorder the fair and just distribution of the fruits of the Empire’s labor, for the goodof the Empire’s people and gods alike. In that goal, they were entirely in accord with each other.
He wished the Convocation might have happened a month earlier than the night of his dreams, so that he could have spoken with them with a clearer, deception-free conscience.
In everythingbuthis affection for his softly purring little demon of chaos incarnate, he did find more in common with the young order-priests than he’d expected. At least until they came to the Council’s private entrance to Bastet’s sanctuary, and Faraj caught his first glimpse of how Shai Vishal had chosen to express his displeasure with the situation.
