On any other day, if Shai Vishal had not bothered to change a smoke-smudged and haldi-stained priest’s wrap after his shift at the cauldrons, Faraj would have taken it as a silent comment upon the relative importance of Imperial pomp and circumstance, in which Shai Vishal ranked Imperial politics somewhere well below his personal service to the poor and hungry of Tel-Bastet. Faraj would have felt the sting of the rebuke and been humbled, as Irfan would have felt the sting of the rebuke and become indignant.
On a day when thePriests of the Assessors of Maathad sentauditorswhom Faraj was attempting to divert from the secret inquisition about a prophet’s soul-binding to a chaos-spirit given flesh, under cover of a ruse about the monthly tax day that he had not had the chance towarn Shai Vishal about?—
He barely had a moment to wonder if his foresights were too overwhelmed by the full array of new potential disasters in his life and this one had just slipped past his mind’s eye, when Irfan said in a crisp high court dialect, “Your Reverence, the Priests of the Assessors of Maat intend to supervise our reconciliation of the monthly donation ledgers. I do apologize for the unexpected disruption.”
“I see,” Shai Vishal said, in the common tongue of the Basteti streets, as utterly neutral as Irfan was pointed.
The youngest of them bit his lip at the thought that their zeal had also disrupted someone else’s Order. Faraj might have had more sympathy for a young priest’s first encounter with Irfan and Vishal’s sharply pointed propriety if the priests hadn’t been so insistent on reading dire omens of the fate of the empire into one pain-staggered prayer of devotion and one polite fiction about a dropped ring.
He supposed that people without his own literal visions of impending troubles must feel the need to grasp at whatever straws of forecasting they could conjure up from fevered imaginations. But at some point before the Greater Convocation ended, he really ought to take them both aside and gently explain that the world held quite enough actual looming disasters without reckoning fateful portents into dropped baubles and spilled cups and a scuff of dust marring the orderly pattern of a mosaic floor.
As an actualnadhirprophet, he thought he had the standing to advise them that not every omen was always of doom, and sometimes it was not even an omen.
But then, if they had uncovered his purring heresies by that point, they might be disinclined to accept a guilt-haunted man’s advice to belessstringent in their seeking of evidence.
“Should I have a word with the Temple acolytes, to ask after a suitable study room with additional desks and chairs?” Irfan asked, following Shai Vishal’s shift in language smoothly.
“No need,” Shai Vishal said. “A woman of the community has come to me with a crisis of faith, and the monthly calculations can wait. But I believe a private word of comfort from the God-Emperor’s own prophet may go some way toward soothing her soul. Perhaps our visitors would enjoy a tour of the Temple storerooms in the meantime.”
“Are you forbidding us from observing you?” the slightly-elder of the two Priests of the Assessors said, shocked.
Dryly, Shai Vishal said, “If you prefer to be forbidden than to have the grace to step aside in a private matter of the heart, young ones, then certainly I will forbid you as you wish.”
“I had not thoughtyouwould support chaos and disruption, your Reverence!”
“I do not,” he agreed. “That is why I ask you to step aside, rather than to further disrupt my ministry to my community. Fold some broadleaf bowls. Play with some kittens. Wait your turn.”
“Order stands aboveall,” the youngest one said, aghast. “Ordermuststand above all, or else?—”
Of coursethatwas the moment that Sahar felt the imperative pressure of her next kitten. The cane was just a single slender, wobbly stick, and Faraj’s knees werenotgoing to hold him up.
One of the young priests began shouting about the irregularity and the chaos and the deception while Kamil scooped him into his arms andsnarled. The Chamberlain fluttered about like a startled dove, trying to soothe the flaring tempers and brush the hostilities aside while desperately distracted by his own concern.
“This is far beyond chaos, this isconspiracy!”the elder cried.“For you to hide the infirmity of the God-Emperor’s prophet and however many cracks you conceal in the foundation of the Empire itself?—”
It was rare for Shai Vishal to raise his voice, but when he needed to, he would.
“Children,”he said, “you are much too young to understandage. When you are old and fat and exhausted and your body creaks with every step, talk to me again about how only a physically perfect specimen has the right to embody youridealized order. In the meantime, listen to the wisdom that age and pain and endurance have brought his Highness and myself, andlet the man rest.”
“But if the God-Emperor’s own brother is ill and infirm, what of the God-Emperor Himself? What right to claim flawless dominion?—”
“The God-Emperor is perfect beyond perfection,” the Chamberlain told them, with the unshaken blaze of pure faith shining in his eyes. “The God-Emperor is inevitably Himself. But should you wish to inspect the flawlessness of God-Emperor’s perfection with your own eyes, I will bemorethan glad to arrange for your transportation to the Summer Palace. Now, your Highness, we must find a quiet place to?—”
Hands clenched at his sides, the youngest one declared, “In the name of Maat, in the name of Order, and in the name of Truth, I demand?—”
Even through the difficulty of Sahar’s exertions, Faraj flinched when Shai Vishal threw his head back and laughed.
“Youdemand? You?In the Temple of Bastet, who delights in mischief? Beneath the eye of the High Priest of Upaja, who holds that imperfection is proof of humanity? Goaway,children. Come back tomorrow. Then I will count for you as many sacks of wheat as you wish to watch me count.”
“What’s all this fuss?” Shai Nanda asked, stepping in through the door from the sanctuary. “Vishal, I thought you were going to attend to that angry woman in the library.”
“I would gladly do so as soon as these yapping puppies sit down.”
Shai Nanda wasnotwhom Faraj would have chosen to escort priests of Order, because she was born with an instinct for mischief that made her right at home in Bastet’s Temple. “Counting the wheat, you said?”
“They seem most concerned with the order of our warehouse,” Shai Vishal agreed.
“Come on then, boys. We’ve just gotten a new donation of wheat. We can countevery single grain.”And she seized both of them by the elbows and hauled them away, despite their increasingly indignant protests.
