The moment the door closed behind them, Irfan’s poised facade shattered; he dashed to Kamil’s side, caught Faraj’s hand in his own, and pressed his palm to Faraj’s chest without even the pretense of tending to a stray mote of dust on his silks.
“Your Highness,” he murmured, and his voice shook. “This isn’t your back, or your knees. Your heart is pounding. Please. Tell me what’strulywrong.”
Faraj squeezed his hand, but he didn’t dare try to speak. Gasping pain in his voice would have worried them further, and what could he say that wasn’t…
“It’s that creature, isn’t it,” Irfan said. “This iswhyit’s too dangerous. Your heart?—”
The pressure released abruptly, and Faraj couldn’t help a gasp of relief. “It’s all right,” he said, the moment he trusted his voice. “I’m fine. She’s fine. She’s just… occupied.”
“Whereis the creature? What is it doing to you?”
“Might I catch my breath…?”
He truly wasn’t sure how much of the heart-pounding distress was reflected from Sahar and how much was the overwhelming fear of the inquisition, of how desperately he needed to defend her and how little but love alone he could cite in her defense. Kamil’s quiet, watchful strength was a comfort to every fear but this one. He hadn’t dared look into this day, or beyond it, for fear of what he would foresee.
Kamil said to Shai Vishal, “Is there somewhere quiet I can watch over theshahzadawhile you see to your congregant in the library?”
“Come to the library,” Shai Vishal said. “Some matters will become more clear.”
Kamil huffed his opinion of that vigorously enough to ruffle Faraj’s hair. But he padded silently behind Shai Vishal’s footsteps, carried Faraj across the threshold of a familiar room, and stopped short even as Faraj’s ears popped at the sudden pressure-shift of some unexpectedly sharply crackling scry-wards.
Magicalwards, in the heart of theTemple of Bastet.
Najra looked up from amid piles and piles of books heaped on the study table and the floor around her in every direction. She said, “Oh, good. I’ve almost finished drawing the diagrams.”
“Ohdear,”Faraj said.
15
The High Priest’s Judgment
FARAJ
Possibly because of Najra’s ferociously crackling warding, Faraj’s foresight had not given him so much as a glimmer of her… but of course, he’d been trying to ignore the looming chance-shadows of the many ways this day could go badly. He couldn’t tell whether Najra was truly not intending to make disasters, whether the wards were meant to contain the disasters, or whether she was planning to make disasters with an outward-facing blast pattern. Knowing Najra, though, a wise man would bet upon the latter.
“‘A woman of the community with a crisis of faith,’ you said,” the Chamberlain said to Shai Vishal, very straight and very still.
“I am comfortably certain every word of that is true. You will note I did not mentionwhosefaith would find itself in crisis after the Archivist was done with it,” Shai Vishal replied, just as calmly.
“Who invited her?” Irfan said, with frustration glittering at the corners of his hastily-reassembled facade of control. “I might have looked to you, your Highness, except that you are as shocked as I am. Why would any of you invite aheretical witchto a matter of faith and the soul?”
“I was standing right there when you rejected his Highness’s appeal to the Convocation and insisted on Shai Vishal alone,” Najra reminded him. “And I know his Reverence’s birth-name from the dynastic records in the Archives. Make your cypher more of a challenge next time.”
“Oh, please don’t,” Shai Vishal said, briefly cupping both hands to his brow in a plea for his god’s bountiful mercy. “The cypher was more than enough of a challenge, and I sincerely hope we do notneeda next time.”
“How did you evenseethe cypher?” the Chamberlain demanded. “Did you waylay the courier, or infiltrate the Temple, or scry through your witchery somehow?”
“You don’t honestly think I’m going totellyou that, do you?” Najra scoffed. “Kamil, there’s a pile of pillows under the table. I needed the floor space when I was getting all the spellbooks and scriptures out.”
“Thank you,” Kamil said, and hooked his back claws into some of the pillows to drag them out. He settled onto the pillows with Faraj still in his arms. When Faraj tried to shift himself out of Kamil’s lap onto a pillow of his own, Kamil sank his teeth into the scruff of Faraj’s collar as though he was a wayward kitten.
“Oh,” Faraj said, a bit startled, and gently smoothed the fur on Kamil’s muscular forearm. “I’m fine now. You can set me down.”
I can,Kamil told him,but I’m not going to. His breath was very warm and his whiskers were very ticklish against the nape of Faraj’s neck, and Faraj suspected only a heroic effort of will kept Kamil from putting a big paw on the top of his head and grooming him protectively.
“Truly, Kamil, I’m fine now.”
“You’re fine until the creature sinks its claws into your soul and makes its next excruciating demand that your love and yourcourage leads you to deny,” Irfan murmured. “Your Reverence, as you can see, it is already as I feared.”
