“No, see, the point is that if the kittensinheritwhatever shining prophet-aura he has that scatters the little wretches in approximately a twenty yard radius?—”
“Thepointis that you have senthis Imperial Highness Nur-ul-Shuruq Faraj al-Nadhirto goimp-hunting like a rat-catcher!”
“Imp-repelling, technically. Which is why I’m looking forward to finding out whether the kittens do it too!”
“Irfan,” Faraj said gently, “she’s winding you up on purpose.”
“But isn’t it adorable watching him fluff up in indignation protecting your dignity and your kittens?”
“Najra, please, I’m trying not to break him entirely.”
“Psssht. He’s tougher than the silks make you think. As we’ve just demonstrated.”
With an explosive sigh, Irfan said, “I must endeavor to lose some of your esteem,ya ustadha, so that next time you will not calculate a need to crack the foundations of our God-Emperor’s faith in order to be certain of your victory.”
“If you didn’t have that steel rod up your backside, you wouldn’t deserve your place. His Adorableness deserves people he can rely on through flood or famine, because he’s already had to.” Najra glanced at Kamil and said, “Thanks for the tips, by the way.”
“What tips?” Shai Vishal said, a touch sourly.
“His Eminence’s cypher-key was much easier to untangle than a gap in your frankly ludicrous schedule,” Najra said.
“Howdidyou know when to—” Shai Vishal stopped, looked at Kamil again, and said, “The cat at the window.”
“You are not reassuring me that my fears of feline espionage are overblown,” Irfan said, with a pained crinkle at the corners of his eyes.
“I never said they were,” Najra pointed out. “But if everyone else has already got curious eyes and curious whiskers pouncing on the secret-mice, then we might as well recruit more secret-mousers ourselves. Kamil can’t beeverywhere.”
“And how much of today’s private deliberations will be much less private than I had believed?” Irfan asked wearily.
“Oh, that’s what the wards are for. A little extra insurance for us both. For you? Privacy in the conversation. For me?” Najra grinned. “Want to bet on how many cats are sitting in the hall because there’s been something going on in Bastet’s Temple behind a closed and warded door, they don’t know what, and the curiosity is itching at them like fleas?”
“I’m sure I don’t wish to imagine.”
“Between fifteen and twenty, depending on who brought kittens,” Shai Vishal guessed.
Faraj blinked. “But you do not use coin, your Reverence? What would you wager with?”
“You’ve ‘misplaced’ a ring again, your Highness.” Shai Vishal nodded toward the hand holding his kulhad of chai.
Ten or fifteen years ago, if Shai Vishal had ever said that he paid such careful attention to Faraj’s hands, Faraj would have flushed and stammered and made truly terrible excuses and fled to thehaveli. Then he would have buried himself in his bed-silks and mashed a pillow over his face and tried not to make such breathless noises of embarrassment that a concernedkhadimwould have tapped at his door.
Even now, he still felt his face warm. But he said with what he hoped was reasonable dignity, “If you have found it when you have particular need of it…”
“At the present moment, I have particular need ofyouwearing it, your Highness. Because if the Priests of the Assessors of Maat pounce on even the rumor of a misplaced ring, I confess I am too old and too tired for the drama that will ensue should they find me wearing your misplaced ring.”
Faraj wondered if any shreds of his dignity could survive burying his face in one of the nearby throw pillows and trying not to squeak so much the Temple cats took him for an overlarge mouse.
(He had not permitted himself to imagine Shai Vishal wearing any of the rings he had so carefully misplaced, not for many years, but the image that presented itself… those hands illuminating a work of holy art, or serving those in need, or even in repose, wearing a particular ring… And it was even easier to imagine Master Asharan’s hands gently tending to the jasmines in his window or stroking Nehal’s fur with a delicate gleam ofgold upon a graceful finger, easier to imagine Master Asharan’s smile?—)
Najra took a breath.
Faraj didn’t even need to be a prophet to know heabsolutely could not survivewhatever was going to come out of her mouth, regardless of whether it had to do with his youthful wistings or with a charming companion of night-blooming jasmines whose hand might lack rings.
“No!” he yelped. “I mean yes, I mean of course not, I mean— all of the ways they could read that are—um.”
“When collusion and bribery are thebestof the options,” Shai Vishal agreed wearily, “and from there it likely descends into some sort of hidden revolutionary scheme between the God-Emperor’s youngest brother and a minor nobleman who disavowed his blood-claim but who has lain in wait as the High Priest of a rival religion, and that’s only if they don’t bring star-charts and convergences and the upcoming Greater Convocation into it…” He held out the ring, which he had clearly discovered despite what Faraj had thought a reasonable hiding-place beneath the curve of the chai pot. Faraj took it back, and slipped it onto his finger.
Grinning, Najra took another breath. Faraj kicked her under the table.
