“Pardon the intrusion, your Highness, your Eminence? You’d wanted to know when one of us found a cat at the gates? Well, er, we have found a cat. A very small one.”
“Newly born?” Faraj asked, concerned. If one of the kittens had been left behind amid Sahar’s seeking of a safe, private place?—
“Notthatsmall, your Highness,” the guardian said. “More schoolchild-age? She’s wearing a kurta.”
“Ah, I see,” Faraj said, and hastily brushed at the dust on his shoulders. “I’ll be right down, if one of you can be spared for the carpet.”
“In yournight-clothes?Covered in dust?” Irfan said, incredulous.
“Have you ever asked a kitten to patiently wait their turn?” Faraj asked wryly, thinking of the flurry of eager patting and demanding little yowls for sweets at Elder Sister’s cauldron. “And would we not prefer to test Archivist Najra’s snag-proofing charms with my night-clothes rather than my saffron silks?”
“Must there beonlythose two choices, your Highness?”
“In any case, I’ll hurry,” Faraj said, trying to decide what would be the least embarrassing method of getting himself back down the attic ladder under the eyes of a slender and graceful young guardian-mage and his longsuffering Chamberlain.
(Ashar)
“And so no one has seen Sami since his inquisition?” Ashar asked the leaf-folding aunties gathered at the entrance of Bastet’s Temple. His own hands were less steady than he might have wished, and folding leaves gave himself a way to busy his hands until Shai Vishal’s shift at the cauldrons ended.
“No, and it’s a good thing too, because I would kick sand all over him,” Mreret grumbled, ears flattened. “Collars.He got theshahzadato writeCOLLARSinto aproclamation.”
“More to the point, my husband heard about the tax refunds,” Basima-auntie said gloomily, stabbing a bowl with atwig-sliver with particular vigor. “He is already scheming up an assortment of ruts to dig into the farm roads and jammedqanatfilters he can clear.”
“Basima-auntie,” Ashar said, “I am entirely certain that theshahzadawould not provide tax refunds for averted disasters that your husbandcaused.There were five separate sections specifying that artificially induced disasters did not count.”
“You try telling my husband that,beta, because he surely won’t listen to me.”
“Evenmoreto the point,” Hoda-auntie said, “what about his sweet little cat and her kittens? Tell me where to aim my fire-poker.”
“Oh, they’re fine now,” Shai Nanda said comfortably, stacking up a pile of the folded bowls. “The Council smoothed out the various factions’ riled-up fur before theshahzadasent that proclamation.”
“And if he hadn’t settled their fur?” Mreret asked, suspicious.
“Then every market-witch who knows Archivist Najra’s name would have received the text of a very different proclamation,” Shai Nanda said. “And every hungry scribe whom I’ve ever fed would have gotten a brand new sheaf of papyrus with their next bowl.”
To Ashar, whostillhad to duck into alleys and beneath market-carts to avoid the pursuit of avid matchmaking aunties, the rousing of a scandalized city-wide gossip network sounded like one of the most dire threats short of bloodshed that he could imagine.
Shai Nanda stacked her heap of leaf-bowls on the top of the pile. Two of the mendicants, Tarikku and Shai Rahim (whom most of the children of the Catsprowl still called Rahat-sahib thanks to Hira’s mischief), carried an enormous kettle ofvegetables up the Temple’s front ramp to refill the cauldrons, so that everything could simmer together through the afternoon.
Hoda-auntie had just rewetted her towel to keep wiping the travel dust from the broadleaves, and she gave Ashar a significant look: “Don’t you pester any priests, young man. They areworking.”
“I understand, Hoda-auntie,” Ashar assured her, smiling. “But they’re so irresistible, how can I help myself? Kindness and dedication and generosity, and they nurture everyone they meet…”
“You’re not escaping a wife that easily,beta.”
“Oh, believe me, I would never suggest escaping a wife has beeneasy,”Ashar said.
“Sure it is,” Shai Nanda said, settling next to Hoda-auntie again and reaching for another cut leaf to fold. “Just look at me. I decided I was done with husbands twenty years ago but I still haven’t found a woman who’ll put up with me. In other words, I am the perfect role model.”
Standing beside them with the next heaping pile of broadleaves in his arms, Shai Vishal cleared his throat, and Ashar flinched guiltily despite himself.
“Somebody’s in trouble,” Shai Nanda sing-songed, grinning. “I’m so proud! Quite the troublemaker you’ve grown into, haven’t you. Keep that up and you’ll never get a wife!”
“I meant that reproof for you, Nanda,” Shai Vishal said, and she chortled.
“Still a point for me, then! See there, sweetie, you just do like I do, and no self-respecting woman would saddle herself with either of us.”
“Stop encouraging him,”Hoda-auntie groaned.
