Ashar set the tray on the low sitting table, folded himself onto one of the floor pillows, and patted the next one with an entirely human smile of invitation.
Theshahzadablinked those big soft eyes at him, and Ashar suspected he might still have bolted for the door if it hadn’t been for the lingering, languid warmth of the glamourie. Instead, he crumpled into a round little heap of silks and bemusement on the pillow, still blinking like a little bird.
“So: I am sworn to Bastet as one of Her own, and like any cat, I am as much a creature of curiosity as of indolent pleasure,” Ashar told him. “Tell me, where on earth did you hear my name outside the Catsprowl?”
Theshahzadamade a little squeak of distress, and Ashar realized everything a moment too late: he hadn’theardAshar’s name, not to begin with. He’dseenhim, in a way that had everything to do with fate’s guidance and, apparently, not enough to do with detailed faces. And then he’d gone to make inquiries, in order to follow the thread of his exalted palace-vision into the side-alley shadows of the Catsprowl.
Oh, let me think—some plausible, mundane excuse he can grasp?—
“Don’t tell me it was Nimat,” Ashar said, pulling a name wildly out of the air. “Of all the people to carry tales far and wide. I shudder to think what you might have been told.”
“I won’t tell you it was Nimat, then,” the God-Emperor’s brother said, proving his court instincts of word-wrangling were sound.
“Bless you, my jewel: ever a sweet comfort. I believe I’ll call you Rahat,” Ashar decided, and offered him a piece ofrahat al-hulqumon a delicate pink rose petal. “Is that to your taste?”
“Oh, yes, very much,” Rahat said, clearly meaning both the rose-scented sweet and the safety of the alias. He took the offered sweet with a smile and bit into it, and made a sound like a contented dove. Then he blinked at the sugar-dusting on his fingers and looked up at Ashar, and his cheeks reddened again: that bewildering, unexpected shame.
“…But it’s not as though I need any more sweets.”
What?
Oh.
Oh, of all the petty things for someone at that court to have shamed him for…
No one spoke against the tastes of the great ones who made sport of their servants, or those who made war for power’s sake, or those who took whatever they wished from those without the power to deny them. No, nothing was to be said against the tastes for power. Just the taste for sweetness, in someone who would feel the sting of shame.
“How fortunate that our tastes overlap, then,” Ashar said, and took theshahzada’shand and softly kissed the sugar-dusting from each fingertip. “Rahat is very much to my taste as well, you see.”
Under the rich warm bronze of his skin, Rahat’s cheeks were almost as deep a red as the core of the rose-sweets. He seemed to have lost his voice, somewhere between disbelief and a furtive hope.
He thinks me handsome? Well, good.
“Would you allow me the privilege of sharing pleasure with you?” Ashar asked him.
“Allow—? Master Asharan, why would someone like you want… well…”
“You have no idea how delightful your blushes are, do you,” Ashar said, smiling. “You blush likerahat al-hulqum’s own rose-red heart, looking at me with a gazelle’s soft eyes and lips like petals, and you ask me that? I can never be one of the catfolk, but I am as much Bastet’s own as any man can be. Pleasure is its own reward. Indolence interrupted by bursts of play, bathing at any opportunity, charm and languor and indulgence? I amsoone of Bastet’s own, in everything but the hunt; and even then, I hunt in my own way. Be grateful to the chai pot, or else I would pounce upon you and prove it.”
Rahat’s glance flicked toward the pot. He bit his lip, which was unfair, because Ashar wanted to nibble his lip for him. And then he picked up the pot and set it carefully aside.
Well,thatwas an invitation if he’d ever seen one. Ashar leapt over the table and knocked Rahat flat among the pillows, a leopard with its chosen gazelle. Rahat gave a startled yelp, then laughed in delight.
Still, before he pushed any further, Ashar asked, “Is this to your taste as well? Letting another take control—” He stopped himself before he could sayputting aside the weight of your responsibilities. Instead, he said, “Letting us indulge. Savoring Rahat’s every sweetness, and thanking you for the gift.”
“The gift is mine, to thank you for,” Rahat said.
“I would argue that, but itisentirely fitting that we make of ourselves gifts to each other,” Ashar nuzzled a kiss against the soft curve of his cheek and touched the fastening-ties at his collar. “May I unwrap my gift?”
Rahat hunched his shoulders, ashamed and uncomfortable.
And oh, by his name and his eyes and his faith, Asharan bir Chameli was not going to letthatpass by unchallenged.
“We are in a bath-house,” he said, “and as lovely as your silks are, they will not enjoy an oil-slicked massage and a warm, languid soaking the way I intend for you to enjoy them. At the very least, let me coax you into a bath-towel, before I ask the delight of unwrapping you again. Why else would you come here to me, if not to share such pleasures?”
“I’ve been dreaming of your hands for half my life,” Rahat murmured. “But I don’t know why.”
That gave Ashar a moment’s pause, because everyone in the Empire knew that the God-Emperor’s third brother was a true-seeing prophet — and that he foresaw trouble in the making.
