“It wasn’t just you. I’m not nose-blind,” Hira said dryly, brushing past him to turn Sekhmet’s statue toward the sunrise,then moving Pakhet to a shelf-nook that would be shaded until the afternoon. She lit a little cone ofkyphifor each of them. “I know how much that incense scenting his silks must have cost, and nobody else usessaffronto dye that much fabric with.”
“Oh, hells.” Closing his eyes as though it might help, Ashar said, “That’s why I put the silks in the bag in the cat-basket, and there’s no helping whoever saw him last night, but at least it was dark. Do you think anyone else would have noticed this morning?”
“The humans might mistake the scent for Bastet’s Temple incense, if they could smell it at all between the cookfires and the pickle-pots and the refuse. And the kittens won’t care how one more human lies about his smell, because they know anyone who loves soap and perfume as much as you do is going to scent his lovers too.” Hira plucked her usual claw covers off her left hand and fitted the covers with the pen nibs in place. She made a loud point of opening the ledger book with a thump. “But even so, in this neighborhood, you can’t sit and stare out your windows wondering whether your new lover will make it safely home whilestaring toward the Imperial fortress.”
Ashar turned his back to thejalipanel immediately.
“Do I need to have the same talk with you that I had with him?” Hira asked.
“Oh, mercy,” Ashar said, laughing despite himself. “When did you—? Oh, when Sahar was choosing her basket and her ribbon, yes, of course. Dare I even ask what you said to him?”
“That you’re utterly useless with numbers, not that that surprises anyone,” Hira told him. “And that you are an excellent judge of character. And that if either of you tries to convince himself that the other could not possibly have meant your affections as tenderly as you felt them this morning, I would hunt you both down to knock your heads together until some sense rattled itself into place.”
“Ah. Well.” Ashar bent his head to fuss pointlessly with the cup, because he couldn’t meet her frank gaze. “I will of course absolve you from any need to hunt him in — in that place I shall not stare towards.”
“You don’t get to make that decision for me.” Even from the corners of his eyes, he could see her tail twitching in vexation. “Talk to me, Ashar. You’re not giving up before he’s even made it home? You made him promise to bring you kittens. Do you think so little of his sincerity?”
“Hissincerity I would never question,” Ashar sighed. “But neither would I question Kamil’s devotion, or his skill. And having lost his charge to a slipped leash once, a guardian of such skill and such devotion is unlikely to allow a second misadventure. I doubt I’ll see either of them more than once again, and even that only if Kamil permits it for the promise’s sake.”
“Then why did you make him promise something you weren’t sure he could keep? He’s the sort who’d be eaten by guilt at a promise unkept.”
“It wasn’t for me,” Ashar murmured. “It was for him. So that he would believe I truly do want to see him again. So that he would believe he was trulywanted,and not for his wealth or his power’s sake. I will be delighted if he manages to escape that golden cage once more! But beyond that… well.”
He put the cup down again, running a hand through his hair. The cup had a chip in the glaze that had resisted his attempts at magical mending-persuasion, and much of the House of Jasmines was like that. Well loved, well lived in, well cleaned — of course it was well cleaned; Hira teased him about his fondness for soap with honest justification.
And all of those things added together to become well worn.
The evidence was obvious everywhere he looked. The slight hollows in the steps, worn down from generations of feetbefore his own. The softly rounded edges on the tea-tables, where hands had rubbed the wood smooth. The patterns of rings left by the occasional spill and the tannins, from years of laughter. Occasional bumps and nicks from when the furniture needed to be hastily stacked above unexpected flood-crests that sometimes took the river several feet deeper than usual. The carefully mended pillows and towels, after catfolk had expressed their bliss at petting or grooming with slightly too vigorous claws. The many-times-restrung bead and bell strands in the door arches, which had entertained generations of kittens and children while their elders groomed and gossiped.
Helovedthe House of Jasmines. He loved his home, his neighborhood, his people. And he was nearly as shameless as a cat, when it came to questions of body-pleasures in particular. He wasn’tashamedthat the House of Jasmines was as well-loved and as well-worn as it was.
But Asharan bir Chameli was also world-wise enough to understand how much the House of Jasmines was not suited to either the lavish and flawless displays of wealth or the extraordinary powers surrounding a man who was the God-Emperor’s brother.
“I know what I am, and what he is,” Ashar said. “I know the depth of the gulf between us. It would be unkind to expect anything more from him, when the joy of his company even for one night was such a rare and unexpected gift.”
“You’re both human,” Hira said, with an irritable scratch in the ledger as she marked a new day and entered the starting balances. “‘What you are’ and ‘what he is’ are both human and kind. Is that not enough?”
He smiled, rueful. “Every cat is born kin to the cat-goddesses, and well aware of it,” he told her. “We who are human feel a greater distance between ourselves and our godsand masters, even when the gods’ and masters’ gentle brothers walk among us.”
“There’s your problem right there,” Hira said. “Catfolk have no masters.”
Ashar blinked, because on the whole he believed it, but: “Then what is Rahat to Kamil?”
“An adored kitten with no fangs and blunt claws, who desperately needs a devoted and suitably dangerous protector,” Hira told him, with the kind of unshakable feline confidence that Ashar often envied in her. “The Empire may enchant as many collars as they wish, and pretend they own some of us. But Kamil wore no collar. What binds him to his Rahat isn’t power or obedience; it’s love.”
“Oh, how Kamil would grumble if he heard you say that,” Ashar said, smiling.
“Only because I’m right,” Hira said, cleaning out the ink-clot in the reed-pen capped on her first claw. “But I’ll spare his dignity if he’ll bring that sweet round dumpling back to us, for you to nibble to both your hearts’ content.”
“That’s the other reason I wouldn’t ask you to hunt Rahat,” Ashar said. “You wouldn’t get past Kamil.”
“I don’t need to getpastKamil if I can shame your Rahat into calling him off. And then into keeping his promise to you.”
“Please don’t make his life more difficult,” Ashar murmured.
Hira reached out and batted his nose again. (Ashar suspected she’d ink-streaked him on purpose as he rubbed his nose clean.)
“Wrong objection,” she told him. “If you told me not to risk the House of Jasmines gathering dangerously powerful notice, I might have listened. If you told me not to makeyourlife more difficult, we might have had a debate worth having. But he made his own way here, to you, specifically. I’ve heard enough rumorsto guess what might have led him here, to you, of all the bath-houses in the city. Haven’t you?”
