“I had not intended for a spilled cup of chai to become a crisis of the soul, either yours or mine,” Rahat sighed. “But you say to putmyclothes back on, and… when it comes down to it, Ahmed, I’m not certain they are mine?”
“They were fitted to your measure, sahib. Whose else could they be?”
“They were fitted to my measure by servants of my brother’s household, in the colors of my brother’s heraldry, in the styles appropriate for my brother’s kindred, as dictated by my brother’s ministers of protocol,” Rahat said, fidgeting with the fringed hem of the towel-cloth. “But I’ve wondered, this morning in the marketplace… if I were notalwaysmy brother’s, who I might find myself to be? Off duty, as it were. Others do have times they are not on duty. I wondered if I might have one morning to be only myself, fetching my own cup of chai, greeting children who had never seen me in my brother’s robes of state, before my duty called once more.”
“But youarealways your brother’s, sahib. All of us are always your brother’s.”
“Yes,” Rahat sighed, “but, Ahmed,youcan fetch yourself a cup of chai from the marketplace without it becoming a courtly scandal.”
“Sahib, if I were wearing nothing but a bath-towel draped like a priest of the fat god, it most likelywouldhave been a courtly scandal!”
“You don’t have the figure to pull it off,” Kamil pointed out, droll.
“No, I… I can understand that,” Rahat admitted, rueful. “But I don’t have anything else that isn’t …his. I didn’t know any other way to learn… who someone might see if they looked at me, and they didn’t see his shadow first. If they only sawme, and no one else.”
“Sahib…why?”
“You know, that was nearly the first thing I asked myself when I woke up to a cat walking on my face?”
“And now why was there acat walking on your face?Cats are prohibited in thehaveli!” Ahmed wailed. “Any of them could be a Basteti infiltrator!”
“But Sahar is my own cat! Also I doubt she can read any of the languages of record, so the tax filings are quite safe from feline espionage,” Rahat hastened to assure him. “Although I’m less certain the ink-pots will go unspilled and the quills un-pounced-upon once her kittens arrive?—”
“Her kittens,” Ahmed said, in the voice of a man whose last desperate grasp at a hope of order had just slipped away.
“Any day now, I suspect,” Rahat said fondly, gesturing toward the basket where Sahar was sound asleep. “She’s quite round, isn’t she? Kamil teases me that she recognizes we are of a kindred shape.”
“Kamil…teasesyou, s-sahib?”
“Don’t tell anyone I told you this,” Rahat confided, “but he has occasionally revealed a sense of humor.”
Kamil, who was very pointedly honing his claws on the whetstone, said, “I got it implanted the last time I took a gut-stab.”
Rahat put a hand over his mouth to keep from giggling, because poor Ahmed looked as though he couldn’t decide whether Kamil was serious, and, if so, whether he would murder an undersecretary for an inappropriately timed laugh. And Priye looked nearly as uncertain as Ahmed.
“What set all of this in motion, sahib?” Ahmed asked, wearily. “Please tell me it is not a matter of a woman.”
“Are you entirely sure you want me to answer that, Ahmed?” Rahat asked. “Because there is still another choice here. The other choice is that Esha brings us our cleaned clothes, and we get dressed, and we go to our work laughing together about a spilled cup of chai. And then we hope that no one at the Ministry of Orthodoxy looks more deeply into the matter.”
“Yes,please,” Ahmed said, eyes closed and a hand passed over his face. “Please let it be as you say, sahib.”
But Rahat still saw the shadow of Ahmed’s leapt-to conclusions in the leering shadows at the corners of his own eyes, as clearly as though he’d shouted it:of course it is a woman, it is always a woman and a commoner and usually a harlot, it is always a woman who sees opportunities to seize in a royal name and title, I’ll have to have inquiries made about any rumors of bastards.
A wild, impulsive part of Rahat wanted to march into the ministry wearing nothing but his towel-cloth and his flowers, declaiming to everyone he met that he had found someone who treasured him for himself, someone who had given him such sweet proof of his regard, to taste and share and know. To declare that he understood now why love was madness as the poets sang it, and that his love was as mad and glorious as any poet’s lay, bought and paid with no coin but the promise of kittens.
But he didn’t need to be a prophet to foresee how badly that would go, both for himself and for Master Asharan. Because Master Asharan had gone to such lengthsnotto hear Rahat’s other name spoken, and the sudden descent of Imperial inquisitors upon the little Catsprowl alley-neighborhood would be an unjust and unwarranted cruelty.
He gently folded Rahat’s name together with Master Asharan’s and tucked every thought of them into the magic of the little enchanted rose-pouch. Then he settled the mantle of Faraj’s names and titles back onto the shoulders he squared.
“By the way,” Faraj said idly, “you’ll also be relieved to know that it is not at all a matter of a woman.”
It crashed against Ahmed’s assumptions so abruptly Faraj could all but see the shockwaves ripple.
“It’s not? That’s wonderful! I — I mean— but then if it’s not, why on earth…?”
“The other path,” Faraj reminded him. “The cup of chai, the laughing together, neither of us wearing towels as we walk together into the ministry… more particularly, the following lack of inquisitors and physicians and divination spells to enquire about madness or ensorcellment. We both prefer that path, yes?”
The way toward it was vanishingly narrow, but Faraj could still hope that diverting the shouting toward the existence of a cat-familiar rather than a lover would be kinder for all involved. And the path broadened if Ahmed helped him.
