“Yes.Yes, absolutely, sahib. A thousand times yes.” Ahmed bowed his forehead to the scratch-mat again, and said, “Do not permit me to threaten that path, but… if I may ask… can you tell me that you are safe and well?”
Faraj honestly hadn’t thought Ahmed would be so bold as to care about him as a person, rather than as the God-Emperor’s brother or as an uncommonly chaotic disruption to the work of their shared ministry. Oddly touched, he reached out to lift Ahmed from his obeisance with both hands.
“I am both safe and well,” Faraj assured him, smiling. “I am not ensorcelled. I have all my faculties about me. On the question of women, I have this morning conversed with two women and one molly, none of whom have proposed to meany activities more intimate than sharing a bite of breakfast or cleaning clothes. I’m afraid I have no idea how many dozens of children and kittens I’ve met, though Kamil has most likely filed the identifying characteristics of each of them in that steel trap of his mind.”
“You’re not wrong,” Kamil said.
“Is that of any comfort to your concerns, Ahmed?”
“Thank you, your H-…sahib.” Ahmed took another careful breath, and asked, “Again if I may… what set all of this off to begin with?”
“I had a vision,” Faraj said, knowing both that it was entirely true, and that Ahmed would likely think it a diplomatic falsehood. “A kind man’s hands tending a pot of blooming jasmine in a window. I knew that I had to find him.”
“And was it worth all this?”
“Oh,absolutely,”Faraj said, and hoped he didn’t sound too desperately smitten. “He helped me to summon my lovely Sahar.” And the other things he’d learned from Master Asharan would, he hoped, remain between them.
“Will she live in the stables, then, with the barn cats?”
Sahar laid her ears back, and Faraj said, “Good heavens, no. She’s myfamiliar.A spirit made incarnate. Her soul recognized mine, and wove herself a body to join me. She is part of me, and I’m a part of her.”
“Sahib. That is exactlywhycats are not allowed in thehaveli, and why catfolk must use their taller shapes,” Ahmed said, rubbing his temples. “Because any mage could send his familiar into thehaveliand wreak untold mischief from within. To say nothing of assassins or spies. Leave her in the stables, or with the guards at the gate-house, or in one of the granaries where they welcome mouse hunters.”
Faraj remembered the note of sympathy in Hira’s voice when she’d seen in himthings other people can have that you can’t. Ways other people can be that you can’t.
He tried, very much, not to abuse the power that came with being the God-Emperor’s third brother. He tried not to want the impossible or the impolitic or the ill-advised. And his servants tried to provide everything else he might want, within their power.
He had rarely wanted anything as irrationally or as desperately as he wanted to wake up in the mornings with Sahar walking on his face, so that he would know his heart was whole… even with part of it living outside his body, purring into his ear. He wanted to remember that Master Asharan was just as real as she, and not just a figment of a fever-dream. And he wanted to be there when the kittens came, in case she needed anything.
It was beyond absurd to envy the stable-boys and their mouse-hunting barn-cats. But for a moment, he did.
“I have friends in the city who can keep an eye on her when her time comes,” Kamil said. “They know more about kitten-bearing than all of us combined.”
“But I want to be with her,” Faraj murmured. “If anything happened and I were too far away…”
He wondered again at the grace Master Asharan had offered them, to forgive Kamil for ending Nehal’s incarnation, even if he’d known that he could resummon him and Nehal would accept. Faraj thought he couldn’t possibly be so generous with anyone that threatened Sahar; he didn’t know whether he could re-weave all the pieces of spellwork that crafted the potential for a cat-body for her spirit to step into. He didn’t know what it might mean for the kittens. He didn’t believe he could have managed the charmcraft alone; it seemed far more likely that Master Asharan’s power had woven the path, and that Saharhad chosen to accept the invitation because Master Asharan’s skill had eased her way along with Nehal’s, rather than anything Faraj had done himself.
Faraj should have asked Master Asharan how anyone could bear living with a part of himself outside his body, risking what any small soft creature risked in a city full of predators of varying morals.
“Sahib,” and it was beyond strange to hear Kamil call him anything butshahzada,unless that something else wasidiot.“When a queen wants her privacy for her kittens, even if she were admitted within thehaveli, she’ll find it. She’s likely to vanish under the bed, or into the attics, or into the rag-heaps at the laundry. Or even the depths of the vaults, if she’s picked up your knowledge of where you hide things that are valuable and treasured and defended. She’ll find the place she wants. I sometimes think the small ones pick the most awkward places where humans are least likely to fit on purpose.”
“Your guardian is wise,” Ahmed said.
“He is. I know. He is a blessing.” Faraj bit his lip for a moment. “Perhaps I could take lodging in the city for a time?”
“Sahib!”
“If we were traveling to or from one of the capitals, there would be places I could stay with her,” Faraj said. “I can’t travel to the capital now, of course, not when we’re this close to the Greater Convocation. But would it be too terribly disruptive if I sought a room as a common man might?”
“When you travel, we scour each of the caravanserai from cellar to spire three weeks ahead of the day you arrive,” Kamil said. “And this is Tel-Bastet, not one of your brother’s capitals.”
Silently, he added,You know I’d expected your enchanter to have taken you captive and turned your mind last night. You know why I’d expected it. If you stay with him, you draw thepowerful and ambitious to his door, when he fought so hard not to hear even a hint of your title.
And when you leave, if you are ever recognized leaving that place as yourself? He does not have a hundred guardsmen and a dozen mages to protect his bath-house from the spies and the scryers who would sell their knowledge of his name and your intimacy to the highest bidders.
Faraj sighed. “Could I stay in the palanquin? Or in the stables, even?”
“Sahib,” Ahmed groaned. “Are youcertainyou have not taken leave of your senses?”
