“Before that,” Faraj said, releasing him from his obeisance with a hand on one shoulder instead of both, because it would have been unkind to anoint him with spilled hot chai. “Could you send for someone who can let my cat in? I’d be quite grateful.”
The guardsman looked at him as though he were speaking in tongues.
Faraj was fairly sure he was presently speaking in the language of the Imperial court rather than the common Basteti street-tongue, because they’d left little Priye in the marketplace with the actual tent, but he tried again. “She’s expecting her kittens any day, you see, and I’d prefer not to need to walk all the way to the Lion Gate to ask the stablehands to let me stay in a stall outside the curtain wall with her. So if you know who’s maintaining the wards these days…?”
“Astall— but—” He swallowed hard. “Your Highness, a thousand pardons, but cats are forbidden within. It is not done.”
“You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve already said that this morning,” Ahmed said wearily. “I suggest you find a way to get it done, young man. Or else you will have the God-Emperor’sthird brother sitting in the dustoutside your gate, playing with his forbidden cat with a knotted tangle of yarn scraps, until someone who can have both our heads on a pike comes down from the Upper Falcon Gate and demands to know why this is happening. I do not wish to explain it to either your supervisor or mine.”
“But… how…?”
“That is notmyproblem,” Ahmed said, with a certain relish. “I am not the one barring the God-Emperor’s own brother from crossing into the safety of thehaveli.”
“But—”
“Myproblem is getting his Highness to the Ministry of Finance before Deputy Minister al-Faruq asks why we are late, and I am forced to tell him it was because an officious young guard denied theshahzadaentry at the Lower Falcon Gate. What is your name again?”
Do you need the cavalcade of cat toy infantry?Mistress Salimat’s dry voice asked in Basteti, in an exquisitely crisp partition at the edge of his thoughts.
Faraj replied,I think not, my lady, or else not yet? Ahmed is very nearly terrifying when he has a grievance he can make into someone else’s problem.
“But cats are forbidden within thehaveli!”
“Because they could be an infiltrator or the familiar of a hostile mage, yes,” Faraj said. “However, we know exactly whom Sahar has claimed for her own. She’s claimed me. So if there is anything within thehavelithat she might see, that someone would prefer that I should not see… well, I would wonder why they would prefer neither I nor my cat should see it. And I might remind you I do have a touch of prophecy. Someone would have to hide a scheme very, very deeply to hide from both my eyes and hers.”
And since Ahmed had proposed it as such a grave and unthinkable offense against the Way Things were Done, Faraj sat down in the dust of the road and took Priye’s little yarn strand from his sleeve.
Kamil silently set Sahar’s box next to him, outwardly serene, though the twitching of his whiskers spoke volumes of how hard he was fighting not to break composure. Ahmed closed his eyes and murmured a brief prayer for forgiveness, and both of the guards turned a bit gray.
Sahar was delighted by the dangling bit of yarn, especially when he dangled it close enough for her to bat and gnaw without too many vigorous gymnastics.
“Ican’tlet your cat in,shahzada,”the young guardsman said miserably. “I’m not a mage.”
“Then I suggest you find someone who is a mage — an Imperial mage — before theshahzadasummons a Basteti market-witch to try her hand at breaking the wards,” Ahmed said.
“I would settle for a pallet in the stables, if someone would help Kamil with the guarding,” Faraj said.
“You willnotsettle for a pallet in the stables,” Ahmed said firmly. “I would summon the witch myself first.”
All of them stared at him.
“Shahzada,what I want is very simple,” Ahmed said. “I want all of this irregularity to be dealt with and behind us so that all of us go back to our work. Installing you in the stables because no one will allow you your royal whim ismost irregular.And it willcontinueto be most irregular for as long as your stubbornness crashes against the wall of propriety. I have learned today that your stubbornness is just as formidable against your loyal servants as against the tax frauds and reprobates you pursue. The people of the Empire serve the God-Emperor’s will, and the God-Emperor’s will is that we of theEmpire keep His prophet safe in this uncivilized city of prowling alley-cats. So the faster we get you an exception for the cat that everyone else would be forbidden, regardless of whether the mage who breaks the wards for you is Imperial or Basteti, the faster we all get back to work and put this entire farce behind us.”
“Yes, sir,” the young guardsman said to Ahmed, and took off at a run.
Heart-stricken, Faraj stared up at him.
I wanted him to see that the ban against cats and cat-familiars doesn’t make sense for Sahar when I’m the prophet of the God-Emperor and they know she’s mine.
But it doesn’t make sense for any other Imperial mage either,he thought.Not for a loyal one. Or for any peaceful Basteti mage, or the catfolk who want a choice of their shape. Or for Master Asharan’s Nehal. Master Asharan is so clear that he wouldn’t want to visit me here that I’d forgotten he couldn’t send Nehal to visit me even if he wanted to.
Surely this city holds more merry and mischievous little cats than sorcerous spies and assassins. Surely there must be some other way to guard against the actual villains. And we make no prohibitions on humans, when all it would take is a misplaced servant’s garment to give them a similar disguise.
But I only questioned the ban once I had a cat of my own.
I hadn’t thought I was being selfish, thinking the rules didn’t make sense for me. But the rules never made sense for anyone else who wasn’t planning malice either.
I’m just the first with enough power and influence to demand my way regardless.
