The Chamberlain swayed on his feet.
The Deputy Minister blinked twice, took a breath, and shouted, “Have you LOST YOUR MIND?”
“You are the God-Emperor’sprophet,”the Chamberlain said, pressing a hand to his own brow to check for fever. “You are hispriest, you — who hasdaredto force such ingress into your soul? Who compelled some unholy, ensorcelled creation into soul-bondage? What influence do they seek?—”
“How could you bind your soul to a beast without the common decency to keep its paws out of the inkwells?” the Deputy Minister asked, because he’d always been more pragmatic than spiritual.
There was a scuffling sound behind them, and Faraj turned to discover…
Ahmed, of all people. Clutching his kulhad of chai in one hand and a plate ofmaamoulin the other, with a fixed and rigid and slightly terrified smile.
“I’ve brought themaamoulfor our chai, your Highness,” he declared, as though he were reading it off a signboard, or as though Esha had been hastily coaching him in the courtyard. “Let us laugh together over the story of the cup we spilled.”
“Oh, Ahmed, thank you,” Faraj said, wishing that both their hands might be free enough to be able to give him a hug.
He knew how much it took for Ahmed to place himself in the path of the Deputy Minister’s ire, even if he also knew Ahmed was far more concerned about the path through the cup of chai that didnotlead to interrogation and inquiries. He was afraid it would be unkind to explain that truly terrible acting was not as helpful as Ahmed wished it to be, when Ahmed was so clearly casting his every hope of peace on his faith in hisshahzada’sforesights.
The Deputy Minister might have kept shouting, except that Esha and Hikmat were standing directly behind Ahmed. And that transformed the situation from “a private matter of internal discipline among employees of the Ministry of Finance” to “a no-longer-private matter and not to be discussed before the common-born populace.” Faraj watched him swallow his ire as though it were a coal in his throat.
“Greetings, my honored lords,” Esha said in a passable court dialect, though unmistakably influenced by the Basteti vowels. “If you’d pardon me, we did overhear a concern about the nature of his Highness’s familiar? I have sold cat toys to any number of young street-mages, and I truly couldn’t tell you which of them had ritually summoned their familiars and which had lured alley-kittens with a bit of fish. You needn’t concern yourselves with visions of necromantic shambling cat-ghouls, I’m sure.”
“And visions of ink-spilling, quill-hunting, madly gallivanting little menaces?” the Deputy Minister asked.
“There I can’t reassure you, I’m afraid,” Esha admitted, scratching behind Sahar’s ears gently. “Catsarecats. Your Highness, if I may be so bold…”
“Can we stop you without clapping you in irons?” the Deputy Minister asked tartly.
“Honestly, no, but it seemed polite to ask,” Esha said. “Your Highness, might I accompany you to a study room with a suitably respectable escort, so that we might discuss ways to kitten-proof your more delicate belongings?”
“Kitten-proof?”the Chamberlain gasped.
“Any day now, I suspect,” Esha said, offering Sahar’s basket for the Chamberlain’s consideration. “She’s quite round, isn’t she?”
The Chamberlain’s knees went out from under him, and he hit the marble floor like a sack of grain.
As it turned out, Najra was still just as determined to protect the inviolate privacy of his personal study, regardless of the drama involved.
“This is not an infirmary any more than it is a player’s performance hall,” she declared, standing solidly in front of the door to Faraj’s study.
(Faraj suspected that after she’d sent him off under her illusions, she must have spent the evening gossiping with the Eldest Archivist over a particularly salacious or forbidden book that she hadn’t had the chance to hide when the ministers had knocked. If a cat-familiar was necromantically horrific? Then discovering in theshahzada’sprivate study a not-quite-summoning but definitely-inviting circle for the soul of a centuries-long dead Archivist, on a table that was heaped with either thumbed-through erotic novels or cursed spellbooks, would be earth-shatteringly beyond the pale.)
“If he feels the need to have hysterics, he can have them in his own domain,” Najra told them. “Hikmat, please tidy up the mess on our Archives’ carpets.”
As it also turned out, young Hikmat’s knack for levitating carpets laden with supplies was just as effective at levitating carpet-swooning Chamberlains who had collapsed from the shock of the God-Emperor’s own prophet daring to summon a cat-spirit familiar who was brimming-full of kittens.
Staring at the vaguely drifting, foot-dangling limp figure of the Chamberlain sprawled on a carpet hovering three feet off the floor while Najra sipped her chai and Ahmed clutched the plate ofmaamoulin shaking hands, the Deputy Minister’s last nerve audibly snapped.
“Ahmed, deal with this,” the Deputy Minister said. “Our Ministry requiresprecision. No undead cats, no chai spills, no ink-pawed gallivanting, no gnawing on the ledgers, no fainting dramatists,no gossip. Deal with this.Discreetly.I don’t want to hear about it in the servants’ quarters. I especially don’t want to hear about it in the soldiers’ barracks. And heads will roll if I hear about it in the taverna. Are we clear?”
“Yes, your Eminence,” Ahmed said, with a deeply respectful bow.
The Deputy Minister nodded crisply, turned on his heel, and stalked out.
“Well, that’s one mess off our carpets,” Najra said briskly. “Your Highness, where do your servants usually take this one when he has a fit of the vapors at you?”
“Irfan usually doesn’t swoon on me,” Faraj admitted, concerned.
“You don’t usually stand up for yourself,” Najra pointed out. “Other people, yes. Yourself, no. Of course, this time you’re standing up for a cat, but if you consider the metaphysics of the way she is soul-bonded to you, there’s a fascinating philosophical debate to be had over whether you’re actually standing up for yourself or not…”
