“Can we not?” Faraj asked wistfully. “It has been a difficult day and it’s not even noon.”
“My apologies, your Highness,” Najra said. “May I pet your beautiful cat?”
“She does have her own opinions, of course, but if she agrees…?”
Najra offered her fingertips for Sahar to consider, then laughed in delight when Sahar shoved her head and her ticklish whiskers into the palm of her hand. “You are softer than velvet and far more enchanting. If I askverynicely, will you consider leaving the books ungnawed for both your favorite person and me?”
Ahmed said in some disbelief, “Do you know how to ask anything nicely?”
“If you’re a cat, I do,” Najra said, scratching gently under Sahar’s chin and smiling at her soft purr. “I am an unsanctified market-witch as well as an Archivist, and there is a marvelous seller of cat-toys standing right here.” With a sudden grin at Faraj, she added, “We should experiment with whether catnip tea and yarn balls will sweeten your own disposition toward courtiers. What an unfair negotiating tactic that would be! Which means we know that someone is going to try it.”
With a sound as though he’d just been punched, Ahmed sagged onto the nearest chair and buried his face in both hands. The Chamberlain looked like only the need to keep up appearances was preventing him from joining him.
“I’m almost kidding,” Najra said. “Not entirely, because it would be useful to investigate the answer.”
“It would be evenmoreuseful if the God-Emperor’s brilliant and prophetic brother’s mind were not disordered by bestial lusts, distracted by scribes’ feathers, and addled to hallucination by catnip!” the Chamberlain protested.
“Exactly,” Najra said. “Which isnotwhy you dispense with his cat. It is why you brew him a catnip tisane, ask his bodyguard’s expert opinion on the most distracting dangles, and take notes. Because if it works on him, it will likely work on other powerful familiar-summoners too, and then we’ve learned something the Archmage would never admit to the God-Emperor’s people. And if it doesn’t work on him we’ve learned something different.”
The Chamberlain passed both hands over his face, completely heedless of the carefully arranged ringlets in his beard. It was possibly the most unguarded moment of sincere dismay Faraj had ever seen from him. But then he said, “I have always acknowledged your wisdom, Archivist, even when I have not followed the sense in your algorithmic diagrams. This algorithm I do follow.”
Najra, Esha, the Chamberlain, and Ahmed all looked at Faraj with a certain scholarly speculation on their faces.
On the whole, Faraj was relieved they were soothing their interpersonal ruffles. But he wasn’t entirely looking forward to submitting himself to the sorts of empirical experiments they were about to start bonding over.
He hoped catnip tisane didn’t tastetoodreadful.
Even more, he hoped it wouldn’t cause a human any more hallucinations; he had quite enough of hallucinations with his prophecies already.
Esha had never been a woman to overlook a sales opportunity. She fished a large jar of catnip out of her baskets and offered it with a deep bow: “With my compliments, your Highness.”
Kamil hadn’t moved a muscle, but some instincts were beyond even his impressive control. His pupils had blown wide and black as pools of pure ebony.
“Perhaps you might want to wait on the balcony while our friends experiment with my possibly altered feline drug tolerance?” Faraj suggested.
Kamil’s ears went flat back. “I am yourbodyguard.”
“The balcony is close enough for your truly astonishing pouncing skills, even if my foresights do become unexpectedly impaired,” Faraj said.
“Kamil,” Najra said, “I would feel safer if you stepped out to the balcony. I know exactly how terrifying your reflexes are when you’re sober. And since I am about to be taking notes with a twitchy scratchy cat-tempting twiddle-reed in this palm-book, I would prefer not to lose my hand at the wrist to an encounter with your reflexes when you arenotsober.”
With a lashing tail and a growl deep in his throat that no one could mistake for a purr, Kamil slunk out to the balcony.
“Thank you,” Faraj murmured. “I know how seriously he devotes himself to my safety.”
“Thankyou,”Najra said, drawing a dividing line in her notes with the silverpoint and scratching the outlines of a dose-response table. “Because I was serious about his reflexes and my writing hand too.”
6
Marketplace Mischief
HIRA
With Kalyani watching over the House of Jasmines and Ashar distracting an entire flock of aunties simply by walking out the front door of the building, Hira folded herself down into a much smaller four-legged shape and went out the courtyard window. After a quick glance around to see who else might have noticed, she scrabbled her way up the facade and over the roofs. From this vantage point, she could make her way through the city much more quickly and much less noticeably than if she’d walked on two feet with her necklace chiming and a pouch of coin in her hand.
Usually, Hira didn’t have to go hunting for fat priests wrapped in white priest-cloths. She knew exactly where to find Tel-Bastet’s own Upaja-priests at the Temple of Bastet; everyone did. But when she needed to find the Upaja-priests who werenottheir own Temple’s priests, the less familiar ones arriving from across the Empire to help Tel-Bastet’s local priests feed the Greater Convocation? Then she was going to need more eyes through more of the city, because they might be comingin from any of the roads. And she needed to find the traveling mendicants, because everyone in Tel-Bastet knew theirownUpaja-priests by sight; the only chance of blurring Rahat’s identity came from the less-known mendicant priests.
Of course, she couldn’ttellher cousins that reason. Neighborhood cats gossiped as much as neighborhood aunties.
