Hira thought very firmly about water splashing and suds everywhere and the horrible taste of Ashar’s flowery soap when she had to choose between drenching herself to rinse it away or licking it off her fur.
“Nyaowwwwwwwwrrrrrrrr!”The kitten bolted for the underside of the kebab stall as though a splash of grease had scorched its tail. A dozen more of them followed suit, all vying to be the fastest to take their yowling about cousin Hira back to cousin Israa.
“All settled, then?” Hira asked brightly, to distract the humans from staring after the yowling kittens and asking any inconvenient questions about what had scattered the pounce.
“You’re certain you want nothing but gossip?” Shai Prahlad asked, with his mouth doing something complicatedly human-expressive. “We cannot haul water and chop wood for your humans instead? Shai Rahim may have grown up amid that sort of whisper-trade, but I would feel less… muddied about the soul if I hauled water for your baths, or helped clean them.”
Hira carefully did not sigh as she scrambled for another pouncing-lure that might entice them.
Think like a human,she told herself hastily,think like Ashar, what would Ashar tell them?
Oh, that was easier to answer than she’d expected. She knew exactly what Ashar would say to his gently anxious priestly friend Shai Madhur.
“I don’t ask you for payment,” she said. “I ask you to let me repay a debt. Ashar and I have eaten at Upaja’s cauldrons during any number of lean months throughout our lives. It would be a shame upon our house if I asked Upaja’s priests to haul water and scrub tiles for us as well.”
They traded rueful glances among themselves.
“We ourselves are not the priests who have served you,” Shai Prahlad said.
She couldn’t sayStop being so noble, I need you to serve as mischief-pawns in my gossip management shell game while you’re feeding kittens out of silk pouches and being seen going in and out of our bath-house.
She couldn’t look desperate, either. No self-respecting catfolk wouldeveradmit a situation was not entirely under her control. She groomed her shoulder for a cover for a few more seconds to think.
“Are you saying you don’t want our hot baths, then?” she purred.
“Oh, we do, we definitely do,” Bekele said, elbowing Shai Rahim firmly. “We haveso much gossip.”
“We do?” Tarikku asked.
“So much gossip,”Shai Rahim agreed, trying not to wince.
One of the kittens yowled its vexation from under a nearby table.Gossip-thief,it told her.If your stupid human’s baths just weren’t so WET.
So wet, so slippery, so full of horrible-tasting soap,Hira agreed smugly. To Shai Prahlad, she said, “If you feel you absolutely must make a trade without gossip, my human is very fond of his depravities.”
“Excuse me, his what now?” Shai Rahim looked more startled by the word than Hira had expected, even accounting for some newness to the street-tongue.
“Depravities? Humans dunking your entire bodies in water and rubbing soap and oil on everything, and somehow not hating it?” Hira shuddered delicately. “I will do many things for my human, but sharing his taste for depravity is beyond me. And you do have those clawless fingers that could rub shoulders with no one yowling.”
“We do,” Bekele agreed, grinning broadly. “And we call that bathing, not depravity.”
“And yet somehow I bathe myself perfectly well with no drenching or splashing or soap to lick out of my fur,” Hira said, primly feline. “So if you would not mind joining him in his slippery human depravity, I think we have an agreement, yes?”
“Pray lead on,” Shai Rahim said.
Gossip-thief!a kitten yowled into her head.
Get your own splashy, drippy, depraved, soap-frothing humans,Hira replied, unrepentant.
Nyaowwwwrrrrrr. Hssssssst.
Hira honestly couldn’t tell whether their difficulty in navigating the streets and alleys had more to do with Israa’s petulant watchers making nuisances of themselves because they’d been so cruelly and splashfully deprived of their chance at gossip, or whether the street-children’s gossip network was even more efficient than Israa’s when it came to sweet treats from generous priests who wouldn’t ask coin for the nibbles. In any case, it took them about three times as long as she’d expected to maneuver their way back to the House of Jasmines, and Bekele lost several more hair-bells along the way.
Hira told herself that all of this was good, because quite a few of the young scamperlings called Shai Rahim Rahat-sahib, and he hadn’t bothered to correct them in his rush to hand out more rose-sweets for all the patting hands and hopeful beggings.
They’d run low enough on the fish-snacks that Hira had darted back to the market across the rooftops, stolen another larger sack, and dropped a fistful of silver at the bewildered fishmonger’s stall before he had even taken a breath to shout. Then she’d dashed back over the roofs before Bekele could find himself entirely inundated by hair-bell-enraptured kittens.
They made it in the door somehow, and neither children nor kittens were inclined to casually walk into a place where an adult might drench them and scrub them behind the ears, not even for sweets. Not when they could wait outdoors for the next time the door opened.
