While the priests took off their reed sandals and washed their hands in the basin (and murmured a few quiet prayers of gratitude for their respite), Hira blinked in surprise at seeing Ashar in the waiting room, unexpectedly disheveled and pouring several kulhad of chai with unsteady hands.
“Back already?”
“What do you mean,already?”Ashar asked. “That was the longest market-run of my life.” He pressed his hands together to steady them and bowed deeply to the priests. “Be welcome to the House of Jasmines. I bless your mercy, your Reverences, and I think I owe youso much penance.”
“If you do, it is hardly due to us,” Shai Prahlad said. “Ask your penance of those whom you have offended.”
“Have I not offended against your priesthood? At the very least, I owe you as many sacks of sweets as I can conjure,” Ashar said, “and I didn’t even make it to the confectioner’s before I turned tail and ran.” He ran both hands through his hair, looking around for anything else he could enchant.
“I brought more fish,” Hira said, holding up her sack. “But I can’t say I’d recommend sugaring fish.”
But Shai Prahlad looked delighted, rather than reproving. “If we might acquire the makings of sweets somehow, then perhaps I can repay a bath with confectionery rather than gossip? Then both of us will be well pleased.”
“Really?”Ashar asked, blinking. “But you have had a long journey, and unless I miss my guess you have been pestered every step of the way for the last half mile…”
“I would much rather cook than gossip,” Shai Prahlad said fervently.
Cupping his hands at his brow, Shai Rahim admitted, “I must beg pardon, eldest and wisest, but I would much rather gossip than cook right now.”
“To each your own,” Hira said. “I’ll go buy more jaggery. And some more jingle-free beads and a head scarf for Bekele’s braids.”
“Bless your mercy,” Bekele said. “May I join you, to thank the merchant who is about to spare my scalp a great deal of hair-pulling?”
May you join me under the gaze of the community and distribute even more attention-gathering gossip as we are mobbed by scamperlings on the way?Hira thought, purring to herself.Why yes, yes you may.
“That’s really not necessary,” Ashar said. “Wouldn’t you rather rest and recover? I am certain you will more than repay our community through your generous service at the Convocation.”
Hira tried not to lay her ears back. Ashar was her human, she had known him for years, and she should have seen that coming. He was clever, of course, but his form of cleverness was far too humane for most cats’ prey-playing taste.
“I do confess an ulterior motive,” Bekele admitted, and Hira blinked. She hadn’t thought Upaja’s priests even knew what ulterior motives were.
“If I accompany a well known pillar of the community such as the renowned Hira,” Bekele explained, “and if I observe which of the merchants she favors, I will be able to borrow the guidance of her experience when I return to the markets in need of more ingredients for our kitchens through the Convocation. So if you would not mind my shameless leaning upon your wisdom, O velvet-pawed knower of the innermost ways of Tel-Bastet?”
“Perrrrrrrrrrrrfect,”Hira purred.
7
Trial by Catnip
FARAJ
Catnip tisane tasted like a wilder, muskier version of mint, apparently. Faraj couldn’t say he felt particularly compelled to madness by it. Perhaps it was because Sahar was clearly uninterested as well, sniffing at a saucer and then yawning as she tucked a paw over her nose.
Najra took far too much gleefully scientific interest in her experiments. She’d crushed catnip, brewed catnip, burned catnip like incense, powdered catnip and dusted books and pillows and his turban with it, until he was sneezing from the sheer concentration of it and Kamil backed away from thejaliinto the balcony garden to make sure he had un-drugged air to breathe.
When Najra was as convinced as she could be that Faraj was impervious to catnip, or at least that he was impervious while Sahar was so very roundly expecting and so very uninterested in any exertion herself, she changed her experimentation to more physical matters.
She’d set Sahar’s basket in the middle of the thousand-year-old pre-Imperial desk despite the Chamberlain’s horrified objections, stacked a pile of books along the edge for an improvised privacy screen for Sahar, and rearranged the sittingfurniture so that Faraj had his back to Sahar and the desk but Ahmed could see whatever she was doing in order to pass signals back and forth.
As a result, Faraj was becoming excruciatingly self-conscious about his fidgeting. He’d never been quite so aware of every itch of his ear or every seam in his clothing before he needed to wonder whether it wasactuallyhis own itch, whether Najra was tickling Sahar’s ear with a feather, or whether she’d floated a lock of his own hair to twirl about and tickle him. Even the scratching of Najra’s silverpoint wasn’t enough to go by: she was as dedicated to noting non-responses as she was to noting responses.
Either he was becoming more attuned to his own ticklishness, or Sahar was becoming more explicit about sharing her vexations. He’d been trying to hold a coherent conversation with Ahmed about the implications of the revisions he was considering to the taxes for the next season, and he honestly couldn’t tell which sensations were his, which were Sahar’s, and which were figments of a self-conscious and anxious imagination.
The one thing he was certainwasn’this imagination? He would need to be much, much better at masking in diplomatic situations, and very quickly. Priests and their retinues from across the Empire were already arriving for the Greater Convocation, and he couldn’t afford indiscreet itches and squirming in public whenever someone tickled his cat in indelicate ways.
Ahmed’s faintly horrified expression was an excellent motivator to improve his blandly smiling diplomatic facade’s integrity as swiftly as he could. Faraj wasn’t entirely sure whether the horror came from Najra’s shamelessly personal liberties with an heir to the Sun Throne or from the case he wastrying to make for prophetically enhanced tax relief, with a side order of more equity for catfolk.
“But why do you want catfolk to pay even less in taxes?” Ahmed asked. “They scarcely pay their taxes now, unless some athletic young tax collector is fast enough to scruff them before they bolt out the window. That is unfair to the humans.”
