“It’s not that I wantonlycatfolk to pay less in taxes,” Faraj offered, with his hands firmly clasped on the table so that he couldn’t itch at unexpected ticklings. “But I — I admit I am personally sensitive to the underestimated value of forewarned disasters that then donothappen, and expensive repairs that are thennotnecessary. If, for example, the value of the warehouses that were evacuated before a flood or a fire were credited to the one who warned?—”
(The tickling had shifted to the most sensitive nook in the crook of his elbow. And Ahmed looked even more horrified.)
“Your Highness,” Ahmed said, “I understand you are a kind and generous soul, but the staggering potential for tax fraud inherent in ‘Behold the number of my rivals’ warehouses that Icouldhave burned if I chose?—’”
“Oh, yes, I know,” Faraj admitted. “That’s why captured vermin are far easier to calculate than some hypothetical lack of arsonists’ extortion. If we reckon how much grain an uncaught mouse or rat might spoil in the course of a year, compounded by the breeding potential, and we credit a reasonable percentage of that to either cats or humans who bring us the tails…”
“But, your Highness, why should we even bother? Cats catch mice whether or not we credit them for it.”
“In other circumstances, profiting from someone else’s uncompensated labor on your behalf is called by an assortment of names I do not wish to stain myself with,” Faraj said. “A historical oversight is still an oversight. And a historical injustice is still unjust.”
“But do catfolk even care whether we credit them for the taxes they don’t intend to pay anyway…?”
“I don’t know yet,” Faraj said, feeling an itch between his shoulder blades that he was almost certain was guilt over never having thought to ask Kamil about his opinion on human-imposed social restrictions on where he was permitted to use his small shape.
Kamil had chosen Faraj for his human so many years ago that sometimes Faraj didn’t remember to think about which matters were complicated because Kamil had firmly added himself to the Imperial household, with its associated courtly protocols and restraints, and which matters were complicated foranycatfolk.
“I don’t know how many of them care at present,” he admitted, “but I intend to learn, if?—”
Suddenly, the tickling was just too overwhelming. He swatted at his own ear.
His hand came away from his ear with Najra’s tickle-feather in his fingers.
As she snickered and scratched away in her notes, Faraj thought that at least he hadn’tentirelylost his sense of his own body between Sahar’s soft round echo and the fiercely embarrassing self-consciousness.
None of it had been dangerous, of course. Najra knew the limits of his foresight nearly as well as he did. She was a consummate scholar, and she wasn’t about to contaminate her research into familiar-bonds with the overspill of anadhir’sdanger-warnings.
Then the Chamberlain pulled a long, wickedly sharp silver pin from the tapestry mending kit?—
Faraj had thrown himself out of his chair and had the Chamberlain by the wrist before he realized that had beenforesight, because the Chamberlain had been sitting behind him, and he’d only begun to reach for the mending kit.
“I’m sorry,” Faraj managed, letting him go. “I hope I didn’t hurt you?”
“Not as much as whatever he was planning would have hurt you, apparently,” Najra said, glaring at the Chamberlain.
The Chamberlain ignored her entirely. Instead, to Faraj, he said wearily, “Now we face twice the challenge in ensuring your safety, and twice the vulnerability to hostage-taking. And if we must banish the creature for your sake and the sake of the Empire, your prophecies will complicate it, and you will need to choose to suffer with the creature’s banishment. Truly, your Highness, I would have expected your foresights to warn you away from such a rash course of action, if you were not enchanted by whatever gutter-witch bound this creature to your tender heart.”
Faraj bit his lip hard againstMaster Asharan did enchant me for a moment, but it was nothing at all like that,because the far more desperate realization clawing at his heart wasMaster Asharan must have felt it when his familiar — when Kamil— because I hadn’t told him?—
Najra said, “No one shouts at the other noblemen when they sire hostages to fate. No one scolds a noblewoman for bearing a beloved child her family would do rash things to protect.”
“A summoned bit of necromancy is not a child! You know that! You’re a self-proclaimed witch and a heretic who sent him into the grasp of an enchanter, and now you runexperimentson his ensorcelled heart. How dare youspeak as though such ensorcellment were love?” the Chamberlain snapped.
Najra froze utterly motionless.
“That is enough,” Faraj said. “That is far beyond enough. Irfan, go and see to the household schedules.”
“Your Highness, someone withyourbest interests at heart must speak truth to you?—”
“Go,”Kamil snarled, from directly behind Faraj’s ear.
Faraj flinched despite himself. His conscious mind knew Kamil would never, ever harm him, but that much sheer rage so close hooked into body-instincts far below rationality. And his heart was still pounding with the knowledge thatKamilhad struck down Master Asharan’s familiar, and they both must havefeltit.
The Chamberlain was not a coward. “Your Highness?—”
The noise Kamil made was nothing at all like a human. It sounded like distilled molten wrath half a breath from bloodshed.
Stiffly, hands clenched at his sides to prevent them from trembling, the Chamberlain bowed to Faraj with excruciating formality. Then he turned his back on Kamil as he left, every step precisely measured.
