Swallowing hard against a lump in his throat, Faraj managed, “More than I dreamed.”
“And he appreciatesyou,not the God-Emperor’s brother.”
“H-he wouldn’t hear my name spoken.”
“Smart,” Najra said. “I should never hear his, for the same reason. But tell him I expect I would approve of him, if we were ever so reckless as to meet. Is he nicely proportioned?”
“Najra!”
“For the sake of the Eldest Archivist’s records! You know she’ll ask me, because we both know you would writhe with embarrassment if she asked you.”
“Shekeeps records?Still?”
“She’s the EldestArchivist. Of course she still keeps records. How many years have we known her? What did you think she does with her time?”
“Reading works of varying historical accuracy but luxuriant sensual detail, I had thought, based on her preferences among the manuscripts we bring her…?”
“Oh, that too, but the dead have so much more time to fill when they needn’t sleep. So,for the record,” Najra teased. “Is he actually handsome, or do you feel obligated by four hundred years of poets’ traditional exclamations about their lovers?”
She petted the saffron silk over his pounding heart with the same gentle affection she offered to purring cats. Faraj put a hand over hers, more grateful than he could say.
“It is fortunate that I had never dreamed his face,” Faraj admitted softly. “If I had foreseen his beauty, I would never have dared approach him.”
“And what a waste that would have been! You would have had my nagging in your ears for years on end, but you would never have had your night of scandalous pleasure, nor this delightfully soft bundle of trouble following you home.”
Trying for a smile, Faraj said, “How unthinkable a fate.”
“Exactly.” She scratched behind Sahar’s ears. “I like you having a body too, O most plush and velvety of queens. You are wonderful to pet, and sometimes I can’t serve as your favorite person’s Designated Cuddle-Assistant when there are too many fussy courtiers around him. Butyou,pretty one, have the perfect excuse. Because not even the God-Emperor Himself can tell a cat ‘no’ and expect the cat to listen.” She rubbed a fingertip under Sahar’s chin. “What shall we title you? Assistant to the Designated Cuddle-Assistant?”
Sahar yowled her irritable opinion of that.
Laughing, Najra said, “Ah, my mistake. I am your assistant, then? Just as I am our best beloved Royal Cuddlebunny’s assistant, I see, I see.”
“I will speak to Irfan,” Faraj told her. “He was needlessly cruel. I have never once questioned your understanding of love, whether or not you feel desire.”
“Don’t trouble yourself. We have bigger fights to win, and it’s not like I haven’t heard worse from my own family.” Najra tilted her head against his shoulder for a moment, eyes closed. “And still you’ll speak for me, but not for yourself. He should be grateful you brought home unexpected kittens rather than unexpected bastards. If you won’t point that out, then I will.”
“Oh, Ahmed is the one who frets over imagined bastards,” Faraj said. “I’m sure Irfan would have preferred I brought him bastards. That would suggest I had expressed the dynastically appropriate desire at least once in my life. As opposed to the inappropriate desires for books, or cat-familiars, or… well… men.”
“Yourhajibhas known your brothers long enough that I’m certain he understands how to manage bastards far more effectively than kittens,” Kamil said.
Najra snorted. Sahar laid her ears back, and she told the cat ruefully, “Sorry, darling.” Smoothing Sahar’s fur over her veryround belly, Najra mused, “If it weren’t for the fact that it will likely not be your most enjoyable of days, we might have used her kittening as your excuse to vanish into the Catsprowl and visit your gentleman of the jasmines again.”
“Oh, dear. Please don’t call him that aloud,” Faraj said, blinking at shadows in the corners of his vision. “Have we — I can’t recall how many people you or I might have said that in front of? But everything is so rumpled right now I can scarcely make sense of it. Apparently I will choosenotto settle the dogfolk priests’ arrival for the Greater Convocation, but I can’t see why yet? And I had never previously been quite so aware of the movements of the powers of the greater Dark in the Catsprowl. I can’t see in the dark, but it’s never been as much a dilemma as it’s about to be.”
Kamil made a sound of despair very like the Chamberlain’s.
“It’s not dangerous, most of the time,” Faraj hastened to assure him. “Or rather it couldchooseto be dangerous, but it prefers gossip and brewingkumiss? And I don’t know whether I should send a few coins to the shepherd who’s most likely about to lose a goat, or whether that leads to too many questions I oughtn’t answer. How can I say to this poor herding-child that her nanny goat is about to be pulled into a political nightmare that I set off when I chose to spend a night with a companion in a bath-house, and then we summoned a cat, and now my foresight is full of the shadows cast by the Catsprowl and a third of the Imperial bureaucracy may seize the opportunity to conclude that I am a compromised Basteti agent in soul-thrall to necromancy in general and the cat-Archmage in particular?”
“You’re a princeanda prophet,” Najra told him fondly. “Wave your hands and declaim something aboutthe portents have foretold it.”
“It’s one thing to do that in the capital; everyone wants my prophecies to cover their indiscretions even when I can’t,” Farajsighed. “But farmers often don’t care for prophecies unless they’re harvest forecasts.”
“Can you give her a harvest forecast?”
“Beyond that her goat is likely to be consumed by politics even more literally than most scapegoats are? I would apologize, because she is inexplicably fond of that goat, except that as far as I can tell everyone around her believes the goat is already demon-spawned. So her market neighbors will be as relieved as she is upset when the goat follows the Dark into something that almost looks like…” He squinted. “Oh. Oh, dear, I can’t say that toanyone,I’m sorry.”
“Thisisn’t helping,” Kamil moaned, digging all his claws into the gravel path and scratching furiously.
