“No, not acatfolk, just acat!”a girl folding the linens said to her assistant, with a shudder. “A cat can’t be taught protocol, and who’ll be blamed when the silk gets snagged or it pisses in the closet— oh, your Eminence!” She didn’t drop the linens, but she did bow deeply enough that she would need to restart her folding.
“In that unfortunately plausible circumstance, I assure you I will not blame our staff, Kubra.”
“Thank you, your Eminence,” Kubra said, swallowing hard. “What on earth would his Highness want with an ordinary cat? Kamil is much superior,andhe doesn’t snag the silks.”
An ordinary cat,Irfan thought, and seized upon the cover it might provide. “His Highness is a prophet, Kubra, and he does not owe you an explanation whether the cat is ordinary or peculiar or even purple-spotted.”
Kubra’s assistant Nida giggled. “Is the cat purple-spotted?”
“Not yet,” Irfan sighed, permitting himself to rub at his temples. “But it has also not yet discovered either the scriptorium or the cellar, and at that point I myself am not enough of a prophet to predict how many colors of ink or paint or powder it might adorn itself with. Or how many colors it might then adorn the linens with, or the tapestries, or…”
“May his Imperial Majesty’s divine protection be swifter than cat-paws,” Kubra said, shuddering again. “When I’ve finished folding, your Eminence, I can go and ask the priests to bless the historic artifacts with prayers of mischief-warding.”
Irfan took a breath, because to saydrop everything and run for the priests nowwould make the cat seem less-than-ordinaryagain. The longer thekhadimunathought it merely a princely whim rather than a matter of sorcerous influence upon his Highness, the better for buying time.
“I would be most grateful,” Irfan told her, quite sincerely. “Nida, if you would warn the launderers, I haven’t begun to consider the number of places where Kamil has always been civilized but an ordinary cat might make ruin of the fabrics. I will have words with the Ministry of Finance and the scriptorium, and I expect that Archivist Najra will speak with her people about the safety of the books.”
He said it calmly enough, as though this were any other day. As though his Highness had not bound his soul into the service of some sorcerer’s unnatural creation by the urging of the heretic book-witch who had sent his Highness into physical and spiritual peril without hesitation, despite everything Irfan thought he’d understood of them both.
He was certain his mask of vaguely ruffled vexation hadn’t cracked; neither of the linen servants looked at him strangely.
Both of them bobbed another bow and returned to their folding with no concern more pressing than how many colors of mess an ordinary cat could make at once.
Irfan inclined his head and continued down the hall to his study, keeping every footstep perfectly even. It would not do for thekhadimunato see him run.
Only when he closed the door to his office behind himself did he let himself lean on the cool shaded marble of the inner wall, shaking.
Who would crack first? Where would the first fault-line shatter?
Thekhadimunawere chosen for their loyalty, and also in no small part for their noble sponsors’ prestige. They would not have read enough of forbidden workings of sorcery andnecromancy to suspect his Highness’scat to be a danger. Not unless someone explained that to them.
Archivist Najra would not explain to anyone that his Highness’s cat was adanger. By comparison with the cursed tomes she bound in the most heavily warded sections of the Archives, Irfan supposed that the cat might be less perilous than her alternatives. But in any case, she clearly believed there was nothing wrong with a sweetly purring soul-leech being attached to his Highness by a sorcerer of unknown allegiance, and then breeding more soul-leeches to ensnare him further.
Still, he calculated that she would not spread either the spiritual or the political crises of faith among several tiers of servants, because then the gossip-hunters pestering her would distract from her research, and she had a new fascination to explore in the matter of the cat’s transferred effects upon his Highness’s sorcery-warped state of mind.
Ahmed would not spread word. Ahmed was loyal to the depths of his soul, and wanted nothing more than for the chaos to be safely over with.
Deputy Minister al-Faruq would prefer to eat glass rather than to engage in gossip with illiterate teenaged laundry-servants.
The Basteti saleswoman…
The Basteti saleswoman would not have the leverage to apply to Imperial nobles in other cities and other realms. She would not know who to sell her knowledge to… or whonotto sell her knowledge to.
As distasteful as it is, I will need to pay both the saleswoman and her market-witch well enough to keep their silence. And I will need Kamil’s own network to keep an ear tuned to the marketplace.
Kamil’s loyalty was unshakably with theshahzadahimself, and not at all with the God-Emperor’s court. But however muchthe two of them disagreed about the ensorcelling familiar, Irfan had known Kamil long enough to know that his Highness had not consulted him either. The excuse of the bath that a catfolk would not follow his Highness into had sounded precisely the way Kamil sounded when he needed to lick his shoulder and pretend that the accident had been intentional all along.
Surely Kamil will still see the need to listen for the rumors of the marketplace.
Surely Kamil will still put his years of loyalty to his Highness above the soul-leech some sorcerer has attached to his Highness’s living heart.
…Unless the sorcerer has ensnared Kamil as well.
If this had not been a matter of sorcery, Irfan could have trusted that his Highness’sforesights would have protected him. But for years he had heard Archivist Najra’s own tales of the soul-snares cast by cursed books and wicked artifacts, and her stubborn pride in the elaborate containment measures necessary to render them harmless enough to store rather than to burn.
If Archivist Najra’s containment measures mean that his Highness can wander the Archives untroubled by the wickedness of those known evil creations… then surely those who created such evil can conceal themselves just as thoroughly.
The crafters of malice would havehadto conceal themselves and their works. Neither the God-Emperor nor his brother the prophet nor the ferocious Archivist Najra nor any number of priests sworn to grace were minded to allowevilto come to unwitting innocents in their spheres of influence.
