Irfan bir Enayat al-Sadiq had been raised at his father’s side among the courtiers of the God-Emperor’s palaces. He believed in his God-Emperor’s might and his Imperial Highness’s prophecies.
But even as a child, Irfan had never been credulous enough to believeallmalice had been vanquished by the God-Emperor’s blazing illumination.
Growing up among the courts had simply proved to him how very many ways malice could smile and lie and await the perfect moment to strike.
Irfan had never had the gift of his Highness’s prescience. He had taught himself to read the more base and human matters as though malice and ambition were simply another set of cyphers. He had taught himself to deal with such matters as swiftly as he could, to spare his Highness the foresights of the pain and shame and power-struggles they might spawn if they were not swiftly, sharply nipped in the bud.
His Highness had never been so badly deceived before.
But Irfan remembered how badly his Highness had wanted to deceivehimself, when Archivist Najra and her sister Ghada had first come to the Archives and his Highness had met two women he would love and trust innearlyall the ways that mattered. Two bright, scholarly women, fearless and fascinating.
If Archivist Najra herself hadn’t insisted that his Highness should not force himself to marry a woman he couldlove,but notdesire,just because the court desired children of prophecy from their prophet…if she had not been so clear that she herself could never desire anyone…
Irfan had respected her for that, deeply.
It was hardly herfaultshe had been born with a mind and a heart that were different than others’. She had always been fearfully clever; she used her wit as sharply as other courtiers used their wiles. He was certain that what she felt for her sister was her own version of love, through all her algorithmic models of the ways that other humans felt passions and desires that she did not share.
He was just as certain that she was brazen enough to consider his Highness to be nearly her brother, despite the heresy of such thoughts. He was certain that she treasured his Highness as dearly as any living being, and even more dearly than those cursed spellbooks of hers.
What he had not previously considered, what he should have considered years ago, was whether she was brazen enough to send his Highness to spring some sorcerous trap simply to indulge her own curiosity.
There had to be more to it than the cat. Therehadto be. If his Highness had conceived a desperate desire for a small and pettable cat-companion, Kamil would have grumbled fiercely, but Irfan was certain Kamil would have permitted hisshahzadasuch an indulgence. And if his Highness had instead conceived such a desire for a summoned work of forbidden sorcery, Archivist Najra and her spellbooks were right there, and had been for years.
Irfan would still have been distressed at the heresy and the vulnerability, of course, but Archivist Najra had held her place and her power for decades, and she already knew his Highness would offer her anything. She had no need to bind his soul to ask him whatever she wanted.
If it was more than the cat… Irfan could see a vast array of possibilities that theenchantermight desire. A charming little spy in the Ministry of Finance or the Archives, an entangling of Bastet’s power with the God-Emperor’s prophet, influence over the kindest and most powerful man in the oldest part of the realm… an enchanter had hundreds of desires he might fulfill with a spell woven into his Highness’s heart. But what his Highness might desire…
Irfan hoped, desperately, that his Highness had felt his own desire. That the troubling dreams had not been the enchanter’s soul-binding all along. But of course a soul-bound man wouldswear his mind and heart were his own; it was what made such bindings so insidious.
If Irfan had had any idea his Highness was struggling with a matter of soul-bound fate, he would have worked harder to support him. His Highness had spent too much of his life trapped between the thorns of duty and obligation and the visions he alone could see, pulled this way and that by heiresses he could not desire but was expected to, courtiers who desired his power far more than his person, and priests who could not accept even a hint of impropriety from the God-Emperor’s prophet.
If his Highness’s need to deceive himself in some matter of destined foresight has overwhelmed his usual restraint, I would have suggested his Highness should acquire a pocket-dog for that unquestioning, unpolitical support.
Cats are not known for their selfless, loving, and loyal service even when they are not actually demonspawned.
…It would have been beyond improper to offerhimselfto his Highness. His place was toserve,nothing higher.
But when the alternative was a soul-bond to a possibly-demonspawned bit of velveted sorcery…
Rubbing his brow against the rising headache, Irfan thought,I would have dared a great deal of impropriety to have spared his Highness this.
One of thekhadimhad left a floating bowl of lotus and jasmine blossoms next to the smoldering incense, had drawn a fine silken curtain across the southern panel of themashrabiyafor cooling shade but left the others open to ventilation, had straightened the reed pens and silverpoints and refreshed the inks on his desk, but left his papers untouched.
His people knew him so well, as he knew them. As well as he’d thought he’d known his Highness. Last night he’d thought certainly his Highness had simply been swept up in somescholarly enthusiasm in the Archives, that Archivist Najra would have tucked a blanket over him when he’d fallen asleep in his study and woken him in the morning to send him to his work.
This morning, it had become unmistakable that his Highness had somehow vanished.
Out of thehaveli, into the city, into the hands of a soul-binder.
And his Highness was thenadhir,who foresaw the coming of trouble.
If Irfan had had the slightest hint… if there were anyone he could have called upon, any aid he could have offered, any comfort to his Highness’s unfilled need…
He flinched at the sharp sound of a rap on the door, and pulled himself together hastily. “Yes?”
“It’s Esmat the cook, your Eminence, if you have a moment?”
“Yes, of course,” he said, because there was nothing else he could say if it were an ordinary day and an ordinary cat and no questions of import weighing upon his soul. “Come in.”
