“We’ve all spent years not saying it,” Esmat said, “and his Highness has spent years not saying it, and everyone is used to no one saying it by now. But if anyonecoulddrop a hint to the High Priest, your Eminence…”
“I couldn’tpossibly,” Irfan said, honestly shocked.
He knew how long ago his Highness had spent a summer wistfully yearning about Shai Vishal, who had been as fiercely, blazingly honorable as any man Irfan had ever met. A man whom his Highness could admire at just as safely impossible a remove as Archivist Najra’s modest and respectable sister Ghada, who was nearly everything the Empire might have wanted in a royal bride, if only she had been able to give birth to heirs. There had always been anexcept, or anif only. Shai Vishal might have been very good for his Highness, if only he had been anyone other than the High Priest of a rival god, and if only he had not so sharply renounced his Imperial birthrightand all his noble family’s bonds to take up that rival god’s mantle.
Irfan also knew when his Highness had set that yearning aside, and turned his wistful thoughts into expensive ‘accidents’ of financial support to the community cauldrons. Of course Irfan knew. It had been his place toknow, and never to breathe a single hint.
“You’re entirely sure?” Esmat said. “Wouldn’t it be romantic, after all these years?”
“You have just asked me forkindness,Esmat,” Irfan sighed. “His Highness hastrustedme for all these years. It would be more than cruel to betray what I might have glimpsed in his heart, after all these years. It would be more than cruel to betray those gifts he might have made. To draw the Ministry’s attentions to those losses, and to the ghosts of emotional entanglements that we know his Highness did not indulge. To ensnare the good works of Upaja’s entire priesthood in sordid rumors of bed-debts between his Highness and their High Priest, who has taken such care to renounce his own birthright among the noble powers of the Empire in order to serve the poor of Tel-Bastet.”
Even as he said it, he fought himself. Because therewaspower there for the taking, if he needed it badly enough. If the need to free his Highness from that velveted ensorcellment overwhelmed every other need.
I don’t want to use this,he thought.I don’t want to have to use this. Surely there must be some other way to see him set free.
“I’m sure you know best, your Eminence,” Esmat said. “I’m just a matchmaking old busybody who’d like to see his Highness smile more often. But then I’m sure his cat will be quite the charmer; they always are, aren’t they?”
“Yes, I’m sure his Highness’s cat will bequitethe charmer,” Irfan said, grimly.
If his Highness has foreseen this night, this soul-binding, this fate, for half his life? Perhaps I should have told Shai Vishal long ago of the many ways his Highness has… admired him.
If I had told him years ago, perhaps this ensorcellment would never have come to pass.
“I’ll be sure they all eat something more than ink fumes and chalk dust, your Eminence,” Esmat said, bowing over her hands as she backed toward his door. “And there’sqanbarisand fruit in the katori, sir crow, when you notice the raven’s wing is also black.”
“Thank you, Esmat,” Irfan said, with all the dignity he could muster. “I will be certain to eat as well.”
She giggled like a much younger woman as she slipped out of his study.
Irfan knelt beside his desk and clasped his hands together almost in prayer, and found himself bracing his brow against his clenched fists.
If only. If only his Highness had foreseen a night with Vishal and Bastet’s kittens in the Temple, rather than with a sorcerer and a soul-binding, and the moon alone saw where…
Shai Vishal was one of very few souls whose purity Irfan did not question.
If only his Highness had spent that foreseen night in the Temple of Bastet rather than some sorcerer’s hovel — even if it had not been the God-Emperor’s own Temple, it would have been so much preferable. And of course his Highness would never be able to admit if he had come to an understanding with Shai Vishal, for the sake of Upaja’s priesthood’s independence from the God-Emperor.
Perhaps that might even make sense of his Highness’s desire for a cat of his own. Bastet’s Temple swarmed with kittens; Irfan couldn’t imagine how their scribes could ever finish a work of illumination, but somehow they did.
If his Highness would not speak his tutor’s name because Upaja’s priests could not be too visibly entangled with the God-Emperor or His prophet in the eyes of the city…
Except that Shai Vishal would never have bound his Highness by the soul. He would have given him a perfectly ordinary cat and a blazingly righteous lecture about the arrogant Imperial injustice of warding cats out of any part of Tel-Bastet. Which would have caused its own cluster of difficulties, of course, but not the sort that left sorcerous claw-marks festering in his Highness’s soul.
And if Shai Vishal had truly never noticed his Highness’s wistful admiration, then the man was so utterly devoted to his God and his service that there was surely little room left for any other all-consuming passion.
He is devoted to his God, but he is not meek,Irfan thought, studying the perfect arrangement of blossoms in the floating bowl, and the way the incense smoke wavered with his breath.I’ve seen Vishal’s passion. I’ve seen his desperation to feed our people after the great floods and droughts, when the waters had ruined the grain in too many storehouses or the spring harvest had not sufficed.
He would use any power under heaven to ensure that no one starves, when the floods and the locusts come and there aren’t enough protections even with his Highness’s foresights.
I understand why his Highness searches his rooms for anything he might ‘misplace’ at the Temple, whenever his foresight hasn’t been enough to avert the crisis. I am not sure Shai Vishal does, not entirely.
But if Irfan had ever tried to tell that solemn priest, who had once been Imperial and noble, of his Highness’s wistful longings when they had all been young… Shai Vishal would not have believed him. Why would his Highness’s loyalhajibbetray such intimate thoughts? There could not possibly have been agoodreason for such a shattering of confidence — and Irfan himself had never had the years of foresight he would have needed to have seen the previous night’s complications so far in advance.
And whether or not he believed me, Vishal would have thought of the politics: why I would betray his Highness’ heart, who had sent me to do so, who would gain from either truth or falsehood.
And then if he is half as clever as I believe him to be, he would have used that leverage against me, and against the Empire I serve.
Is it worth giving a rival god’s High Priest such leverage over the Empire now, to see his Highness freed of the enchantment before anything worse may befall…?
