Bath-services were intimately body-indulgent, though. Perhaps Upaja’s approval of both generosity and indulgence found an echo in the young man’s heart. Today he had brought?—
“Oh,” Shai Vishal said, looking at the sugared cubes of several flavors ofrahat al-hulqumand the dozen little silk pouches in the courtesan’s basket. He felt a strange time-echo, as though somehow he had seen this before, or said this before, or would possibly say it in the future: “I should have known you’d be behind all this.”
The young man actually flinched.
“I’mso sorry,”he said, and that echoed strangely as well.
“You’re sorry?” Shai Vishal frowned, because he had never known the young man to feel anything like shame or guilt; he had never known him to haveneedof it. He set the palta against the edge of the cauldron. “What have you done that you regret?”
“That’s the problem,” the courtesan said. “Idon’tregret it. But I’m almost certain I should, because I didn’t mean to cause as much trouble as I have. Have the children been asking you for sweets already?”
“Not me personally,” Shai Vishal admitted. “I seem to be forbidding. But Shai Madhur…”
“Oh, of course the children would be after him; everyone knows what a sweetheart he is,” the courtesan sighed, running a hand through his absurdly beautiful curls. “I should have hurried with that last batch. But I of all people know there’s no outrunning rumor in this town.”
“I can ask one of our mendicants to help watch the cauldrons, if you’d like to have a private word,” Shai Jyoti offered them.
“I find I am intimidated by the thought. Is this what shame feels like?” the young man asked, rubbing at his chest. “How unpleasant. I much prefer being shameless.”
“What have you done that you feel to be cause for shame?” Shai Vishal asked.
“Nothing,” the young man said fiercely. “That isalsothe problem. That, plus it seems every woman with a marriageable daughter in thirty miles has lost their mind at once. But I willnotkiss and tell. Not even to a High Priest whom I revere. But I should at least have warned you about the sweets, except that I didn’t have time until after it was already done, and…” He rubbed at his heart again. “I trulydislikewhatever this feeling is, as though I should regret what I cannot regret?”
“If you wish to speak to the unburdening of your soul,” Shai Vishal said, “Shai Madhur’s shift has recently ended, and he is the most comforting of us.”
“I am not sure whether I need comforting or scouring,” the young man admitted. “I am fairly sure I owe penance for the trouble I have made. But I cannot actuallyregretany of it.”
“Well, then perhaps I am the best suited after all,” Shai Vishal said, and swung his cauldron’s palta around so that Shai Jyoti could reach the handle more easily.
For all that Shai Vishal had first known him as a winsome, coltish boy with a ready smile, he had to admit that he had grown into a breathtakingly handsome man who was very,verywell aware of how to use his charms.
Shai Vishal had never been thefocusof those charms before, and he had the unsettled impression that the young man wasn’t even aware of what he was doing.
It couldn’t be accidental that, rather than sitting upon a guest’s pillow beside Vishal’s scribe-table, he had instead perched himself in themashrabiya’swindow-ledge at the exact angle where the sunlight through the carved screen glanced through his jade-bright eyes and carved his features from honeyed amber and gilded his luxuriant sable-dark curls with glimmerings of bronze and gold. It couldn’t be accidental that he’d shrugged the collar of his vivid blue kurta loose enough to bare the golden arch of his throat and the sweep of his collarbone. But it also didn’t seemconscious,either.
After years of such dedicated study of the performance of his body-arts, his instincts for the angles of sunlight and the embodiment of elegant beauty must have been nearly as well-honed as a cat’s instincts for the warmest sunbeams. Somewhere along the way, he must have learned that his beauty could often win him indulgences, just as cats’ purring charms often let them escape a scolding.
Still, Shai Vishal had never seen anyone make himself soemphaticallystunningly handsome in the direction of Upaja’s High Priest before. Even before Vishal had been stern and middle-aged, he had always been fat and scholarly and pious. Most of all, to the marriage-market’s point, he had long beenknown never to touch coin through devotion to his chosen faith. His family of birth had despaired of him because of it.
Shai Vishal had never been a catch worth the fishing. He was almost bemused by the tug of such an exquisitely presented lure.
His judgment had never been swayed by lust in his life. But hewasan artist; he had always had a certain weakness to beauty. Floundering in waters deeper than he had expected, he cleared his throat and tried to settle his unsteady balance.
“You use more than one name among the community,” Shai Vishal said, “and I have known you since you were a child.” (Perhaps that might remind him to reel in the lure a bit.) “Which of your names would you prefer I use now?”
“Oh. Um. I… would you call me Asharan? I cannot imagine you calling me eithermasterorChameli-sahib, your Reverence.” He fidgeted with the cuffs of his sleeves; something about the way he tugged at the hem shifted the fall of the sunlight and shadows against his throat.
“Thank you, Asharan.” Shai Vishal folded his hands on the surface of his scribe-desk so that he would not fidget himself. “I will not, of course, ask for intimate details. But if you are to relieve your heart’s burden, I would ask you to begin in the place that feels most involved?”
“I amso sorry I didn’t warn you,”Asharan burst out, and again it echoed dizzyingly somehow. “I didn’t have time, I didn’t have space — I’m used to thinking of the performance within the walls and within the time, you see? I make a very good performance of charm and confidence as long as I don’t have to keep it going too far past the doorway. You’ve seen a cat fall off a window-ledge and pick itself up and its whole body shoutsI meant to do that?”
“Yes, of course,” Shai Vishal said, hoping his beard hid the quirks of his amusement.
“Right. Yes. Inside the House of Jasmines, I know how to throw myself into the performance and land on my feet every time. Except that this time I did need to cross the threshold and take it outside, he — he needed that affirmation. I needed him toknowthat I wasn’t ashamed to be with him. I wasn’t! I’m not! Except that I didn’t think of muchbeyondhow he needed the affirmation, and every time I turn around things get more complicated. I thought of what it would mean to him that the aunties saw us together, but I didn’t think of what theauntieswould think that I’ve been seen accompanying a man outside the privacy of my baths. And I’m not married, and I own the building, and now they’veall lost their mindswith the matchmaking with their daughters!”
“You have my utmost sympathy,” Shai Vishal said, from the depths of his soul. Asharan blinked at him.
“That’s the voice of experience,” he said. “How did you escape it, your Reverence?”
