That long-discarded name unlocked the pattern of the cypher when he paired the letters to the patterning of the outlines in the order of a sundial’s clockwise sweep across the hours of a day.
As the judge whose neutrality was paramount, he could not betoograteful to theshahzadafor tipping his hand. But Shai Vishal also knew that, as distracted as he was by the mathematics of the daily work of the cauldrons, he would have needed days or weeks to work out the cypher’s pattern without his Highness’s hint.
His Highness could have left that sentence unspoken, and he could have gained a considerable advantage in the inquiry.
But he had said it himself, that he would lighten Vishal’s burden if he could. And that it would be improper of him to intervene.
For all that Shai Vishal had walked away from the God-Emperor’s religion and the God-Emperor’s court, he had always found the God-Emperor’s brother to be a trustworthy and admirable man.
He had also found the same to be true of his Highness’shajib. He had never heard of the two of them being set at such drastic odds with each other before. And anyone who had spent enough time in the inner circle of the God-Emperor’s court knew not to be surprised by the elder brothers’ sexual enthusiasms. It would be beyond hypocritical for al-Sadiq to lose his wits that his ownshahzadahad spent a night with a courtesan for what was most likely the first sexual rebellion of his anxiously dutiful and foresightful life.
Al-Sadiq had never been a hypocrite, even if he was too fond of clever puzzles, so what under heaven had he hidden in that cypher…
…oh.
It wasn’t just a cat. It was a catfamiliar.
Meaning the problem wasn’t the consorting with a courtesan, but the consorting with amage.Who had bound the God-Emperor’s brother’s soul to a cat-spirit.
In Tel-Bastet, the city of the cats, where Bastet claimed Her dominion over Her children and their purring incarnations regardless of the God-Emperor’s opinion on the matter.
Shai Vishal wondered if it was too late in the evening to catch Asharan in his bath-house, drag him into a quiet corner, and shake him by the shoulders while shoutingWhat in five hells were you thinking?
Most likely, he hadn’t been thinking. Most likely, he’d beenfeeling: that theshahzadawas lonely, that cats were delightful,and that a touch of magic would bond theshahzadato a particular cat-spirit in ways more stubbornly persistent than an alley-stray who could be more easily turned aside at the gates of the fortress.
…No, honestly, Vishal doubted that the impulsive young man would have thought of anything beyond the fact that cats were delightful. Clearly theshahzadahad never had one, and clearly everyone in Tel-Bastet ought to be owned by at least one cat.
Unless, of course, they were a high-ranking Imperial with secrets of state to keep behind their eyes and prophecies that might rock the Empire, now soul-bonded to a small, new-made, vulnerable creature far easier to kidnap or threaten than theshahzadahimself.
No wonder his Highness had apologized so many times in that note.
And no wonder al-Sadiq was having well-bred hysterics. Al-Sadiq hadn’t known Asharan for the past twenty years. Al-Sadiq had no reason to think an unknown Catsprowl enchanter to be anything but a power-hungry opportunist, sinking charms and influence into the soul of the God-Emperor’s brother. But Vishal couldn’t simply tell thehajibthat. Not without revealingwhyhe trusted a back-alley enchanter whose name shouldn’t cross the Imperial gates any more than Faraj’s should be bandied about in the Catsprowl.
There was no way through that conversation which didn’t involve “I have known him for most of his life,” which led towards “he is a common-born Basteti bath-house courtesan and a charmcrafter, and even if I do not expose his name to the gossip-grinding of the entire Empire, you are clever enough to have your people track him down if I let the slightest hint slip. And yes hecouldchoose to bewitch a prince if he wished. And I ask you to blindly trust me, with neither reason nor tangibleevidence, when I claim that I personally don’t believe he would have.”
None of them had been that naive for many, many years, not in the circles of power that they shared. That defense could not possibly stand on its own.
Vishal himself wouldn’t have trusted such a tale if one of the courtiers had asked him to simply trust that a secret physician’s newly compounded tincture was merely a healthful headache remedy for his Highness, and not sent by his rivals or tampered with by fortune-seekers. Somehow, they had to separate the question of the enchanter’s purpose from the fact of the cat-familiar’s existence.
If he had been twenty years younger, Shai Vishal might have beaten his forehead against the desk to see if one headache could drown out another. Twenty years of experimentation had confirmed that it simply compounded both the headaches.
Still, the thought of retiring and turning all these headaches over to Shai Madhur…
…no, Shai Madhur did not deserve to be handed these headaches either.
And Shai Madhur would immediately have chosen in favor of the sweet soft little cat, without considering the implications for the balance of power in the Empire, or the question of dominance among the gods, or even what fees he should require on behalf of the Temple and the community cauldrons when both of the men involved were independently wealthy.
Asharan had come to Shai Vishal rather than Shai Madhur forjudgment,and he had done so for a reason.
His Highness had also come to Shai Vishal forjudgment.
…If only al-Sadiq had not felt quite so compelled to bolster his case withsixty pagesof cypher embedded in scripture.
If only his Highness had offered more than the key to al-Sadiq’s cypher. If only he had offeredanywork of law, scripture, or precedent in his own defense…
Except that he couldn’t, could he? Because he was the God-Emperor’s brother and a prophet, and his Highness knew how the power he held so carefully could be misused with a few implications too many. And because, in the eyes of the God-Emperor’s priesthood, surely therewasno defense.
Bastards and love affairs were nearly expected from wayward royal kinsmen. Mage-wrought soul-bonds to a cat-spirit so clearly of another goddess’s domain, though…thatwas most likely unprecedented among the God-Emperor’s prophets and priests.
