“Yourcourtesanis bright enough not to send you out into the alleys unsupervised,” Kamil said. “Fortunately, that’s my job. I’ll get him home safely,ya rafiq. You can sell the rest of your night.”
“Ya rahati?” Ashar asked steadily, despite Kamil’s amusement shading into mockery.
“I want to stay with you,” Rahat whispered, eyes shut, head bowed, still blocking out the world. “Just a little more. Please.”
Kamil wasn’t the only one who could pointedly ignore someone. Ashar stroked light fingertips up Rahat’s arm to steady him, bending close slowly enough for the warmth of his breath to be felt a moment before he kissed him.
“As you wish,ya rahati. This night or any other.”
Kamil huffed again, conceding the point, and turned away to better watch the window.
“Resummon your poor lost familiar, then?” Rahat suggested. “I owe you that.”
“You owe me nothing,” Ashar said. “But it would be my privilege to earn a smile.”
“O most glorious,”Rahat said wistfully, and pressed a kiss to Ashar’s palm. “Teach me how you call your cat-familiar? It seems a valuable thing to know, in the Catsprowl.”
“Well. What form does magic take in your soul? Do you touch magic through the divine, or through diligent study, or through inspiration?”
“…I hadn’t really thought about it?”
Ashar chuckled, rueful. “Inspiration, then, which means for better and ill we are two of a kind. Those who find this art simplest to master are those given to study: magic as words and recipes, sages with their scrolls and spellbooks. I learned it from a ritual enchanter who kept intricate incantations. But then, herding cats is notoriously difficult, and I should imagine herding magical cats to be even more so.”
“Truth, that,” Kamil admitted, wry.
“Where the clever-minded studied it as rituals, I practiced it as a performance,” Ashar said. “I keep it in my hands and my heart, not in a spellbook. But in turn, this makes teaching it more a challenge. Still, perform it with me, and we’ll see who answers the call?”
Rahat bent his head in agreement, despite Kamil’s little huff. So Ashar gathered the supplies he needed from the box of bath indulgences: a brazier and candles, incense and scented oils, a handful of tiny chiming bells, fragrant catnip.
He rolled back the tapestry carpet to bare the tiles, then called up a bit of cantrip-magic to trace a warding circle with chalk. Then he held out both hands to Rahat. Rahat blinked at him, but stepped carefully over the circle.
“Can you call fire or float a bit of chalk?”
“Fire, yes,” Rahat said. “Chalk… not well enough to write inscriptions, I’m afraid.”
“Then I’ll be the scribe, and you the giver of offerings.” Ashar tilted his head, considering. “In your court’s language—if I ask you the word, can you show me how it’s written?”
Rahat blinked again, surprised. “Will it work in another language?”
“I translated it into my mother’s tongue for myself,” Ashar admitted with a small shrug. “Isn’t the court’s language yours? How would you saycat?”
“Qut.” Rahat sketched the swoops and curls across his palm, right to left.
Ashar curved his hand over Rahat’s and laid a finger over his. “Do that again?” he asked. This time, when Rahat traced the word in his palm, the chalk carefully followed each movement.
There were seven more words to fill the compass, all of them cat-actions: seek, hunt, slay, nap, indulge, play, and charm—“Sahar? You named me that, didn’t you?”
“Among others,” Rahat agreed shyly. “It has layers. Charm as magic, but also beauty, fascination, glamour…”
“Oh, cat-spirits will love that word,” Ashar said, and kissed Rahat’s cheek softly. “Thank you for that.”
With the circle inscribed, Ashar called several pillows to his hands next, and placed them carefully, to not smudge the chalk. He sprawled as a cat might, and patted the pillow beside him. Rahat settled himself into place with far greater decorum.
Kamil leapt into the circle with heedless grace, stalking around them before he settled in a long lean curve around them both—around themboth, when his only duty was to Rahat, but Ashar wasn’t feeling quite brave enough to call him on it.
“Everything from here is temptation,” Ashar explained. “Reminding their spirits of the joys of bodies, of play and petting and treats and the hunt, and the leisure after. Like so.”
He tossed one of the jeweled bells into the air and batted it with a hand until it bounced toward the octant marked withseek, and another towardhunt.
