“Iknowthat, Irfan.” Faraj reached up to curve a hand to his cheek, aching to see unshed tears bright in his devoted servant’s eyes. “I will never ask you for such service.”
“Ask me, your Highness. Anything you desire, anything you need?—”
“Can you look me in the eyes and say my name?”
The Chamberlain’s breath caught short. He swallowed hard, and took an unsteady breath.
“It’s all right,” Faraj said, gently cradling the hand that still trembled against his heart. “It’s not a demand. It’s an illumination. Can you see why it would be cruel and unworthy for me to demand any more intimate service from you, when my rank has stolen even my own name from your lips?”
“If you do not demand,” he whispered, “if you do not press, but I offer…”
“Many years ago, I tried to make myself believe that I could love Najra in that way as well,” Faraj murmured. “Because she was worthy of love, if only I could be determined enough to correct my desires. If only I could submit my desires to the service of the greater needs of the Empire. Fortunately, she was wiser than I, and she taught me to believe that if we love each other in nearly every way, then the ways we do love each other are enough.”
Stiffly, the Chamberlain said, “I find myself presently disinclined to think well of Archivist Najra’s advice, your Highness.”
“I have never questioned that she loves me in every way but one,” Faraj said. “Just as I have never questioned that you love me in every way but one. You are both brilliant at your work, both devoted to the perfection of your craft, both treasures it is my privilege to hold.”
“Save that you trust a heretic with the sanctity of your soul, as you could not trust me.”
“I trust you to guard the sanctity of my soul, Irfan, for you value it more highly than I do,” Faraj sighed. “I trust Archivist Najra to guard my hope of joy, for she values it more highly than I do as well. Is it so utterly unimaginable that the enchanter who taught me the summoning of a small, soft, purring cat might simply have wished for my happiness as well?”
“Your Highness, youknowbetter than that,” Irfan said wearily. “You have known better than that for as long as you have known your power. Even if your sorcerer were some naive child, the moment that their name became bound to yours among the court, among the priests, even among the gutter-witches?—”
“I know,” Faraj said, passing a hand over his eyes to try to lose sight of some of the shadows. “Believe me, I know.”
“Oh,” Irfan said, and sighed as well. “Oh, of course. You have always been too kind, and too vulnerable to kindness. Let me send guardians.”
“No. For exactly the reasons you have just given me.”
“So that none of us will know when your naive and innocent kitten-sorcerer has been forced into some greater power’s service? Not until the coming disaster is great enough to crowd into your prophecies?”
My sorcerer is not so very naive and innocent,Faraj thought, biting his lip against the amusement that Master Asharan would feel to hear himself described that way; and yet in contrast with the powers of the God-Emperor’s court, the Chamberlain was not entirely wrong, either.
Irfan tucked a stray curl back behind Faraj’s ear and said, “If you were so very determined to entangle your heart with soul-bonded sorcery, your Highness, why did you not ask Archivist Najra to instruct you? She is at least aknownpower, with her own formidable defenses.”
That was a terribly good question that Faraj had not anticipated, because he truly hadn’t gone to the House of Jasmines hoping to bring home a cat-familiar. But he was also not about to explain what else hehadhoped for to his fretful Chamberlain, because that would only reopen the questions of pressures and snares and undue influence.
Instead, he said, “Irfan, I don’t exactly know what Najra keeps in those spellbooks of hers, but I am absolutely certain I do not wish to find out. Because she would not have taught me to summon a small round housecat imminently full of kittens. She would have taught me giant eagles, or hippogriffs, or some terror of the fathomless deep, or?—”
“Oh,five hells,” the Chamberlain said, leaning hard upon the closed doors to steady himself. “Yes. I am forced to admit I could very nearly thank your naive sorcerer for his restraint.”
Faraj bit his lip again, because he couldn’t possibly let any hint ofI did thank my sorcerer for his restraints, his restraints were marvelouscross his expression. It took considerable effort to straighten his face enough to say, “I will thank him on your behalf the next time I see him.”
“You will not,” Irfan said. “If he is as kind and harmless as you have suggested, you are still too vulnerable to threats against innocents. And if he isnotas kind and harmless as that, then you are too vulnerable in other ways. When one of us must be unkind, your Highness, then I will be unkind, because you would never be.”
“Neither of usmustbe unkind, Irfan.”
“Ask Kamil whether he agrees with that, your Highness.”
Later that night, after he had bathed and changed into his bed-clothes and dismissed thekhadimuna, after Kala had begun her nightly prowl of the garden and the chambers, Faraj waited for Kamil to close his eyes from the pile of well-scratched cushions by thejalithat he preferred to sleep in front of.
Several minutes later, he said, “You heard all of that, didn’t you.”
“You were standing directly behind the doors I was guarding,” Kamil agreed. The gold of his eyes shone nearly greenish in the moonlight through thejali.
“You believe that Irfan is correct, don’t you.”
“You should never need to be cruel,” Kamil told him. “When cruelty is necessary, he and I are both better suited to it.”
