“Oh, cats and God-Emperors and all that lies between them,” Sami said, not entirely as lightly as he intended.
“Which of them is owed the other’s worship depends on whether you ask the cat,” Mreret teased, grinning. She cut another broadleaf to size with a very well sharpened claw and added it to the stack between Sami and Hoda-auntie of the hand-towel, who promptly wiped its surface clean.
“You are as shameless as he is,” Basima-auntie said.
“Excuse me, he is as shameless as I am,” the calico retorted, cutting another broadleaf. “We were here first.”
“Today, or in general?” Sami asked, blinking.
“Both,” Mreret said. “There were catfolk here long before you preyfolk started piling rocks onto each other. We’ll be here after you leave.”
“Unless you get bored and wander off,” a gap-toothed boy bringing them another stack of broadleaves said, grinning. “Or unless there is a moth, or a pigeon.”
“Hsssst,”Mreret said, and took great interest in grooming the tip of her tail.
“But do you feel it unjust that we humans came and claimed this place?” Sami asked anxiously.
“Justice is a human thing,” she sniffed. “The God-Emperor’s humans yowl about his territory, we ignore them, everyone pretends they won the hissing match, life goes on.”
Shai Vishal coughed into his fist by the cauldron, his face carefully turned away.
“Ohdear,” Sami said. “When you say that you ignore the territorial yowling, do you mean that you do seek entrance into thehaveli?”
“Do you really think I’m not going to lie to a nose-blind human with an accent like yours?” Mreret asked, arch-voiced.
“I have been advised to count on it, actually,” Sami said, letting his hand brush against Ashar’s as he folded the next bowl. “But I have also been advised to count on the difficulty of herding any number of catfolk into thesamelie.”
Her whiskers twitched a feline comment on her amusement. “Well, true enough.”
“Supposing you were to have more freedom of access to thehaveliand to the places which the Imperial bureaucracy has claimed for its own, what might you like to do there?”
“Shred all the silks, I expect,” Basima-auntie said tartly. “And relieve yourself on tapestries and ancient relics, just because you could.”
“That is unkind of you to presume, Basima-auntie,” Sami said.
“Oh, she’s not wrong,” Mreret said, with a luxuriant stretch from the twitching tip of her tail to the curl of her impertinenttongue. “I’d sniff everything and scratch everything, to leave my mark. And piss in a corner, to make Hoda-auntie choke on her teeth.”
“Hmph,” Hoda-auntie said. Somehow she managed to make it twice as disapproving when she told Ashar, “I do hope you are notthatshameless.”
“I confess I am not,” Ashar admitted, bowing slightly with a hand over his heart. “It is a weakness in my character.”
“Hrrrrmph,”Hoda-auntie said, and Ashar bit his lip to keep from smiling too broadly at how much she sounded like Kamil.
“But after that, what would you do next, Mreret?” Sami asked hopefully.
“Then I’d come home to my own territory, obviously,” the calico told him. “If they’ve kept the cats out of thehavelifor so long, their rats must be the size of camels by now. We have much easier hunting down here.”
Shai Jyoti coughed this time, and waved his hand vaguely: “The smoke, beg pardon.”
“There is nothing you wish from thehavelior those who live in it?”
“I wish for them to keep ignoring us,” Mreret said. “Because there’s nothing I want badly enough to risk the God-Emperor noticing how much we ignore him.”
Geeta-auntie made a mudra to let bad luck overlook them all, and said, “Pray to all the little gods for all the little mercies.”
“I am compelled to note that no one has ever called Upaja little,” Shai Vishal said.
“But we have called Him merciful.” Ashar let himself lean into his sweet treasure’s side as he reached for another leaf to fold. “The God-Emperor’s brother also seems a kind and gentle man,” he said, “and his prophecies have spared many lives and livelihoods from disaster.”
