The summons arrived with breakfast.
Ali received a folded note, sealed with the minor stamp of the court chamberlain rather than the Sultan's personal seal, which told him everything he needed to know about how this invitation to the court had been categorized. It was not a royal command. Nor a personal request from his father. Rather an administrative inclusion which was the kind extended to members of the royal family when their absence would be conspicuous enough to require explanation, but their presence was not actually desired.
He read it twice and it said two sentences in Farasi, "Trade Council is summoned at the second hour after midday. Attendance of the invitee is expected."
It said Expected. Not requested. Not commanded. Expected, the way one expects the ornamental fountain in the eastern courtyard to be full of water. Because it is always there. Because it would be strange if it were not. Because nobody actually thinks about the fountain.
Ali folded the note, finished his breakfast, and began deciding what to wear.
The trade council of Faras met in the Hall of Assessments, a long rectangular room on the palace's administrative wing whose only decorative feature was a carved frieze along the ceiling depicting the great trade routes of the Arab world in loving geographical detail. Ali had studied that frieze from memory at the age of twelve and identified six errors in the cartography. He had never mentioned this to anyone. But marked it in his memories under things the room did not know about itself.
Ali arrived early.
Not so early as to seem eager. Early enough to choose his seat deliberately — third chair from the end of the left side of the long table, positioned with a clear line of sight to both the door and his father's chair at the head without being close enough to invite direct attention. A position from which you could watch everything and be watched by almost no one.
The council filled in around him the way water fills around a stone — flowing past, briefly interrupted, reforming on the other side as though the stone were not there. The council included - three senior trade ministers. Two representatives from the Settled Merchants Guild, whose names Ali knew from the administrative histories he had cross referenced two mornings ago. The chief of the treasury. Four lesser advisors whose function was primarily to agree with the people around them in descending order of seniority.
And Wazir Farhad al-Khorasani, who entered last and took the seat to the Sultan's immediate right with the ease of a man who had sat there so many times that the chair had developed a memory of his shape.
Ali watched him settle and gazed at his distinctive features. Farhad was perhaps fifty, and had broad shoulders, with a beard maintained at precisely the length that communicated authority without vanity. He had the eyes of a man who counted things. Not money specifically. Everything. People, advantages, debts, distances. He glanced at Ali once upon entering, the way you glance at a piece of furniture you have already assessed and found uninteresting and did not look at him again.
Sultan Bahram al-Shirazi entered from the side door and the room stood. Ali stood with it.
His father did not look at him. Not immediately, not as he settled into his chair and gestured for the room to sit, not as the chamberlain opened the session. The Sultan's attention moved across the table with the practiced efficiency of a man conducting business — present, focused, entirely occupied with the work in front of him. His eyes passed over Ali's position in the way they passed over the water pitchers on the side table. Sultan did register Ali's presence but ignored it entirely.
Ali sat with his hands folded on the table and his expression settled into the particular neutrality he had been practicing since he was fourteen.
The session opened with a report from the treasury chief on the previous quarter's trade revenues. Numbers that Ali already knew. He had found the preliminary figures in a report left in the administrative archive three weeks before they were compiled into this official presentation, which meant the official presentation was a cleaned and selectively edited version of something messier. He listened to the gaps.
Then the first Guild representative, a heavyset man named Hashim ibn Musa, presented a proposal. The language was careful and the framing was generous, but the substance was simple — a revision to the tariff schedule that would increase the inspection fees applied to travelling merchants passing through Faras's three main road junctions by fourteen percent.
The justification offered was infrastructure maintenance.
Ali looked at the carved frieze on the ceiling. Specifically at the section depicting the road junctions in question. Then he looked back at his hands.
The discussion that followed was vigorous in the way that discussions are vigorous when everyone in the room has already privately agreed on the outcome and is performing deliberation for the record. Two ministers raised mild concerns which Farhad smoothed out with the practiced ease of a man who had been smoothing this particular kind of concern for years. The treasury chief nodded at intervals.
Then the second Guild representative, a younger man named Tariq al-Nasseri whose family Ali knew had supplied three of the last four treasury chiefs through a combination of strategic marriage and timely financial support, turned to the room with the expression of someone making a final appeal to reason.
"I think we can all agree," Tariq addressed, "that the travelling merchant trade, while valuable, places a disproportionate burden on our road infrastructure relative to its contribution to the settled economy. The revision simply corrects an imbalance that has existed for some time."
He announced it to the room, but he did not count Ali into it. Nobody in the room said anything to Ali as they believed he was the fountain in the eastern courtyard.
"Which imbalance specifically?"
The words were out before Ali had consciously decided to say them. Not loudly. Not aggressively. In the tone of someone asking a genuine question they would like a genuine answer to.
The room turned.
Tariq al-Nasseri stared at Ali the way a man looks at a piece of furniture that has just spoken and the room required a brief recalibration. Then the particular kind of patient condescension that experienced men deploy when they are explaining something to someone they have already categorized as not worth explaining things to.
"The imbalance between road usage and revenue contribution, Shehzade," he answered, with a slight emphasis on the title that managed to function simultaneously as respect and dismissal. "The travelling merchants use the infrastructure without contributing to its maintenance at a proportionate rate."
"Ibn Qudama makes that argument in his commentary on the Kharaj," Ali argued. "He was appointed by your grandfather's Guild. His conclusion has been disputed by every independent trade economist since, on the grounds that travelling merchants generate secondary revenue in the markets they supply which is taxed at the point of settlement rather than the point of transit. The infrastructure burden argument does not account for that secondary contribution." He paused for a moment to let the room register his words completely before continuing further.
"It also does not account for the fact that the three road junctions in question have not received infrastructure maintenance funding for six years, which suggests the existing fees are not being used for the stated purpose and a fourteen percent increase is unlikely to change that pattern."
The room went very quiet.
Tariq al-Nasseri had stopped looking condescending. He had moved past it into something that had not yet decided what it was.
"The maintenance records," one of the junior ministers uttered carefully, "are not typically part of this council's briefing materials."
"No," Ali agreed. "They are in the public works archive. Cross referenced with the infrastructure budget allocation reports from the treasury, which are also not typically part of this council's briefing materials." He looked at the treasury chief with polite, uncomplicated attention. "I can provide the specific filing references if it would be useful."
The treasury chief had the expression of a man who very much did not want the specific filing references provided in this room.
Farhad spoke on the behalf of everyone. His voice was smooth and unhurried, the voice of a man who had survived seventeen years in this court by not losing his composure over unexpected furniture. "The Shehzade raises interesting points. Perhaps a subcommittee review of the maintenance records before the final vote would be appropriate."
It was, Ali recognized, a masterful redirect. Agree with the disruption, contain it, send it somewhere it could be managed at leisure. The proposal would still pass. The subcommittee would find whatever it was directed to find. But the immediate moment was neutralized without confrontation.
Ali said nothing further. He had made his point. He knew exactly how much a point was worth in a room like this and did not waste words gilding it.
He silently gazed, without meaning to, towards the head of the table.
His father was watching him.
Not with the distracted administrative attention he had given the rest of the session. With something quieter and more complicated than that, an expression that lasted perhaps four seconds before Sultan Bahram al-Shirazi looked back at the chamberlain and indicated the next item on the agenda.
Four seconds.
Ali looked back at his hands. Outside the Hall of Assessments, the city of Shiraz continued its afternoon. The fountain in the eastern courtyard continued its quiet work.
But somewhere in the room, something had shifted by four seconds worth.
Ali remembered the moment carefully, in the place where he kept things that were not yet useful but would be.