The Goblin Emperor (18 page)

“The emperor attends upon Dachensol Habrobar?” Maia said, not offended—he had not yet grown so vast in his own conceit—but amused.

“Serenity. We understand that, in order to decide which design will best suit any individual, Dachensol Habrobar must be able to consult his collection of signets, of which he has several thousand.”

“Quite,” Maia said—and realized that Csevet had succeeded in making him eager to visit Dachensol Habrobar and thus without ground to resist discussion of his hypothetical wife.
There is more than one kind of bargaining,
Maia thought, and set himself to uphold his end of the bargain by listening carefully to what Csevet had to say.

He was not surprised to discover that Csevet had a list. “We thought, Serenity, it might be best to tell you something about the women who are currently at court, so that you may decide as you meet and speak to them which of them you like. For while this is certainly an
important
matter and one which you should not neglect, it is not something we think you should
rush.
”

“No,” Maia said. “We do not wish to emulate our father in his approach to marriage.”

Csevet’s ears twitched and flattened a little. “Serenity, we feel that we must point out that, to a great degree, the late emperor’s numerous marriages were not his fault.”

“Perhaps,” Maia said. He did not want to argue with Csevet. “Tell us of our potential empresses.”

Csevet consulted his list. “We understand, first of all, that Eshevis Tethimar has brought his oldest unmarried sister, Paru Tethimin, to the Untheileneise Court, although we have not seen her. She is fourteen, and Dach’osmer Tethimar is probably cursing his luck that he squandered his sister Uleviän on the Prince of Thu-Athamar, for she is of an age with you.”

“You do not like Dach’osmer Tethimar,” Maia said, a little surprised that Csevet would let any kind of bias, positive or negative, show.

“We apologize, Serenity,” Csevet said, the tips of his ears turning pink. “We allowed our tongue to run away with us.”

“No,” Maia said, “we are not offended. And we value your opinion. We have not found Dach’osmer Tethimar congenial ourself.”

“There was an incident,” Csevet said, the blush spreading from his ears to his face, “when we were first a courier. We would prefer not to discuss it, but…” He cleared his throat and twitched his ears straight. “It is perhaps the case that we bear a grudge against Dach’osmer Tethimar.”

“We will remember,” Maia said. “And we think fourteen is very young to be married.”

“Yes, Serenity,” Csevet said. “Also at court is Osmin Loran Duchenin. She is twenty, the second daughter of the Count Duchenel. She is also the niece, in his mother’s line, of Lord Chavar.”

“We thank you,” Maia said, “for we would not have known that.”

“How could you, Serenity?” Csevet said mildly, as if there were nothing unusual or tedious in having to educate an emperor in matters he should have known unthinking, as he knew how to breathe. “Osmin Duchenin is a very accomplished and beautiful young lady; she is something of a rival to the widow empress. On the other hand, Dach’osmin Csethiro Ceredin, who is the great-niece of Arbelan Drazharan and also very accomplished, moves in the same circles as your sister Vedero. They are the most established courtiers of the women who are close to Your Serenity in age—which means that both they and their houses are ambitious and therefore very likely to pursue a marriage.”

“Yes, of course,” Maia said, feeling a combination of unhappiness and unreality with which he had become familiar since arriving at the Untheileneise Court. “We imagine they are not the only ones.”

“There are several families of great ambition,” Csevet said, “but of course they have not been grooming their daughters as potential empresses, and there is likely to be a certain amount of scrambling—as with Dach’osmin Tethimin, who probably will not be allowed to appear publicly until she has been properly coached. However, Your Serenity is correct, and we have no doubt that the Ubezhada, the Erimada, the Shulihada—” He scanned down his list. “—also, the Virenada and the Olchevada will be putting their daughters forward. And perhaps Your Serenity will prefer one of the less polished young women.”

He raised his eyebrows at Maia, who said helplessly, “We do not know.” He had never thought of marriage, never in his wildest fantasies imagined that young women might be competing for
his
favor. When presented with it in reality, it was not a comfortable prospect.

“There is time, Serenity,” Csevet said reassuringly, “and this is Dachensol Habrobar’s workroom.”

The workroom was less a workroom than a vault, a great echoing dark space with every wall showing row after row of small square drawers. In the middle, there was a table, lit by a modern gaslight chandelier, and at the table was Dachensol Habrobar.

He was a small man—less than five feet tall when he leaped up to greet the emperor—with silver gray skin and silver gray eyes. He was perfectly, gleamingly bald. He spoke with an accent Maia did not know, which seemed to chip the edges off all the words in its rush and tumble, for Dachensol Habrobar used five words in the time it took Maia to say one. He had brought out from the depths of the vault a box like an oversized jewelry box, containing padded wells, each of which held what he called the “type” of a signet. “So that if you are careless, yes? If you are careless and you are walking in the Duchess Pashavel Gardens and perhaps you are tossing your signet idly from hand to hand, though it is not what we recommend, Serenity. And as you toss it—oops!—there it goes into the ornamental pond and before you can even think to wade in after it, there it is eaten by an ornamental carp, which the Pashavada import at great expense from somewhere in the west and how they keep them alive we often wonder. So you come to us in despair and embarrassment, and yet all is not lost, for we have kept the type.” And he reached into one of the padded wells with small deft fingers. “You see, Serenity, it is not the signet, but the impression from which the signet is made. We keep all of them that we make. This is the type for the signet of Dach’osmin Lisethu Pevennin. She was the last of her family, poor lady, and she died before she’d used her signet more than five times.”

Maia looked at the signet, a delicately rendered swan with a tiara, and tried to place the name Pevenn. Pevennar, Pevennada, Pevennel … it was an odd name, archaic.…

“Dach’osmin Pevennin died almost five hundred years ago,” Csevet said, “at the command of Edrethelema the Fifth.”

“She was a very
unrestful
lady,” Dachensol Habrobar said sadly.

And of course the reason Pevenn had sounded familiar was that the Pevennada had led the last great rebellion against the Drazhada.

“We beg your pardon,” Maia said to Dachensol Habrobar. “But
you
made her signet?”

“Our people are very long-lived,” Dachensol Habrobar said. “We are old, but we will most likely live to make signets for your grandchildren, Serenity.”

An I have any,
Maia thought. He hoped he controlled his flinch, but it was probably not coincidence that Habrobar immediately said, “We have brought out a selection of Drazhadeise signets, so that you may see the range of options before you.” He laid them out neatly and quickly, identifying each by the name of the emperor, empress, archduke, archduchess, or lesser scion of the House Drazhada to whom it had belonged. Cats everywhere: couchant, rampant, curled in realistic sleep, pouncing on a mouse, holding a rose, holding a sword; a black cat and a white cat coiled around each other; a snarling cat’s face with exquisitely rendered whiskers and teeth; a cat’s paw with hooked claws. “The late emperor your father,” Habrobar murmured, “chose this design.” He put down on the table a type with a cat resting one paw upon a crown. The crown was recognizably the Ethuverazhid Mura, and Maia was impressed by Habrobar’s craftsmanship at the same time he was repelled by the design. “Edrehasivar the Sixth,” Habrobar said, setting down a type of a cat seated with its tail curled about its paws, looking solemnly outward. “We will be glad to show Your Serenity any other type you should wish to see in order to help you decide.”

Maia stared blankly at the types laid out before him. There was something missing, but it took him a long time to see what it was. “Did you make a signet for—that is, did the Empress Chenelo our mother have a signet?”

“Of course, Serenity,” said Habrobar. “We weren’t sure…” Whether from fear of offending the emperor or simple tact, he did not finish the sentence. “Just a moment.” He lifted out the top layer of padded squares and picked a type unhesitatingly out of the layer beneath. “The Barizheise do not use signets, but each avar has a device which he uses on his war banners. That of the current Great Avar is the sea serpent the Barizheise call the
Corat’ Arhos,
the ‘Cruelty of Water.’ Thus, for the Empress Chenelo, we made this.” He set it down: a delicate picture of a creature half cat and half twining serpent. It was grotesque, but it was also oddly, inexplicably hopeful, and Maia had to blink hard against the heat of tears.

“We regret,” Habrobar said in that same mild, rapid voice, “that she was never able to use it. The emperor found it unsuitable and insisted that she use the Drazhada’s cats instead. But we kept it, as we keep every type we make. We did not know if you would wish to see it.” His gray-silver eyes met Maia’s. “Serenity, if you should wish to use it, we think it would not be unfitting. It was never even made into a ring for her.”

“Yes,” Maia said, and everyone pretended his voice hadn’t cracked. “Yes, we thank you.”

“It should take us no more than a week,” Habrobar said. “Now, if you will permit us…” There was a rapid flurry of measurements and questions, and by the time Maia left Dachensol Habrobar’s vaulted workshop, he was almost able to forget he had embarrassed himself. But he did not forget, and told himself he
would
not forget, that it was possible for people to be kind without ulterior motive, that sometimes bargaining was not necessary.

Sometimes,
said that cold Setheris-like voice in his head.
But not often.

14

Min Nedaö Vechin

Dining with the court was an experience hated as soon as embarked upon. Thanks to the combined efforts of Chenelo and Setheris, Maia’s etiquette was perfect and unthinking—which he recognized as the boon it was—but what they had neglected, Chenelo because Maia was too young, Setheris because it would never have occurred to him to bother, was the art of conversation. Maia sat with his half sister Nemriän at his left hand and Lord Deshehar, the Witness for the Parliament, at his right, and had not a word to say to either of them.

Nemriän, who clearly would not have wished to talk to him in any event, focused her attention without apology on her other dinner partner, the elderly but sharp-witted Witness for the Judiciate; Deshehar, either naturally better mannered or more sensitive to the dangers of slighting an emperor, made a number of forays. He had the tact to stay away from politics, but since he fell back on literature, most of which Setheris had forbidden Maia to read and the rest of which had not appeared in Edonomee’s barren library, his efforts were not successful and left Maia feeling ill mannered, ignorant, and incomparably loutish. It was a relief to escape the table, an even greater relief to find Nurevis waiting for him, smiling and immediately taking the entire burden of the conversation on himself.

Maia could not tell whether it was deliberate or not that Nurevis’s seemingly artless chatter in fact provided him with a great deal of information. He learned about the Opera House of Zhaö—“the oldest in the Elflands, you know, and every composer worth anything premieres there”—and then Nurevis came to the topic of the soprano who was singing that evening and waxed rhapsodic, seeming to forget his companion entirely.

Her name was Nedaö Vechin. She was the youngest prima soprano in the history of the Zhaö Opera, and the power of her voice was not merely remarkable but (some said) divine. She was beautiful and intelligent, and although she was not of good family, Nurevis said her manners and speaking voice were beyond reproach. “You’ve never seen anything like her in your life, Serenity,” he said, and Maia did not tell him just how little that meant.

The Lord Chancellor’s apartments, though of course not comparable to the Alcethmeret for size or grandeur, were spacious, well appointed, and eloquent to Maia’s eyes—trained by the shabby semi-poverty of Isvaroë and Edonomee—of wealth carefully used but not stinted. He wondered, not quite idly, where the wealth of the House Chavada came from, and made a mental note to ask Csevet. Was the Lord Chancellor’s a salaried position? Another in the ever and infinitely expanding list of things he did not know.

The salon was already thronged with brightly dressed courtiers. The period of official court mourning had ended with the wake; those who continued to wear black, as Vedero did, did so because they felt some closer, more personal connection with the dead. Maia himself, torn between honesty and tact, wore the dark-jeweled rings appropriate to mourning but had otherwise reverted to imperial white. He was sure there were many whom he offended by refusing to acknowledge a grief that he did not in fact feel, but the dishonesty would be an insult to himself, to the dead whom he had not loved, and to his mother, for whom he had not been allowed to wear mourning after the funeral because Setheris considered it unseemly. But he still felt the judgment in the court’s eyes.

Nurevis, fussing amiably, cleared a path through the crowd for Maia and his nohecharei to the place where he intended the emperor to sit. Maia found it embarrassingly prominent, with a gleaming expanse of floor like a moat between it and the decorous rows of chairs for the rest of the audience. Even here, he was forced to be the emperor.
Wouldst liefer sulk in thy tower?
he asked himself, and felt better for being able to mock his own discontent.

The arrival of the emperor was the signal for the evening’s entertainment to start. The courtiers disposed themselves on the chairs, and the soprano, who had been surrounded by admiring men in a corner of the room, advanced to the place meant for her, flanked by two tall candelabra. Maia forgot himself and became still with wonder.