The Goblin Emperor (22 page)

They got through several items of business while he was gone—it was dismally astounding how many townships were in arrears on their taxes—and when the boy returned, panting, with a stack of ledgers and tied quires nearly too high for him to see over, Maia felt it was not unreasonable to say, “We want a
full
report, Lord Chavar, not merely the items you think suitable for our ears.”

Chavar began an outraged protest, but Maia cut him off. “Also, we want a full copy made and delivered to the Alcethmeret.”

“Serenity, you need not—”

Maia interrupted him again—he was learning that it was easier not to be afraid of the Lord Chancellor if Chavar was never allowed to build up a full oratorical head of steam.
“It is the murder of our father.”
And after a long silence, in which Chavar acknowledged defeat by not saying any of the true and ugly things he could have, Maia said quietly, “Please tell us what your Witnesses have found.”

They had not found a great deal more than Celehar had, though at much greater length. All the crew members were being investigated, and all the emperor’s servants. They had sent Witnesses north to Amalo to talk to the workers who had readied the
Wisdom of Chohalo
for what would be her final flight. They had sent a junior Witness to ask the Clocksmiths’ Guild how one would go about building a device to explode an airship and who might have the necessary ability. The Clocksmiths had been volubly helpful, but all their information did not, as far as Maia could tell, bring the investigation one step closer to the truth.

It was a long and depressing confession of no progress, and Maia almost wished he had let Chavar weasel out of giving it. But he would give the copy to Celehar. Maybe it would help.

Everyone was glad to leave the Michen’theileian at noon, and Maia said firmly to Csevet as he sat down to lunch, “Talk to us of something else.”

Csevet understood and obeyed, and they were deep in a discussion of yet another petition from an exiled enemy of Varenechibel’s who hoped Edrehasivar might be more forgiving—they seemed endless, those petitions, like the River of Tears that separated the land of the living from the land of the dead in goblin folklore—when the sound of a considerable commotion in the public space of the Alcethmeret brought both their heads up. Maia nodded to Csevet’s inquiring look, and then waited while Csevet went to investigate. It was not an emperor’s place to find out anything for himself.

The investigation took longer than Maia expected, and when Csevet returned, he was frowning. “Serenity, it is the ambassador of Barizhan without. He asks an audience with you immediately.”

“Immediately?” Maia said, frowning in turn.

“Serenity. He says the matter is of extreme urgency, and for what it is worth, we believe him. He has come himself, and he has
apologized
for not making an appointment through proper channels.” And to Maia’s raised eyebrows, he added, “Goblins never apologize for anything, especially not in public.”

Maia said, “We had best see him. Does it disrupt our schedule entirely?”

“No, Serenity,” Csevet said, although he sounded dissatisfied.

“Thank you,” Maia said. “We realize it is a shocking nuisance.”

“It is our job,” Csevet said, bowing, and turned neatly to go escort the ambassador into the imperial presence.

As was appropriate, the ambassador came in alone, but Maia heard the stamp and clank of his soldiers on the landing—and the stamp and clank of Maia’s guards in return. His first glance at Ambassador Gormened showed him that Csevet had, if anything, understated the case. Although Gormened’s dark skin would show neither blush nor pallor, his eyes were wide and his face was sheened with sweat. He prostrated himself fully, with a mutter in Barizhin out of which Maia understood only the word “respect.”
Ordath
. Chenelo had used it in every unanswered letter she had written to her father, and he knew it was part of the proper address to a ruler.

“Please rise, Ambassador,” he said, and added, to make a joke of his anxiety, “We trust our grandfather has not decided to declare war.”

“Almost, that would be easier,” Gormened said, and he did not entirely sound as if he were joking in return. He rose, if not gracefully, then with no evidence of effort. “The Great Avar proposes a state visit.”

“He wishes us to travel to Barizhan?”

“No, no,” said Gormened, looking even more alarmed at the idea. “He intends to come
here.
”

There were several thousand immediate and burning questions. Maia picked one, almost at random. “When?”

“Winternight. He says he wishes to see how it is celebrated in the Ethuveraz.”

Is there any way to stop him?
He did not say it. He did not need to, for he had the answer already in Gormened’s distress. He glanced at Csevet, who interpreted his expression correctly and said, “The court can be ready for him, Serenity, although the orders will have to be given very promptly, as there are less than two months remaining before the solstice.”

And my birthday.
He pushed that thought away; he hadn’t celebrated his birthday since Chenelo died, and he did not want to celebrate it as befitted an emperor.

“It is the first time the Avar of Avarsin has left Barizhan since the Archipelagar Wars of his youth,” said Gormened. “In our memory, he has never gone more than twenty miles from the Corat’ Dav Arhos.”

Maia began to understand why Gormened was so very rattled. The Great Avar had been an old man already when Chenelo was born; by now he must be over eighty. And it was the ambassador who would be responsible to the avarsin for his well-being.

“Serenity,” said Gormened with a new access of determination, “we feel that there must be a wise and careful plan made for the Great Avar’s visit, requiring more than the usual—and most commendable—cooperation between your government and our
dav
.” He used a Barizheise word that meant, to Maia’s best understanding, something midway between “household” and “office.” Goblins did not distinguish between the two. “We would like…” He drew himself up a little straighter. “We would like to invite you, your Lord Chancellor, and your Witness for Foreigners to dine with us in three days’ time, so that we may all come to a better understanding.” Tactfully, he did not specify what was to be better understood, but Maia felt he could make a fairly good guess. He considered the idea with increasing admiration for Gormened, who had come up with an unorthodox but unexceptionable way of asking the emperor to ensure the cooperation of the two men who could most easily make the Great Avar’s visit a disaster. Maia’s experience of Chavar suggested that nothing, in fact, would be more likely.

“We will be most pleased to attend,” he said, and Gormened beamed at him with relief.

Of course, it was not that simple. Schedules had to be juggled; a thousand details of etiquette and security had to be hammered out; Chavar had to be persuaded to agree (Maia carefully did not ask Csevet what that persuasion entailed); and in order that the emperor not be perceived as granting undue favor to Barizhan, Maia had to agree to dine with the Marquess Lanthevel, who presided over the House of Blood in the Parliament. Even worse, the rumor sprang up, faster than seemed possible, that Maia was dining with the goblin ambassador in order to discuss marrying a Barizheise princess. The Alcethmeret was inundated with pneumatic messages, hand-delivered letters, and people seeking personal audiences with the emperor to convince him that he must marry an elvish girl instead. “And there is still the matter, Serenity,” Csevet said one morning, and his apologetic tone warned Maia to brace for a new crisis, “of the Count Bazhevel. We are afraid there is no way around it: you must grant him an audience.”

“Must we?” Maia said unhappily.

“He feels very ill-used, Serenity. And Osmin Bazhevin is Drazhadeise now, and it is both natural and right that her father should wish to know what will become of her.”

“But we do not know what to do with her!” Maia said, and was horrified at himself for sounding so exasperated. It was not Osmin Bazhevin’s fault that she was in an ambiguous position, and she and her father both deserved an answer. She had signed the marriage contract with the Archduke Ciris, so she was no longer considered a daughter of the Bazhevada, but the marriage had been neither sworn nor consummated; she had never become Ciris’s wife, so she was not now his widow.

It was a tricky and unpleasant question whether she could now marry (
again,
his mind added automatically and he winced), and an even more unpleasant question whether any man would choose to marry her with her ambiguous status. But in the meantime, she was neither a widow, with the right to the income of her husband’s properties, nor a daughter of the Bazhevada to be supported by her father’s estates, and yet she was also not a
daughter
of the Drazhada.

The easiest solution would be for her to become a votary and join one of the cloisters that dotted the Ethuveraz, principally in the more inaccessible points of topography. Maia knew that many of his imperial ancestors would have made that choice for her whether she felt any calling or not, but he found it too much like relegation, and of all people, Stano Bazhevin had done no wrong.

Maybe, he thought, she would
wish
to enter a cloister. But he knew it was not something he could—or should—depend upon.

Maia granted an audience to the Count Bazhevel and Osmin Stano Bazhevin on a cold, bleak afternoon when the clouds were nearly the same color as Maia’s skin. Because the Count Bazhevel had annoyed him with his scheming, Maia chose to receive them in the Untheileian, even though Osmin Bazhevin’s status as the dead archduke’s fiancée would have permitted him to use the Michen’theileian or even the receiving room of the Alcethmeret. But he hoped dourly that the frigid expanse of the Untheileian would encourage the Count Bazhevel to be brief.

It was unfortunate that the Count Bazhevel—long-faced and long-nosed—looked so much like a sheep. Maia had heard courtiers drawing the first syllable of
Bazhevel
out into a mocking bleat, and although it was unkind, it was also horribly unforgettable, and even more horribly so when the Count Bazhevel opened his mouth to begin his litany of complaints and produced a high, slightly quavery voice, as sheeplike as his face. Osmin Bazhevin, standing at her father’s shoulder, kept her head down and did not meet the emperor’s eyes. Maia could see the tension in her shoulders, though, and once her hands started to twist together before she caught herself and brought them to decorous stillness again.

As Csevet had said, the Count Bazhevel felt himself extremely ill-used. Maia chose simply to let him talk himself out rather than either arguing with him or cutting him off, since the essence of his complaint, whether he himself would admit it or not, was that Ciris Drazhar had inconsiderately died before the wedding could take place. Without any imperial response to even the most blatant of his cues, Bazhevel eventually fell silent, although his stance and the set of his ears indicated an obstinate determination to have satisfaction before he left the Untheileian. Maia let the silence stretch long enough that he no longer imagined bleating echoes in the vault of Untheileian, then said, “Osmin Bazhevin, approach us, please.”

Both Bazhevel and his daughter looked alarmed—which heightened the strong resemblance between them, and Maia wondered if courtiers bleated at Osmin Bazhevin now that she was no longer an archduke’s fiancée. She climbed the steps of the dais, and Maia said quietly, “We are sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you, Serenity,” she said, her voice no more than a whisper.

“Osmin Bazhevin,” Maia said, “what do
you
want?”

He startled her into a look of honest, almost pained, incredulity, and he winced in agreement. He had put that so badly it was very nearly an insult. “Let us rephrase our question. We understand that you are in a very difficult position and all of your choices are bad. Acknowledging that that is true, what would you choose to do?”

He’d made it worse; she said, still at a whisper, “We would
choose
to have our fiancé alive again.”

The next moment, eyes wide and ears flat, she was on her knees apologizing while her father bleated at the foot of the dais.

“Please, Osmin Bazhevin, we do not blame you,” Maia said. “Please, stand up.” And when she was finally on her feet again, so rattled that he could see her trembling, he said, “You understand that the simplest solution is for you to enter a cloister, but we will not compel you if it is not what you wish.”

Her doubtful expression made her look even more like a sheep.

“Truly,” Maia said, willing her to believe him.

After what seemed to him a very long silence, she said, “The Princess Sheveän has offered us a place in her household.”

“Has she?” Maia said, empty syllables to buy time while his mind raced. He was fairly sure he knew the reason behind Sheveän’s offer, and it had nothing to do with charity. Stano would be a meek and obliging companion, exactly to Sheveän’s taste. By the same token, Maia wasn’t sure it was a good idea for either Sheveän or Stano, but there were limits beyond which he felt he had no right to interfere, even though he knew he was probably the first emperor in generations to make such a distinction. “Is that what you want?”

“Oh yes,” said Osmin Bazhevin, stopping herself before she glanced at her father, though her ears twitched uneasily.

“Then we have no objections,” Maia said. It was not the truth, but this was, after all, a better solution than the truth could provide and perhaps, he thought—knowing it for callow optimism, but hoping all the same—perhaps having a companion would ease Sheveän’s bitterness.

“Thank you, Serenity,” Osmin Bazhevin said, curtsying and offering him something that was almost a smile.

Maia nodded his permission for her to leave and raised his voice to say, “Your daughter is provided for, Count Bazhevel. You need trouble yourself no longer.”
Nor us,
he thought, but resisted the temptation to say. It was fashionable to be witty at others’ expense, but Maia did not need to be told that the emperor could not indulge in fashion, no matter how much Bazhevel irritated him.