The Goblin Emperor (26 page)

He explained the situation to his edocharei, and they gave him a suite of puzzled looks. “Mer Aisava will not be asleep yet, Serenity,” said Nemer. “We will fetch him.” And he was gone before Maia could tell him not to. He reappeared shortly with Csevet, still fully dressed, and Csevet bowed and took the letter. “It is very well, Serenity. Tomorrow, we will give this to the courier who will carry the formal offer. He will not get things wrong.”

Maia knew Csevet would not say so if the man were not fully to be trusted, and tried to put that particular specter of humiliation from his mind. He also tried to apologize. “We did not mean for you to be disturbed so late.”

But Csevet, like his edocharei, did not see that there was anything untoward. “Serenity, it is our job, and we are very happy with it.”

“But you have no more privacy than we do!” Maia blurted, dismayed, and was even more dismayed when Csevet blushed.

“We assure you, Serenity, we have sufficient privacy for our, ah, needs.”

“Oh,” Maia said. “That’s good. We are glad … that is, we are … we are going to bed. Good night, Csevet.”

“Good night, Serenity,” Csevet said, still very pink but smiling. “Sleep well.”

Maia got into bed expecting no such thing, but in fact he did sleep well and woke in the morning feeling as if his problems might not be insurmountable after all. He descended to find Lord Berenar waiting for him in the dining room, chatting amiably to Csevet: court gossip that Maia was still too much a newcomer to follow. They both stood and bowed at Maia’s entrance; once everyone was seated again, and Maia had a cup of tea warming his hands, he said, “You wished to speak to us privately, Lord Berenar?”

“Yes,” Berenar said. He paused then, long enough that Csevet said, “We will await you below, Serenity,” and started to get up.

“No, no,” Berenar said hastily. “It is not so private a matter as that. Merely … Serenity, it seems to us that you need help and no one is providing it.”

“What sort of help do you mean?” Maia said, his back stiffening and his ears lowering.

“We mean nothing to your discredit—far from it. Though we do feel the late emperor your father has much to answer for. Serenity, if we are wrong, you need only say so, and we will apologize and trouble you no further, but do you, in truth, understand above half of the proceedings of the Corazhas?”

A scalding blush swept through Maia, leaving cold shame and dizziness in its wake. He heard Csevet say crossly, “Your Lordship’s notions of tact leave much to be desired,” and he struggled to pull himself together, to keep from betraying himself—but it was already too late for that. Berenar had already seen the truth, seen that he was ignorant and unprepared, unfit to be emperor. Useless, Setheris had called him, and it was true.

“Serenity,” Berenar said, sounding anxious, “we did not mean it as an accusation. We wish to offer our help.”

“Your … help?” Maia echoed from a cotton-dry mouth.

“A lack of knowledge is a remediable problem,” Berenar said. “We had assumed that the matter would be seen to—for, certainly, your Lord Chancellor has much experience of the court and familiarity with even its darkest byways—but since it clearly has not, we wish to offer our services.”

Maia became aware of the teacup in his hands and drank, giving himself a moment to regroup. It was Csevet who asked, “What do you mean by ‘services,’ Lord Berenar?”

Berenar flashed a look between Maia and Csevet, as bright and biting as glass in the sun. But he turned courteously to Csevet and said, “Why, education, Mer Aisava, nothing more. We see quite clearly that, through no fault of his own, the emperor lacks the knowledge he needs, and we thought that, having spent much of our life at court, we could supply the deficit.”

Maia, well aware that Csevet had been doing his unobtrusive best to teach the emperor the thousands of things he should already have known, looked for signs of offense, but Csevet said, “That is extremely well thought of,” and turned, eyebrows raised, to Maia. “Serenity, you do not have to accept if Lord Berenar’s offer does not please you.”

“No,” Maia said. “We mean yes! That is, we are exceedingly grateful to Lord Berenar and will be glad of any information he feels—” He broke off, realizing he was addressing the wrong person.

Berenar seemed unruffled, merely saying, “We are very pleased, Serenity. May we suggest that a regular meeting time will be both more productive and less upsetting to both our schedules?”

“That seems a good notion,” Maia said.

Csevet said, “We will arrange it, Serenity. Lord Berenar?” They walked out together, and Maia handed his teacup to Isheian to be refilled.

There is goodwill to be found,
he thought, as Isheian returned his cup with one of her shy, barely there smiles.
Even in the Untheileneise Court.

PART THREE

The Winter Emperor

18

Varenechibel’s Legacies

He was called the Winter Emperor, for his reign was brought in with early snow and its first month was characterized by bitter cold; the Istandaärtha froze solid below Ezho for the first time in living memory. It was impossible to keep the Alcethmeret’s vast and echoing lower rooms heated, and the public spaces of the court were even worse. Maia was always cold, despite layers of silk and wool and ermine, and he offended Esaran again by asking if the servants were able to stay warm enough. It was Nemer who reassured him: the servants’ quarters were built around the kitchens; their rooms were warmer than their emperor’s.

It was neither the first nor the last time that Maia wished simply to be a scullery boy.

His days were full of meetings—the Corazhas, the Lord Chancellor and his satellites, representatives of this wealthy family seeking a favor, of that lucrative business seeking a concession. There were formal audiences with each of the ambassadors to the court, Porcharn, Ilinveriär, Estelveriär, Celvaz, and of course Barizhan. The Untheileneise Court itself, like any city, required governance, and he mediated between the courtiers as best he could when he rarely had more than the most academic understanding of the grounds of the quarrel. The courtiers were at least polite about listening to him, though he had no confidence that they heeded him. Matters among the functionaries and servants tended to be far more practical, if no less passionate, but those he only heard about secondhand: Csevet dealt with them lest His Imperial Serenity be “bothered.” In the evenings, he dined with the court, as he was expected to do unless he could find some compelling reason to be elsewhere, and then there was dancing or a masque or some other entertainment at which the emperor’s presence was understood to be essential. He was late to bed again—and again and again as the days of his reign began to mount—but his eyes were blurry with work, not drink, and the pounding headache came from tension, from the constant, half-crippled feeling of having to make decisions without sufficient information, with an always incomplete understanding of the situations, the motivations, the possible repercussions. Even Berenar’s best efforts could not make up the deficit of years in mere weeks.

He tried not to curse his father’s memory, but he could not help knowing that it was his father’s spite that had crippled him.
Thou wert the fourth son; thy half brothers were healthy, and one had gotten an heir. There was no need for anyone to imagine thou wouldst ever come to the Untheileneise Court, much less rule it.
But he wondered, as petition after petition came before him from those who had been relegated from the court at Varenechibel’s command, what his father had intended for him, what his fate would have been if the
Wisdom of Choharo
had not been sabotaged.

The thought was an evil one, but it would not be banished; he wondered morbidly if Varenechibel’s tactics had actually brought him peace of mind, or if he had been always aware of those he dismissed from his presence, his first and fourth wives, his son, his cousin, an assortment of other relatives and members of the court who fretted him or angered him or made him uneasy.

It did not help that the letter Maia received from Csethiro Ceredin was brief to the point of brusqueness, written in a cold secretarial hand far more polished than Maia’s own. The letter spoke of nothing but duty and loyalty, ignoring entirely Maia’s attempts to offer a warmer relationship. Varenechibel had found affection, kindness, even love with Pazhiro Zhasan, but neither the letter nor the prescribed formal meeting held out any hope of the same for Maia.

The Emperor Edrehasivar VII met his future empress for the first time in the Receiving Room of the Alcethmeret. The emperor was immobilized in white brocade and pearls; Dach’osmin Ceredin was austere and immaculate in pale green watered silk; cloisonné beads, crimson and gold, were wound through her hair and hanging from her ears. The contrast made the vivid blue of her eyes—the same brilliant color as Arbelan Drazharan’s—stand out like a shout of defiance in her white, well-bred, characterless face. Maia found it impossible to meet her gaze steadily.

Dach’osmin Ceredin was accompanied by her father, the Marquess Ceredel. Where she was as unreadable as a porcelain doll, he was visibly nervous, full of bravado one moment and all but cringing the next. The Marquess Ceredel had a guilty conscience, Maia noted; later, he would have to ask Csevet or Berenar why.

This was not a great ceremonial occasion such as the signing of the marriage contract would be, but there was nothing informal about it. Edrehasivar VII announced to the Marquess Ceredel that he had chosen Csethiro Ceredin as his empress; the Marquess Ceredel professed his delight and sense of honor. No mention was made of the property Dach’osmin Ceredin would bring with her to the marriage, nor of the gifts and favors that the emperor would bestow on the Ceredada. Those details were being worked out by secretaries and stewards, and Maia hoped Chavar had as little part in the negotiations as possible. This interlude between the emperor and his father-in-law-to-be was mere theater; Maia wasn’t even sure whom it was intended for.

Throughout, Dach’osmin Ceredin stood beside her father, politely impassive, not a flicker on her narrow face or a twitch of her ears to indicate she was even listening. It made Maia both uncomfortable and anxious, and finally, at the point where the audience was meant to conclude, he said, “Dach’osmin Ceredin, are you content with this marriage?”

She raised one eyebrow a fraction in token of her knowledge that his question was useless and even foolish, then dropped a perfect curtsy and said, “We are always content to do our duty, Serenity.” Her voice was deep for a woman’s, and it carried in the emptiness of the Receiving Room like a tolling bell.

Maia, hot-faced and wretched, could only dismiss them, as Dach’osmin Ceredin had already dismissed him.

His marriage loomed before him like a disaster, but despite his black thoughts, or perhaps even because of them, Maia was pleased to grant an audience to Arbelan Drazharan when she requested one. He received her in the Tortoise Room, and the curtsy she swept him was magnificently formal, fiercely denying her age.

He invited her to sit, taking his own accustomed chair, and said, “What may we do for you, Arbelan Zhasanai?”

She managed to turn a snort into a cough, and said, “You need not give us honors which are not ours, Serenity. We are not zhasanai.”

“You were the wife of our father. You were Arbelan Zhasan.”

“Thirty years ago. And if you call us zhasanai, you illegitimate yourself. But you know that.”

“Yes,” Maia agreed. “But we would do you honor, nonetheless.”

“Your Serenity is most gracious, and we do appreciate it. But your mother was relegated, too, was she not?” The question was a formality; they both knew the answer.

“Yes.”

She folded her hands together and bowed to him across them, an old-fashioned gesture of respect and grief. “Varenechibel was like a killing frost.”

They were silent a moment, in token of having survived Varenechibel IV; then Arbelan said, “We wished, Serenity, to discover what your plans are for us.”

“We have not made plans on your behalf, nor would presume to. Do you wish to return to Cethoree?”

“No, we thank you,” Arbelan said decidedly. “But … it is your wish that matters, Serenity, not ours. We are of the House Drazhada.” By which she meant not merely that she was Drazhadeise by marriage, but that, like Varenechibel’s other wives, both the living and the dead, and like his daughters and his daughter-in-law and granddaughters—like his third son’s unfortunate fiancée—she belonged to the Drazhada. She was literally Maia’s, to do with as he pleased.

It was no wonder, he thought, that Sheveän hated him, Csoru despised him, Vedero regarded him with distrust and skepticism. No wonder that Csethiro Ceredin would give him nothing of herself but her duty. He was eighteen, ignorant, unsophisticated; he had no right to control their lives—except the right of law. “Arbelan Zhasanai,” he said deliberately, “we cannot ask our mother this question, and that saddens us. But it is in her memory that we ask it of you: what do you wish to do?”

She contemplated him, her face unreadable. Then she bowed her head gravely. “If it is not displeasing to Your Serenity, we would wish to stay in the Untheileneise Court. After so long, we have no other home, save Cethoree, where we do not wish to return.”

“Then you are welcome here.”

“We thank you, Serenity,” she said.

“Would you—?” He broke off, feeling his face heat.

“Anything that is within our power, Serenity, you know you have only to command.”

“No, it’s not like that,” he said. “It’s nothing … it’s not a
command.
”

Her eyebrows were up. Edrehasivar Half-Tongue Osmin Duchenin had called him when she thought he could not hear; a glance at Telimezh had been enough to tell him it was not the first time. He dug his nails into his palms, forced himself to take a proper breath, said, “We merely wondered if you would consent to dine with us, perhaps once a week?”

She was visibly startled, which in a lady of Arbelan Zhasanai’s generation was no small feat. “There is no impropriety,” he said hastily. “You are, as you said, Drazhadeise, and widowed and…”