The Goblin Emperor (32 page)

23

The Opposition of the Court

Maia never came nearer to open rebellion than he did over the dinner party hosted by the Presider of Blood, the most powerful member of Parliament. It was not merely that he did not wish to go—for his imperial reign had been one obligation after another that he did not
wish
to fulfill; it was that he was almost ill with fear at the thought of it. It took all of Csevet’s considerable powers of persuasion to get him out through the grilles of the Alcethmeret, and if it had not been for his nohecharei, Maia knew that he would have pretended to become lost and accepted every unpleasant consequence thereof, simply in order to escape. But the emperor had no such recourse and was condemned to a punctual appearance at his host’s door.

The Marquess Lanthevel, the Presider of the House of Blood, was tall and thin, with graceful, long-fingered hands that Maia could only envy. His eyes were vivid blue, and he dressed to accentuate them: blue brocade jacket and lapis lazuli beads. His bow, when Maia and his nohecharei were ushered into the Lanthevadeise receiving room, was perfect and crisp. “We are pleased at last to meet you, Serenity. You have not the look of your father.” Said so blandly that the insult could almost pass unnoticed.

“No,” Maia said, “we are generally agreed to favor our mother.”

Lanthevel’s lips quirked in the slightest of smiles, as if conceding a point to an opponent. “And of course,” he continued, with a gesture as softly elegant as an unfurling rose, “Your Serenity knows Lord Pashavar and Captain Orthema, but you must allow us to present our niece, Dach’osmin Iviro Lanthevin; Osmerrem Ailano Pashavaran; and Merrem Reneian Orthemo.”

The greetings were all formal and correct, and Maia returned them in kind while trying to keep his glass-edged panic from showing. He had known there would be other guests, but he had not expected Pashavar, who terrified him more than the rest of the Corazhas put together.

Pashavar’s wife, a head taller than her husband, had the grim look of a woman determined to do her duty despite her personal feelings. Dach’osmin Lanthevin gave him what might have been a sympathetic quirk of a smile; she was in her forties, a short, brisk, graceful woman who dressed her hair with pale jade combs.

He was disconcerted by Captain Orthema, whom he had never seen before without the sun mask of a knight of Anmura—and had certainly never imagined trying to have a conversation with. The captain’s name, Maia knew, was Verer Orthema. He came from far eastern Thu-Tetar, and there was a good deal of goblin in him. His skin was not as dark as Maia’s, having only a faint silvery cast, but his hair was black, and his eyes, under heavy brows, were so deep an orange as to be nearly red. He had campaigned several times against the barbarians of the Evressai Steppes before accepting his present position, and bore reminders of warfare on his face: a scar slanting across his forehead and another slashing from one cheekbone to the other across the bridge of his nose. Although he was almost sixty, his posture was still erect and his stride still vigorous and graceful.

His wife was much younger, only a few years older than Maia himself, and he thought, from the drape of her soft rose dress, that she might be pregnant. She did not look higher than the emperor’s collarbones, and he supposed he could take some comfort in the fact that there was someone in the room more terrified than he was.

It was the duty of the unfortunate emperor to begin conversation; although that rule got bent and rather sloppy at some of Nurevis’s parties, the cold shine of Lanthevel’s vivid blue eyes said there would be no such mercy here. Maia had tried to prepare—as he always tried to prepare—with lists of innocuous but encouraging questions; they all seemed feeble now, like the efforts of a mouse to make conversation with a roomful of hungry cats.

The silence was deepening from awkward to lethal; Maia looked around desperately for something that could at least provide an unexceptionable remark; and saw a wall hanging, not very large and the colors faded with age, but he had taken a step toward it before he knew what he was doing. “We beg your pardon,” he said, but could not wrench his gaze away from the delicate embroidered vines and strange wheel-like flowers. “Will you tell us about this wall hanging? Our mother did embroidery like this.”

“Did she?” said the Marquess Lanthevel, an odd note in his voice. “That is a wedding stole from Csedo, dated to the reign of Sorchev Zhas.” And before Maia had to ask, he added, “Some sixty to a hundred years before Edrevenivar the Conqueror crossed the Istandaärtha.”

Maia stepped a little closer. The stole, protected behind a pane of glass, was stained and frayed, and the colors, which must once have been as bright as a celebration, were now almost indistinguishable, red from blue from yellow from green, but his memory supplied a purple cast to the red, a deep golden yellow, a jewel-like blue. Chenelo had used two shades of green, to give the effect of sun and shadow, but it was impossible to tell if the long-ago embroiderer had done the same.

Lanthevel said, “Do you have any pieces of the empress’s working?”

“No,” Maia said, and forced himself to turn to face his host. “All her personal belongings were burned when she died. We believe it was at our father’s command.”

“He left you nothing for remembrance?” Pashavar said. He used the ritual word, “ulishenathaän”: a token of a dead person.

“No,” Maia said. “Possibly he thought we were not old enough to need one.”

Pashavar snorted inelegantly, drawing a frown from his wife.

“No one who knew the late emperor your father,” she said, “could help but deplore his fourth marriage—not through any fault of the Empress Chenelo’s, for indeed we have never heard anything to her discredit, but simply because he should not have made it. The Empress Pazhiro would have been the first to condemn his behavior.”

“The third empress was a close friend of our wife’s,” said Pashavar.

Captain Orthema made a noise that might from another man have been called a sigh. “It is possible to be friends with a man—indeed, to care for him deeply—and yet disapprove of his conduct. We have always felt that the late emperor’s treatment of you, Serenity, was foolish, for it created discontent where there was no need to, and we know Lord Pashavar advised him strongly to bring you to the capital.”

“When your mother died,” said Lord Pashavar, “again when you turned thirteen, and again when you turned sixteen. But he would not listen to us.”

“He was always very stubborn,” said Lanthevel. “It is a Drazhadeise trait.”

Edrehasivar the Obstinate,
Csevet had said.

“We thought,” said Dach’osmin Lanthevin, “although perhaps it is fanciful, that he had come to associate you not with your mother—for indeed, he did not know her—but with the Empress Pazhiro and her stillborn child. That it was not vindictiveness that drove him, but grief.”

The damned whelp looks just like his mother.

“It is a kind thought,” Maia said. “As we were given no chance to know our father, we cannot speak as to its truth.”

“A very polite way of saying you disagree,” Lanthevel said. “Tact is a fine trait in an emperor. Varenechibel had it not.”

“Put tactfully,” Pashavar said, and for the rest of the time until dinner was announced, Lanthevel and Pashavar told Maia stories of his father, giving him a glimpse, at least, of the man Idra and Vedero and others who had loved him had known. But Maia kept thinking about the wedding stole, and after the sliced pears in yoghurt were served, he asked Lanthevel, “How did you come by that wedding stole? And—forgive us if this is an impolite question, but why do you hang it in your receiving room?”

“Not impolite at all,” Lanthevel said. In fact, he seemed pleased. “Your Serenity knows that we are a scholar of the University of Ashedro?”

“We did not know,” Maia said. “We had understood that scholars mostly remain in the universities.”

“True,” said Lanthevel, “but our elder brother became a votary of Cstheio when he was forty.”

“Oh,” Maia said.

Lanthevel made a small, ironic nod of acknowledgment. “A scholar may be plucked from his university to sit in the Parliament, but not so a votary. We have found, though, that we are able to continue our studies at least in small ways—and perhaps that makes them more precious to us.”

“But what do you
study,
Lanthevel?” Pashavar interrupted. “You’ll talk all night and still not have answered the emperor’s question.”

“Have some more wine, Lord Pashavar,” Lanthevel suggested. “Your disposition hasn’t mellowed yet.”

Pashavar laughed, like a crack of thunder; Maia realized that these two men were genuinely friends, and they were doing him the honor, and the great kindness, of letting him see their friendship.

“As it happens,” Lanthevel said, collecting the attention of the table, “we study neither textiles nor the history of Csedo—our studies are in philology—but a close friend left us the stole as an ulishenathaän, and we treasure it.”

“Forgive us again,” Maia said, dogged because he was trying not to imagine having one of his mother’s embroidered pillows to remember her by, “but what is philology?”

The silence was sharp; Lanthevel’s raised eyebrows said he suspected Maia of mockery, and Maia said, “We ask in all sincerity. Our education was somewhat erratic.”

“Did you not have tutors?” said Pashavar.

“No, only Setheris,” Maia said, realizing too late to catch himself the insult in using his cousin’s given name unadorned.

Pashavar snorted. “Setheris Nelar must have made the worst teacher the empire has ever seen.”

“No, he was a very good teacher, when he could be bothered.” Maia bit his lip, appalled, and only then realized that the warm drifting feeling in his head meant that he was beginning to get drunk. Lanthevel’s wine was stronger than he’d thought.

“Yes, but how often
could
he be bothered?” Pashavar said, with a horrible sharp knowingness in his eyes. “We remember Setheris Nelar and the self-importance he wore like a crown.”

“We remember,” Dach’osmin Lanthevin put in, earning herself a frown from Osmerrem Pashavaran, “his bitter feud with Lord Chavar.”

“Osmer Nelar wished to be Lord Chancellor,” said Pashavar, “having realized he would never rise as high or as fast as he wished in the Judiciary.”

“Arrogance,” Lanthevel said.

“Yes,” said Pashavar, “but we do not know that he was any
less
qualified than Chavar.”

Lanthevel waved this piece of obvious provocation aside. “It is true that Lord Chancellor is in many ways a political post, but it cannot be assumed without
some
knowledge of the workings of the chancellery, and Osmer Nelar had none.”

“But the
opportunity
was there,” said Pashavar, answering a question Maia was not quite brave enough to ask. “Lord Chancellors do not come and go like dayflowers. If he did not try then, it might easily be forty years before another such opportunity arose. Osmer Nelar was ambitious—and arrogant, as Lanthevel says—and his wife drove him. Or, at least, so Varenechibel always believed. He would not let her accompany her husband to Edonomee because, he said, he did not want them scheming
together
—instead, her energies were consumed in trying to get her husband recalled, and his were spent in…” He raised his eyebrows at Maia, but Maia had another question.

“What did he
do
? He would never talk about it, and no one at Edonomee had the least idea.” He’d heard Kevo and Pelchara speculating more than once, but the very wildness of their stories—and the freedom with which they attributed to Setheris the most appalling and extravagant of vices—marked them as make-believe.

“Ah,” said Pashavar, and looked at Lanthevel. “You had the story from Chavar, Lanthevel, and he had it direct from Varenechibel.”

“Yes,” said Lanthevel. “Osmer Nelar made some attempt to persuade Varenechibel against Chavar—which we could have told him was doomed from the outset. But Osmer Nelar said
something
which Varenechibel construed as an attempt to exert undue influence on the emperor.”

“Treason,” Maia said, his mouth dry from more than just too much wine. Setheris had been exceptionally thorough in teaching Maia about the different kinds of treason—exceptionally thorough and exceptionally vicious.

“Yes,” said Pashavar. “And your next question, Serenity, is why Osmer Nelar’s head still graces the top of his neck.”

“Are you still outraged about that?” Lanthevel said, and Pashavar brought his fist down on the table, rattling the dishes and making Maia and Merrem Orthemo jump.

“The emperor is not above the law,” Pashavar said, glaring at Lanthevel with his ears dangerously flattened. “The emperor
is
the law. It sets the vilest kind of precedent for the emperor to ignore due process in that way.”

“We do not understand,” Maia said as humbly as he could.

“Osmer Nelar was never formally charged with treason—or with anything else,” said Captain Orthema. “He was confined in the Esthoramire at the emperor’s command for some three or four months and then relegated to Edonomee, as Your Serenity well knows. It was much the same with Arbelan Zhasan and with the Viscount Ulzhavel and many others.”

“My dear Orthema,” said Lanthevel, “are you actually offering a
criticism
of the late emperor?”

“No,” Orthema said without the slightest hint of offense at the baiting. “Merely stating a fact which Edrehasivar knows to be true.”

“Yes,” said Maia. “Did the Viscount Ulzhavel die in banishment? For we do not recognize the name.”

“He despaired,” said Lanthevel “and killed himself.”

“Not the revethvoran?” Maia said, alerted by Lanthevel’s phrasing.

“No, for that would have required Varenechibel’s command, or at least his permission, and Ulzhavel did not believe he would be granted even that.”

“Ulzhavel was unstable,” Pashavar said. “He got it from his mother’s line.
But.
That does not change the fact that he and many of Varenechibel’s other enemies were treated in a way we most heartily condemn.”