The Goblin Emperor (36 page)

“Csevet, stop!” Maia stared at him. “Why on earth would you think we doubted you?”

“Not that, Serenity, but we came to you from the Lord Chancellor and we know … we know that when you chose us as your secretary, you chose between us and Osmer Nelar. We do not wish you to feel that you are stuck with—”

“We do not,” Maia said firmly. “We could not ask for a better secretary, and it has never once occurred to us to doubt your loyalty. Nor do we do so now.” He managed a ragged quirk of a smile. “Were you part of Lord Chavar’s plot, it would have been much better executed.”

He saw the weight fall off Csevet’s shoulders, and Csevet’s returning smile was better than his own. “Then, Serenity, there is one other personal matter which we think you might deal with this morning.”

“Oh?” Maia said.

“The children, Serenity. Prince Idra and his sisters. They have been installed in the Alcethmeret’s nursery as you instructed, but the maid assigned to them says they are very fearful and anxious. We think it might help them greatly if you were to speak to them.”

“And what are we to say?” Maia asked dismally. “Never speak of your mother the traitor again?”

Csevet said, “They understand what their mother has done, Serenity. Even Ino, the youngest. We think they would be calmer if they knew you did not blame
them.
”

“But of course we do not,” Maia said.

“Then that is what you should say.”

“But we cannot—Csevet, we know nothing of children!”

“Serenity,” Csevet said, “they have no one else.”

The truth of it drove Maia to the Alcethmeret’s nursery, which was in a side wing off the ground floor with its own set of vast grilles. Empresses, Maia had noticed, might live where they liked in the Untheileneise Court—neither Csoru nor Arbelan had ever lived in the Alcethmeret, nor had Varenechibel’s second wife, the Empress Leshan—but an emperor’s heirs were a different matter.
Perhaps I should have had Idra here from the start,
he thought, but he knew he could not have done it.

There were a pair of guardsmen at the grilles and another at the door to the nursery sitting room. Maia was relieved to see that no one was taking any chances with the children’s safety. One of the guards opened the door and announced, “His Imperial Serenity, Edrehasivar the Seventh.”

Yes, because that will make frightened children feel
much
safer,
Maia thought—but he could not rebuke the guard merely for doing the correct thing. He entered the nursery, Cala preceding him and Beshelar following, and found Sheveän’s children had risen to meet him, each of the girls clutching one of their brother’s hands. Idra bowed, and Ino and Mireän curtsied, all without releasing each other. All three of them were red-eyed and rather blotchy. The Alcethmeret was full of crying people today.

“Please sit down,” Maia said, feeling gawky and ill-bred and dark as stormclouds. He sat down himself, in a shabby armchair, and waited until the children were seated again on the sofa. He took a deep breath, grateful that Beshelar had closed the door, and dropped formality. “My name is Maia. I hope that you will feel you can call me by it.”

The little girls’ eyes widened. Idra bit his lower lip, then said carefully, “Thank you, Maia.”

He couldn’t reckon how long it had been since anyone had called him by his own name—and there had been only Setheris anyway, since Chenelo’s death. The familiar-first felt strange and stiff to his tongue and teeth and lips. “I am very sorry about what has happened.”

“It isn’t your fault!” Idra flared up, immediately outraged, and Maia had to blink hard to keep his composure.

“Your mother would not agree,” he pointed out, “and we—I do not know what she may have said about me.”

Idra took his meaning. “She did not speak of you to us,” he said—plural, not formal. “We know only that you are our half uncle, the emperor.”

Maia forgot himself far enough to make a face. “It sounds so stuffy,” he said apologetically, and was startled and pleased when Ino giggled, though she immediately hid her face against her brother’s arm. “And I don’t feel I can properly be your uncle; I’m only four years older. Will you call me cousin, instead?”

“If you wish it,” Idra said a little doubtfully.

“I do,” Maia said.

“Cousin Maia,” said Mireän, “what’s going to happen to Mama?”

Maia flinched, then told the truth: “I don’t know, Mireän. I do not wish to have her executed, but I do not know if she can be trusted.”

“Even if…” Idra swallowed hard. “She would have to be imprisoned, wouldn’t she?”

“Yes,” Maia said. “And she would be forbidden to speak or write to you.”

“I am your heir,” Idra said somberly.

“Yes.”

“What about Ino and me?” Mireän asked. “We aren’t your heirs.”

Maia met her eyes, although it wasn’t easy. “Mer Aisava, our secretary, tells us—I beg your pardon. Mer Aisava tells me that you understand what your mother was trying to do.”

“She was trying to make Idra be emperor,” Ino said. “But Idra doesn’t want to!”

“I know,” Maia said.

“And she was going to have you sent away,” Mireän said. “Like you’re going to do to her.”

“Like Papa and Grandpapa got sent away,” Ino said, her eyes filling with tears. “So they can’t come back.”

Maia looked at Idra, who said simply, “It was wrong,” before he got out his handkerchief and turned to tend to his younger sister.

“Because
you’re
emperor,” Mireän said. “We saw you get crowned and everything. And I still don’t understand how Idra could be emperor if you weren’t dead.”

“I did
tell
thee, Miree,” Idra said, perhaps a fraction too quickly. “Mama wished Cousin Maia to abdicate.”

“Yes, but I don’t—” Mireän began, having her full share of the Drazhadeise stubbornness, then encountered a glare from her brother and subsided.

As he could not honestly reassure Mireän, and yet had no actual proof that Sheveän would have murdered him, Maia thought he would do better to leave that ugly question alone. They would have to come to terms with it on their own. He said, “I wished you to know that I do not blame any of you. I know that you must be uncomfortable and unhappy, and I am sorry for that. Idra, is there anything I can do?”

He trusted Idra not to make impossible demands, and Idra, after careful thought, said, “Might we have some of our own household about us? Not the armsmen, we understand that perfectly, but my tutor and the girls’ nursery maid?”

“Oh, please, Cousin Maia,” Mireän said, “Suler doesn’t dislike you or
anything,
” as Ino said with perfect conviction, “Suler wouldn’t do anything wrong.” Maia noticed that the little girls clearly loved their maid in a way they did not love their mother. But of course it was their maid who took care of them; Sheveän was not Chenelo, Barizheise and alone, to tend her children herself.

“I will see what I can do,” he said, and got up, uncomfortably aware of the duties that were undoubtedly mounting up on the other side of the nursery grilles.

“Thank you, Cousin Maia,” Idra said, with Ino and Mireän a soft chorus behind him. Idra bowed and the girls curtsied, and Maia left them still clinging to each other in the cold and shabby nursery of the Alcethmeret.

24

The Revethvoran of Dazhis Athmaza

Maia’s only satisfaction on that long, horrible day was the fact that neither Csevet nor Lieutenant Echana, the officer of the extra cohort of the Untheileneise Guard now assigned to the Alcethmeret, could find any objections to either Leilis Athmaza or Suler Zhavanin. Maia interviewed both the tutor and the nursery maid briefly. Leilis Athmaza was little and bright-eyed and quick-moving; he put Maia in mind of a ferret. He was clearly fond of his pupil, very anxious to know that Idra was all right, and Maia remembered that it had been Leilis Athmaza who had instructed Idra in the difference between a policy that the Lord Chancellor disliked and a policy that was bad. Suler Zhavanin was even easier; she was twenty or so, goblin-dark, scared nearly speechless, but when he told her Mireän and Ino had asked for her, she said at once, “Please, Serenity, let me go to them. Even if only for a few days, until you find someone better.”

“We can think of no one better than someone who cares about them and whom they trust. Thank you, Min Zhavanin.”

Her smile was as lovely as it was unexpected, and Maia treasured the memory of it against Cala’s bloodshot eyes and increasing pallor, as if he were bleeding slowly to death from an invisible wound; against an incoherent letter from Csoru Zhasanai that intemperately mingled self-exculpation with condemnation of Maia’s treatment of Sheveän; against a painful interview with Nurevis Chavar, all former friendliness gone; against Telimezh’s miserable resolution when he begged an audience late that evening to tell Maia that he was resigning.

“Resigning?” Maia said, his first thought being that he had to have misheard.

“We will leave the court,” Telimezh assured him, as if that were a matter of concern. “We do not wish you to be encumbered with us, Serenity.”

“Encumbered?” Maia said, as witless as an echo. “Telimezh, please, we do not understand you.”

“We failed you, Serenity,” Telimezh said with stony unhappiness.

“There was nothing you could have done. We have been told the cantrip was a powerful one.”

“We did not see Dazhis Athmaza’s treachery. We failed you.”

Maia tried exhaustedly to think of a way to handle this new problem. He could see that Telimezh’s guilt was all too real; he could even, doubtfully, grant that there might be some justification for it, although still not very much. But … “We do not wish you to leave.”

“Serenity?” Telimezh seemed astounded.

“You have done nothing to make us doubt you,” Maia said. “And … we will understand if you no longer wish to be our nohecharis, but we have been most grateful for your service and would wish it to continue.”

Telimezh looked as if he’d been hit over the head with a brick. Maia bit the inside of his lower lip to keep from giggling; it was exhaustion and nerves more than humor anyway. “Please,” he said, “think on it at least overnight. We would be remiss if we accepted any decision you made today.”

It took Telimezh a moment, but he managed to bow and say, “Serenity,” and leave the room without walking into the door, although that was at least partly because Beshelar nudged him away from it.

“We don’t think he’ll resign, Serenity,” Cala said after he’d closed the door of the Tortoise Room.

“Not now that he knows you wish him to stay,” Beshelar said.

“Oh,” Maia said. “Should we not have … we did not mean to keep him from resigning if it is truly what he wishes.”

“You did not, and it is not,” Beshelar said. “Telimezh’s heart would always be here.”

“Oh,” Maia said again, since he was not sure if
good
or
bad
would be a more accurate response.

Csevet, who had politely absented himself during Telimezh’s audience, now returned and said, “Serenity, we have bid the guards close the grilles. There is nothing more that can usefully be done today.”

“And you think we should go to bed.” He was too tired to be angry, all his febrile, furious energy burned away by grief. “We will not argue.”

Beshelar and Cala accompanied him silently up the stairs. Maia felt that he should say something to them, but there was nothing in his head but ashes and nails. His edocharei were equally silent, and he found that he missed Nemer, who was much more inclined to chatter and commentary than either of the other two. He was desperately grateful to retreat behind the hangings of his bed, where he could almost pretend he was alone.

He slept poorly and woke to the information that the Adremaza was awaiting his pleasure in the Tortoise Room. Esha was disapproving, but Maia thought that if the Adremaza had come about Dazhis, he’d much rather see him before trying to eat.

The Adremaza was standing by the window in the Tortoise Room with a young man in a maza’s blue robe every bit as shabby as Cala’s.
Should I have been suspicious of Dazhis,
Maia thought bleakly,
because his robe was new?

They bowed. “Serenity,” said the Adremaza, “we wish to present Kiru Athmaza, whom we hope you will accept as your new nohecharis.”

The young man bowed again, even more deeply, and Maia took stock of him as he straightened. He was quite short and slightly built, with white hair in a long scholar’s braid and pale green eyes. His nose tended toward the aquiline, but his chin was softly rounded, and he … Maia’s gaze skipped down before he could stop it, and then he stared disbelievingly, first at Kiru Athmaza and then at the Adremaza. “Should that not be
nohecharo
?” he asked, and his voice squeaked slightly on the last syllable.

“We told you he would guess,” muttered Kiru Athmaza in a voice that was not even close to deep enough to be a man’s.

“Serenity—” The Adremaza seemed very nearly flustered. “We assure you, Kiru Athmaza is entirely to be trusted.”

“We do not doubt it,” Maia said, trying to recover his poise and knowing he was not successful. “But—”

“Serenity,” Kiru Athmaza broke in, “we were passed over initially, for the old emperor would never have countenanced such a thing. But we have heard of your kindness to Arbelan Drazharan and to the Archduchess Vedero, and we dared to
hope
.”

“And you?” Maia said to the Adremaza.

The Adremaza
was
flustered; there was a pale pink blush in his cheeks and at the tips of his ears. “Serenity, you must understand that to be nohecharis is no trivial matter. First, one must be dachenmaza, and there are few dachenmazei in the whole of the Athmaz’are, even fewer willing to sacrifice their studies. It has always,
always
been the policy of the Athmaz’are that no one may be forced to take up this burden, and…”

He hesitated, and Kiru Athmaza said bluntly, “After losing first the late emperor’s nohecharei and now Dazhis—three dachenmazei in as many months—there’s no one else left.”

“We see,” Maia said. He felt rather ill, and was even more glad the Adremaza had not waited for later in the day.