The Goblin Emperor (42 page)

“It’s not as heavy as it looks,” Mer Halezh said. “You’ll see in a minute.”

At first, Maia could not identify the noise coming from beneath the model, for it had no place in the Verven’theileian, no place in the life of an emperor. It was the whistle of a teakettle coming to the boil.

Merrem Halezho said, triumph snaking out around the corners of her mouth, “We are ready, Serenity.”

“Then, please,” Maia said, and hoped he did not sound as pompous as he felt he must, “show us your bridge.”

Merrem Halezho did something beneath the model, and the whistling stopped. They waited—and even Pashavar seemed to be holding his breath—and then with a slow, jerky movement, two of the bridge’s claws released their grasp and folded back. The rest followed, pair by pair, and then the spars of the bridge lifted like wings and pulled back, one pair at a time, starting in the middle. Maia’s chest felt full of amazement, like a great glowing ball he could barely breathe around.

“The process can be halted at any point,” Dachensol Polchina said, as if he did not know that emperor, Corazhas, secretaries, and all were struck dumb with wonder. “But in case of storms or floods, the bridge can be pulled back onto the banks, as you see. And thus any amount of river traffic can be accommodated.”

It did not happen swiftly or quietly, but as Dachensol Polchina had said, the bridge pulled back almost entirely into its towers.

“It
is
a tangrisha,” Maia said, and then blushed painfully.

“The tangrisha was one of our inspirations,” Mer Halezh said kindly, “though we also watched a great many spiders.”

“But if it is light enough to do that,” said Lord Deshehar, “how much weight of traffic can it bear?”

The question was like a pebble starting a rockslide. Questions poured forth from the Corazhas, a tumult that enveloped Dachensol Polchina and Mer Halezh, though both of them maintained their composure and their courtesy, which was more than Maia thought he could have done himself.

He leaned closer to Merrem Halezho and said, “Can you make it extend again?”

“Of course, Serenity,” she said, and adjusted something beneath the pasture. Maia watched as the two ends of the bridge reached slowly and yearningly for each other, knowing he was as wide-eyed and entranced as a child listening to a wonder-tale and in that moment not caring. The bridge was more marvelous than any amount of imperial dignity was worth. He watched especially closely as the claws clasped again, seeing the jointed spurs curl around each other into an unbreakable hold. The dappled horses could draw the wagon safely across this bridge; the cowherd and his flute could drive the black-and-white cows back to the barn that waited beyond the houses.

He looked up finally. The Corazhas still surrounded Dachensol Polchina and Mer Halezh, but Lord Pashavar had withdrawn—no more than a few steps, but distinctly putting himself outside the melée.

Maia circled the table to approach him. “You still disapprove, Lord Pashavar?”

“It is a toy,” Pashavar said, angry and contemptuous and perhaps, behind that, a little afraid. “It will waste money and time and no doubt lives—have you considered that, Serenity? The men who will die building this cloud-castle of yours? And in the end, the Istandaärtha will remain unbridged, because it is unbridgeable, and it is naught but a wonder-tale to imagine otherwise.”

Maia flinched a little, both at the twisted echo of his own thoughts and at what amounted to an accusation of murder, but he said steadily, “Our grandfathers must once have said the same thing about airships. But they are now commonplace, and neither our government nor our economy could function without them.”

“A poor choice of analogy,
Edrehasivar,
” Pashavar said with a sparking glance.

But Maia was ready for that gambit. “No,” he said, “for the wreck that caused our father’s death was not an accident. The blame does not lie with the
Wisdom of Choharo,
but with the person who made her explode.” Seeing Pashavar was about to argue, he added, “That person could just as easily have sabotaged the axle of a traveling coach. Or the girth of a saddle.”

“None of this means this foolish bridge can possibly be built,” Pashavar said, his ears flicking almost petulantly.

“We trust the judgment of the Clocksmiths’ Guild. In the end, that is the question on which any decision must be based, for we do not have the knowledge to judge the design ourself—and neither do you.” He resisted the urge to use the informal
thou,
even though he wanted to signal how exasperated he was with Pashavar’s obstinacy. No amount of obstinacy made Pashavar deserving of the insult.

“But
should
we trust the Clocksmiths’ judgment?” Pashavar said, using the plural “we” and gesturing widely. “If the advances necessary to make this bridge more than a cunning toy have truly happened, should the universities not be the ones making the demonstration?”

Maia looked across the room at Lord Isthanar, who had also withdrawn from the excited—and more than slightly tempestuous—discussion around the clocksmiths. He had a dour expression on his face, as closed as a miser’s strongbox.

“We think that is an excellent question, Lord Pashavar,” Maia said, “but we would not ask it of the
clocksmiths.
”

Pashavar caught his meaning, and from the scowl on his face, it gave him a good deal to think about. Perhaps it would divide the force of his resistance.

Maia returned to the model and asked Merrem Halezho to make the bridge work one more time.

PART FOUR

Winternight

27

The Great Avar Arrives

The Great Avar of Barizhan arrived at the Untheileneise Court at noon of a brutally cold day that was as bright as it was brief. Forewarned by a courier from Uvesho, where the Avar and his train had spent the night, the emperor was waiting at the great formal entrance to the palace, which he had never seen before. As each leaf of the doors took four men to swing open, it was not much used.

The Avar of Avarsin did not travel by airship; he did not, Ambassador Gormened explained, feel it consonant with the dignity of a great ruler to go bobbing about in the air like a child’s balloon. He was making the journey—the first time he had left his own dominions in fifty years or more—by coach.

The first outriders reached the Square of the Empress Parmeno nearly an hour and a half in advance of the Avar. Although they could not be formally welcomed or admitted to the palace before their ruler, Maia had servants take hot tea to them, and then to each successive wave as it arrived. Servants, baggage, a full sixteen-man eshpekh of the Hezhethoreise Guard, and then finally, a single man on a horse, who rode directly to the sentries before the doors of the Untheileneise Court and announced the arrival of the Great Avar.

By this time, a significant crowd of citizens had gathered despite the cold, and they cheered as the great doors were swung open. They cheered again when Maia came out. He was startled and for a moment alarmed, but Kiru said, just loudly enough for him to hear her, “They would be pleased if you acknowledged them,” and he realized that, of course, many of them were probably out here freezing for the chance to see their emperor in person. He raised both hands, palms out, and the cheering, unbelievably, redoubled. Before he had to figure out what he ought to do next, there was a tremendous clatter of hooves and the entrance into Parmeno Square of the Avar’s traveling coach. It was a ponderous monstrosity, painted red and gilded like a samovar, with tremendous staring eyes carved beneath the coachman’s seat, and a mouth like a bullfrog’s cunningly made between them. More carving along the sides indicated elbows and haunches, and there was a spiked crest along the top and down the oddly curved back. The coach was drawn by ten black horses with red and gold enameled harness, perfectly matching the coachman and footmen, pure-blooded goblins in red and gold livery.

The footmen leaped down almost before the coach had stopped moving. They swept a bow to Maia and his entourage and then became very busy setting blocks before the coach wheels and unfolding the steps built into the lower panel of the door. The Hezhethora advanced to create an aisle, eight men on each side, and their captain mounted halfway up the palace steps and removed his fabulous snarling-faced helmet, tucking it beneath his arm like an extra head. The footmen glanced to see that he was in place, glanced at each other, and one opened the door of the coach while the other stood ready to assist the Avar. All without a syllable being spoken.

One of the ten black horses stamped a foot.

Maru Sevraseched, the Avar of Avarsin of Barizhan, emerged from the coach.

It took all Maia’s willpower not to let his jaw sag perceptibly. The Great Avar was aptly styled; Maia’s first thought was amazement that that vast coach had been big enough to hold him. He was six and a half feet tall, if not more, and mountainously fat. His skin was jet black, his protuberant eyes lurid orange. His hair, white-streaked with age but very thick, was caught in a soldier’s topknot, with braids, brightly ribboned, accenting rather than containing the hip-length mass. His mustache was equally luxuriant, hanging in thick braids well below his jaw. In contrast to his beautifully liveried servants and soldiers, he was dressed very simply in a vast blue robe, and although he wore fire opals in his ears, he had no other jewelry.

Maia watched in mingled awe and dismay as the Avar came down the steps, realizing that if he should lose his balance, there was no way the footman, less than half his master’s size, would be able to save him. But, although the Avar went slowly, he was perfectly steady. Once on the ground, he seemed to become impossibly larger, for he towered over even the soldiers of the Hezhethoreise Guard.

The crowd had gone completely silent, as if the Avar were a man-eating ogre like those said to live in the mountains above Ezho. But after one comprehensive look around the square, he waved amiably and set off at a rolling, ground-eating stride along the aisle made by his soldiers. Behind him, the coach began disgorging more liveried servants—his edocharei and secretaries and whatever else the Great Avar felt necessary to his comfort while traveling.

Maia was cravenly grateful that it was Gormened’s job to step forward and receive the double handclap on the shoulders that was the affectionate greeting between goblin men. There was a quick, low-voiced exchange in Barizhin, and then Gormened stepped back and said loudly in Ethuverazhin, “The Great Avar of Barizhan greets the Emperor of the Ethuveraz and thanks him for his hospitality this Winternight.”

The crowd recognized their cue and cheered enthusiastically; the Great Avar heaved his bulk up the last of the steps, and Maia, tilting his head back, was face-to-face with his grandfather. Properly, Maia knew, he ought to give some sort of speech, but looking into his grandfather’s round orange eyes, he could not believe the Avar would be impressed if he tried—or even if he succeeded. Therefore, he said only, “We welcome you. Please, come inside where it is warmer.”

The Avar stared at him a moment longer, unblinking and unreadable, and then his laughter boomed across Parmeno Square. “Perhaps you are more a goblin than you look!” He clouted Maia hard, though not actually painfully, on both shoulders, and gestured to his soldiers and servants without bothering to turn around. “We agree—let’s go in!”

Csevet had very carefully shielded Maia from the discussions, decisions, and feuds over where and in what style to house the Avar; Maia had caught unconnected, ragged fragments of debate here and there—enough to know that there was a vast and bitter war which he was not being allowed to see. All His Serenity had been informed of was the outcome: the Avar had been granted the rooms known as the Archduke Ermezhis’s Suite. The suite was in a currently unfashionable quarter of the palace, and thus unoccupied, and, due to the circumstance that the Archduke Ermezhis had contracted a wasting fever in early childhood and had been an invalid all the rest of his life, it was one of the few suites in the Untheileneise Court which could be evenly and adequately heated for an elderly goblin. The Great Avar declared himself satisfied after a cursory glance around, but his edocharei immediately began a silent and thorough investigation. Maia knew it was Csevet who would hear their opinion; he could only hope it would be favorable.

The next item on the agenda was a reception luncheon in the Ambassador’s
dav,
with all the most respectable goblins in Cetho and all the elvish courtiers who were willing to attend. That night, there would be a reception ball in the Untheileian, to which the entire court would come whether they approved of the Avar’s visit or not. After that, the days were arranged in an endless rotation of receptions, performances, galas, and celebrations until the Avar departed again. If Maia wished to say anything private to his grandfather—insofar as the word had any meaning at all in his life—it would have to be now.

He had thought, imagining this meeting, that he would have too many questions to be able to choose, but he found that there was only one: “Why did you not answer her letters?”

All of the Barizheisei within earshot froze for a moment; the Avar, who was inspecting the view from the sitting room windows, stiffened perceptibly, but when he turned around, his face was sad. “It seemed better. She was not ours. We could not help her. What else was there to say?”

Goblin and elvish law were the same on this point: a woman belonged to her husband’s family. Interference from her own kin was, at best, a matter for the farcical novels of Budarezh and Omdar—a light in which no man with any pride wished to be seen. And if that was all the Avar had had to offer his daughter, then he was right. There was nothing to say.

“The ambassador is waiting for us,” Maia said. “We had best go.”

28

A Letter from Mer Celehar

Apparently, when left to their own devices, goblins liked to have meals that lasted for half a day, one course of tiny, beautiful foods after another. They also disdained the business of seating all the guests around a table and making them stay there, preferring to set the courses out on small tables where one could sit if one chose, but one could also simply wander the room. It unnerved Maia, because he couldn’t tell how to be polite.