The Goblin Emperor (9 page)

“He’s certainly never mentioned it before,” Csevet said, very dryly.

“It would scarcely have been a political asset,” Maia said. He meant to sound dry, too, but his voice was merely weary. “Well, let us see what our kinsman wants.”

The letter was brief:

To our most serene imperial kinsman, Edrehasivar VII, greetings.

We extend our deepest condolences on your loss and wish to assure you that Barizhan will not hold you to the trade agreement which we were negotiating with your late father. It is our greatest and most cherished hope that relations between Barizhan and the Ethuveraz will move beyond peace to friendship, and in that hope we sign ourself yours most obediently to command,

Vorzhis Gormened,
Ambassador of the Great Avar to the court of the
Emperor of the Ethuveraz

Maia looked helplessly at Csevet. He could identify the presence of a hidden agenda in those very careful words, but he had not the least idea what it might be.

Csevet, frowning thoughtfully, read the letter over again and said, “We wonder if Ambassador Gormened has the approval of his government for the contents of this letter.”

“There’s hardly been time,” Maia protested.

“Yes,” said Csevet. “We know.”

“Then you think…”

“The Great Avar is well known to reward initiative and audacity—when they succeed. We would suggest, Serenity, that you respond to the ambassador so that his relinquishment of the trade agreement becomes a matter of record.”

Everything the emperor said, as Maia had already learned, was a matter of record.

“Was the trade agreement so disadvantageous?”

“If Gormened thinks that you will be grateful to be released from it, yes,” Csevet said bluntly. “We will query the office of the Witness for Foreigners and request the details.”

“Yes, please do. And tell us how to answer our … kinsman.”

“Serenity,” murmured Csevet, and began a crisp dissection of the ambassador’s letter.

At ten o’clock, Beshelar started up from his chair and said, “Serenity, our seconds are approaching.”

“Oh, thank goodness,” Cala said, and stifled a yawn.

The Second Nohecharei proved to be in many ways indistinguishable from the First. A lieutenant and an athmaza, about the same age as Beshelar and Cala, the one starched and polished, the other shabby and unworldly—although this maza’s robe was of a newer, brighter blue, and his hair held a braid better than Cala’s. But Maia noticed that the new lieutenant, Telimezh, seemed nervous of Beshelar as well as of his emperor, while the maza Dazhis seemed anxious only that Cala should not forget to go to sleep.

“No fear,” Cala said, stifling another yawn. “I may be absentminded, Dazhis, but I’m not made of stone. Serenity.”

He and Beshelar bowed, and Maia dismissed them, quashing a ridiculous impulse to beg them to stay. Beshelar and Cala needed and deserved their rest, and there was no reason to feel like an abandoned child, nor to feel frightened of the Second Nohecharei.

Thou shouldst be pleased to be rid of Beshelar for a while,
he chided himself, and turned back to Csevet.

They dealt with another two letters before a great tumult on the stairs heralded the tardy appearance of the widow empress, Csoru Drazharan.

Thanks to Csevet, Maia had some idea of what to expect and thus was not completely overwhelmed by the vision that posed in the doorway between Telimezh and Dazhis, putting back her veil with deliberation worthy of an actress. The widow empress was a small woman—doll-like as Csevet had called her—with a heart-shaped face and eyes of a remarkable, lush deep blue. She was also no more than three years older than Maia himself.

With the example of Hesero Nelaran as a guide, Maia could see that Csoru was overdressed, flaunting her status as she had in her letters to him. The silver bullion embroidery of her jacket was coming very close to the imperial white, which she only dubiously had the right to wear. And her hair, piled in an elaborate edifice of buns and twining braids, would have looked better without the adornment of glittering black beads, each as big as Maia’s thumbnail, that looked uncomfortably like beetles.

It was also, he discovered, easier to cope with the out-and-out beauty of a woman he already disliked than it was the grace of a woman like Hesero.

He rose unhurriedly to greet his father’s widow, and she made him a small, stiff bow. She did not otherwise acknowledge his rank, and he was heartened to notice both Telimezh and Dazhis Athmaza glowering disapprovingly at her back.

Csoru’s gaze darted around the room and came to rest on Csevet. “Who is this?”

“Our secretary,” Maia said.

“Oh.” She dismissed Csevet from her attention entirely—at which Csevet looked affronted—and stood, staring at Maia with a slight frown of displeasure.

Finally, Maia said, “Csoru Zhasanai,
you
wished to see
us.
”

She said, “We hoped that you would be receptive to advice,” her tone indicating that her hopes had been cruelly disappointed.

“What advice would you give us?”

“We do not think you will listen,” she said with a toss of her head that looked ill on an empress.

He waited a few courteous moments, then said, “As it happens, we have a matter about which we wish to speak to you, for it concerns our honor and our sovereignty.” Csoru looked hopeful, Csevet alarmed. “Namely, merrem, you are not Ethuverazhid Zhasan, and having no child you cannot hope to be. Unless, perchance, there is that afoot which we know not?”

Csevet coughed in a strangled sort of way. Csoru said furiously, “We are the wife of the emperor.”

“You are the
widow
of the emperor. Unless you have conceived his child, that title must pass from you.”

“No,” she said sullenly. “But you have no empress.”

“That does not mean the position is yours for the taking,” Maia said. “Be content, merrem, to style yourself Zhasanai. For such you are. And we are Edrehasivar Zhas and will have that honor from you if you intend to remain at the Untheileneise Court.”

He could see her recalculating her position and her strategy. She bowed her head and said in a softer, meeker voice than any he had yet heard from her, “Edrehasivar Zhas, you must forgive a widow her grief.”

“And we do, so long as it does not lead her to behave in ways embarrassing to either the emperor or the House Drazhada. If you are overset, Csoru Zhasanai, perhaps you should retire to the country for a time. We have many manors which we would be most pleased to grant to your use.”

Her eyes went wide and her ears lowered; she heard the threat, and doubtless the examples of Arbelan Drazharan, Varenechibel’s first wife, and Chenelo Drazharan, his fourth, were present to her mind. “Serenity,” she said, bowing more deeply. “We thank you for your consideration, but we feel it unworthy of a widow empress to give way to her grief.”

“Even so,” Maia said. “We are busy, Csoru Zhasanai. Was there another matter on which you wished to speak to us?”

“No, Serenity,” she said. “We thank you.” She did not flee the room, but she left far less ostentatiously than she had entered. They listened as the sharp, hard sound of her feet on the stairs receded into nothing.

“Csevet,” Maia said thoughtfully, “will you write to Arbelan Drazharan at Cethoree and invite her to attend our coronation?”

“Yes, Serenity,” Csevet said, and added it to his list.

7

The Tomb of the Empress Chenelo

Csevet and Maia spent the rest of the morning and half the afternoon going through the latest batch of correspondence. They agreed that many of the problems, questions, and concerns were better dealt with after the coronation, when there would no longer be the slightest ambiguity in the emperor’s position. There was another letter from Eshevis Tethimar, which Csevet frowned at and muttered, “Encroaching!” loud enough for Maia to hear. There was a letter from Setheris complaining of being denied admittance to the Alcethmeret; Maia thought wearily,
Thou wilt be obliged to deal with him sometime.
But Csevet assured him that he could without impoliteness defer that meeting until after the coronation, and Maia wrote a message to Setheris in his own hand to promise an audience after he was crowned and properly out of seclusion.

Then Csevet sat down to write another round of soothing and uninformative letters to the Corazhas, while Maia, Telimezh and Dazhis in tow, set out to deal with what matters he could.

The first was a full inspection of the Alcethmeret, top to bottom, and introductions to all the staff. Esaran looked incredulous and offended when Maia mentioned the latter, but he set his jaw and insisted.

“The emperor your father,” she began, but he cut her off.

“We want to know who serves us,” he said. Esaran acquiesced, but he knew she was not pleased. It was worth it, though, to learn that the shy little server in the dining room was named Isheian, to know the names of the laundresses and charwomen, the grooms and scullions and gardeners—for the Alcethmeret, Maia learned, had its own garden, separate from the gardens of the Untheileneise Court, where the gardeners grew roses that in the spring and summer would fill the tower with color and scent. Oshet might have been guilty of the impropriety of winking at his emperor. The kitchen master was not nearly so alarming as Maia had imagined; he was a grandfatherly gentleman with a tremendous white mustache. His name was Ebremis, and he questioned Maia closely and respectfully about his likes and dislikes. Maia tried not to explain about the household at Edonomee, which was ruled both by parsimony and by Setheris’s tastes, but he sensed uneasily that Ebremis guessed much of what he did not say.

Beneath the Alcethmeret, he met the girls who sat in the center of the spiderweb of pneumatic tubes that ran throughout the Untheileneise Court, and watched raptly for several minutes as they did their job. Back in the Tortoise Room, remembering Csoru’s flustered page boy, he asked Csevet what the use of a personal messenger meant.

Csevet’s eyebrows went up. “It might mean any of several things, Serenity. Such as the desire for secrecy.”

“Ah. No. The message was from Csoru Zhasanai.”

“Well,” said Csevet, “it indicates the desire to be certain that the message is delivered directly into the hands of the intended recipient. Also, of course, the insistence on an immediate reply. It may also indicate that one feels one’s message to be too important and too urgent to wait.”

“Of course,” said Maia, and Csevet almost grinned before he caught himself.

That night at dinner when Maia smiled at Isheian, she smiled back.

The plates had scarcely been cleared when the Lord Chancellor was announced. He came in like a storm; before Maia could so much as offer him a seat or a glass of liqueur, he had begun to explain, in a hectoring voice and excruciating detail, the rituals surrounding an emperor’s coronation. The fasting, the hours spent in meditation: “The emperor’s daylong meditation takes place in a vigil chapel beneath the palace itself. The Archprelate will take you, and it is traditional for the emperor to choose two close friends to accompany him on the journey to and from the chapel. Since you have no friends at court, you will of course choose your nearest male relatives who are of age. We make those out to be the Marquess Imel, your sister Nemriän’s husband, and Setheris Nelar.”

“We—,” Maia began, but Chavar continued over top of him: “At sundown begin the rituals of coronation itself,” and he was launched on a flood of archaic formulas and significant gestures, leaving Maia without a chance to say that he would under no circumstances allow Setheris Nelar to play a role of any ritual importance whatsoever in the process of his coronation. And Chavar’s smug and patronizing air, his condescension—
of course you have no friends, you ugly hobgoblin
—was enough to make Maia not merely resentful, but actually rebellious.
Chavar is not my cousin,
he thought,
and this is not Edonomee. I can make my decision as it pleases me, and he cannot stop me.
He heard Chavar out in patient silence, without giving any indication that his own plans were already diverging from the Lord Chancellor’s ideas.

When Chavar finally left, Maia turned his attention to the other matter with which he could deal before being crowned Edrehasivar VII; this matter was a personal one, and it took some arguing before Csevet and his nohecharei would let him attend to it. It was not—as Telimezh said earnestly, having found himself somehow saddled with the job of spokesman—that they did not approve of His Serenity’s sentiments, but that as an uncrowned emperor in full mourning, he ought not to be seen wandering the halls.

“We do not wish to wander the halls,” Maia said crossly. “We wish to visit our mother’s tomb, which we have not been able to do since her funeral ten years ago. We personally would find far more shocking an emperor who did
not
visit his mother’s tomb than one who did.”

To his exasperation, Csevet insisted on calling the edocharei in to consult on the matter, but they were an unexpected source of support. Nemer said, “Of
course
Your Serenity should visit the empress’s tomb,” and then retreated under a quelling stare from Avris. But Avris and Esha, in whose rectitude he also detected something of Nemer’s partisanship, said there was no impropriety in it, so long as the emperor agreed to go veiled. “You should not have gone to the Ulimeire unveiled, Serenity,” Esha said sternly. “We have spoken with Atterezh about it already.”

“We will agree to anything,” Maia said, “an it permits us this one thing which we so greatly desire.”

“Serenity,” Csevet murmured, giving way.

Maia had last worn a mourning veil also ten years ago. It had reeked of cedar and been scratchy against his face. The veil Esha produced was as light as a cobweb and smelled only of the sage and lavender that the edocharei used to perfume the emperor’s wardrobes and cupboards. There were bronze pins to hold it, with black enameled heads worked with the Drazhadeise device, and Maia felt strangely peaceful when Avris at last lowered the veil over his face.