The Goblin Emperor (13 page)

“Serenity,” Csevet said, setting down the papers as carefully as if they were spun of glass. “It is true that we knew Lord Chavar would approve of any suggestion that would make the investigation larger and more…” He hesitated while Maia silently willed him to be candid, and finally Csevet said, “More ostentatious. But we did not expect him to become quite so
enamored
of the idea. We wonder if our notion has dovetailed with one of the Lord Chancellor’s other enthusiasms. We know that he is at variance with the Witness for the Judiciate. Perhaps he sees a way in which he can turn this investigation to his advantage.”

“Perhaps,” said Maia. “Do you think the investigation will succeed?”

“We know the Witnesses will do their best. And we know that Lord Chavar is entirely sincere in his desire to see the murderer caught.”

“Yes,” Maia agreed dismally.

“Serenity?”

Maia didn’t know how to articulate his concerns—nor was he even certain that they were anything more than pique at being so deftly excluded—and he’d caused Csevet more than enough bother for one day. He shook his head, and was going to ask what horrible thing he had to face next, when Csevet said, watching him closely, “We admit, we could wish that Lord Chavar were not focused so exclusively on
judicial
Witnesses.”

“What do you mean?”

“As we are sure Your Serenity knows,” Csevet said, even though he had to know Maia didn’t, “there have always been two classes of Witnesses, the judicial and the clerical. It has become unfashionable to call clerical Witnesses, just as it has become unfashionable to believe that the gods might grant extraordinary powers to them.”

“So you are suggesting we consult a clerical Witness for the Dead? But how are we to find such a person?”
Without alerting Chavar,
he did not add.

“Actually,” Csevet said, and cleared his throat, “there is a clerical Witness for the Dead, an unbeneficed prelate of Ulis as it happens, here in the Untheileneise Court.”

“How comes he here?” asked Maia

“We do not know his story,” Csevet said. “We know only that he abdicated his prelacy and traveled to the court to live.”

Maia could feel the missing information in what Csevet had said and prodded for it: “Why here?”

“The charity of his kinswoman,” Csevet said with marked reluctance. “The widow empress.”

10

The Witness for the Dead

With more relief than compunction, Maia instructed Csevet to inform Setheris that he would have to wait for the next day to have his audience. He spent most of the day dealing with items of business that had been unresolved at the time of his father’s death. They were many and tedious, and each seemed to require a suffocating amount of explanation. It was late in the afternoon before he could grant an audience to the Witness for the Dead.

He had managed to divest himself of the secretaries who had rushed in and out like swarming bees all day. The only people in the fading winter sunlight of the Michen’theileian were the emperor, his nohecharei, his secretary, and Thara Celehar.

He was younger than Maia had expected, no more than ten years older than his imperial patroness. But Maia had never seen a man who looked so ill and tired. He was slight-boned—in that way like Csoru—but with so little flesh over his bones that Maia could see every separate knob of his wrists. His eyes, in dark hollows of sleeplessness, were vivid blue; he had cut off the long braid his prelate’s rank had entitled him to, and his fine milk-white curls were barely jaw length. He did not wear prelate’s robes, being dressed in unexceptionable mourning. Maia noted the worn patches at the cuffs of the jacket and the turned-up cuffs of the trousers and surmised that the limits of the widow empress’s charity were very straitly defined.

“Serenity,” Celehar murmured, bowing. His voice was rough, gravelly, strangely at odds with his fastidious and respectable appearance.

“We hope that you were told why we wished to speak to you,” Maia said tentatively, for there was something in Celehar’s gaze that made him wary.

“Serenity,” Celehar said, bowing again.

“Yes or no, Mer Celehar.”

“Yes, Serenity.”

Maia waited. Celehar did not speak. “And?”

Celehar seemed only wearily perplexed.

Maia said, “Will you act as our private Witness for the Dead?”

“Beg pardon, Serenity,” Celehar said, bowing. “We were not aware that we had a choice in the matter.”

The words hovered on the brink of insolence, as Maia saw reflected in Dazhis and Telimezh’s bristling and the very deliberate way Csevet set down his pen, but the tone held nothing but exhaustion.

He said gently, “Mer Celehar, you are free to decline.”

He thought later that Celehar would have been less surprised if Maia had ordered Telimezh to run him through. For a moment, his eyes were shocked wide. Then the shutters of a well-bred man flipped back into place, and he was regarding Maia with nothing more showing than weary bemusement. “Your Serenity is most kind. We thank you.”

“You may thank us by giving us your answer, Mer Celehar.”

“Serenity,” Celehar said with a deep bow that Maia suspected was more to hide his face than to show respect. “We will be honored to witness for your dead.”

“Thank you.” Maia waited until Celehar was standing straight again, then said, “We know nothing of the workings of your Witnessing. Tell us what you need.”

“Serenity.” Celehar hesitated. “We need … we need to see and touch the bodies. And it helps if one whose living blood calls to theirs can be present.”

Maia understood Celehar’s hesitation; he hesitated himself. But if he did not grieve for his father, yet he was horrified at the cruelty and injustice of his death, and fearful of what the murderer—or murderers—might do next if not apprehended. He said, “We will accompany you. But we must go now. The funeral is to begin at sundown.”

“Serenity, we assure you,” Celehar said, with the faintest lift of wryness in his voice, “we had no other plans.”

Predictably, the nohecharei objected. Maia smiled at them and said, “We pity you that so much of your post lies in trying to prevent us from doing what we must.” Beshelar would have had an apoplexy; Telimezh and Dazhis subsided in abashed confusion. Cala, he thought, would not have tried to talk him out of it in the first place.

There was less than two hours before the funeral began, and the Untheileneise’meire was clustered with clerics: black robes and green robes, brown and gray and the deep marigold robes of the devouts of Anmura. Five clerics of Ulis, black-robed and black-veiled, though not masked, bowed as they passed, their arms incongruously full of color as they moved the floral offerings to make way for the coffin, which would remain lying in state, guarded and prayed over by the canons of the Untheileneise’meire, until the sarcophagus was built around it. Varenechibel’s four nohecharei had already been cremated; their remains, each in its own gold-inlaid jar, were set in holders at the four corners of the coffin, his First Nohecharei at his head (soldier to the right, maza to the left) and his Second Nohecharei at his feet (maza to the right, soldier to the left) They defended the emperor in death as they had defended him in life—from everything until the thing, the
incendiary device,
that had killed them all.

The bodies of the Emperor Varenechibel IV and his three eldest sons were currently lying directly beneath the dome of the Untheileneise’meire. In closed coffins. That aspect of the crash of the
wisdom of Choharo
had not forced itself on Maia’s attention before; he felt now both stupid and sick. He wanted, badly, to look away—even to leave. But it was clear that Celehar was encountering some opposition from the senior canon, and it only seemed to be getting worse. Maia had let Telimezh and Dazhis and Csevet herd him subtly into a pocket of clear space, but now he stepped forward (unhappily amused by the way Celehar and the canon both involuntarily stepped back) and said, “Mer Celehar? Is there a difficulty?”

Celehar bowed his head slightly and said, “Serenity, Canon Orseva is explaining to us that a number of Witnesses for the Dead have already been allowed to examine the bodies at the cost of a significant delay to the funeral preparations. Canon Orseva fears that there is not time for another examination and does not see what good it can do.”

Canon Orseva did not look entirely happy at this summation of his words, but he did not repudiate any of it. In truth, Maia wasn’t sure what good it would do, either; he was only certain that he could not leave the matter blindly in Chavar’s hands.

While he was still trying to find some compromise between a blunt truth and a political lie, Csevet cleared his throat and announced in an unexpectedly carrying voice, “The emperor would like a few minutes alone with the bodies of his family.”

Within moments, miraculously, the Untheileneise’meire was empty save for one junior canon, her ears flat with unhappy obstinacy, who would not leave her post of vigil-keeper over the bodies.

“Csevet!” Maia said in a shocked whisper.

Csevet smiled at him, unrepentant. “You
are
emperor, Serenity. It is not Canon Orseva’s place to dictate to you.”

Celehar said, “Canon Thorchelezhen does not object to helping us,” and Maia managed to smile at the junior canon. It was not a very good smile, and Celehar, surprising him with his understanding, said, “You don’t have to look, Serenity. You can stay where you are.”

And truly Maia did not wish to look, nor go any closer to those four lacquered black coffins. But something—not desire, but something else, duty or guilt—drove him forward. When Celehar and the canon lifted the lid off Varenechibel’s coffin, Maia was standing beside them.

The votaries of Ulis who had laid out the body had done their best, straightening the limbs, muffling the worst brokennesses in linen and silk. But the only thing they had been able to do for the dead emperor’s seared and twisted features was to veil the head in white lace. Celehar gently lifted the veil, and Maia had to turn away.

Celehar began to say the prayer of compassion for the dead in his rasping, broken voice, and Maia stood looking at the white columns and struggled with the pity and disgust and hatred and sorrow in his heart, all for Varenechibel, his father.

Presently, Celehar fell silent. Maia did not turn around; he did not want to watch the communion between the dead and the Witness, whatever it might consist of. After a while, he heard Celehar and the canon replacing the lid of the coffin and said, still not turning, “Do you need to see the … the others?”

“Serenity,” Celehar said apologetically. “It would help.”

“Very well,” Maia said, although he longed to order Celehar to leave the bodies, leave the Untheileneise’meire, allow him to leave as well. “Let us continue.”

He stayed where he was, not turning around, while Celehar and the canon repeated their grisly ritual three more times. He noticed that the kindness and patience in Celehar’s ugly voice never faltered, that he said the prayer of compassion for the fourth time with the same focused attention he had said it the first. He had not renounced his prelacy for lack of belief or calling, then. Maia knew he would not ask after the real reason; he did not have the right. But he could not help wondering what had happened.

In time, Celehar said, “Serenity, we have finished.”

Maia turned. The Witness for the Dead was standing quietly among the coffins; he looked, at least, no worse than he had in the Michen’theileian. “What do you do now?” Maia asked him.

“Serenity. Your dead do not have answers. They died in fear and confusion and will not find clarity until Ulis grants it to them. But there are other places to look for answers. There are other dead.”

“The graves at the Ulimeire,” Maia said.

“Serenity. If it does not displease you, we will begin our searching there tomorrow.”

“It pleases us, Mer Celehar. And we thank you.”

“Serenity,” Celehar said, bowing, his voice so neutral that it was itself a judgment. He came out from between the coffins. He was several inches shorter than Maia, but seemed not in the slightest discomposed by having to tilt his head back to look his emperor in the face. “Do not thank us when you know not what we will find.”

“It matters not what you find. We thank you for seeking the truth, and we thank you for doing this thing although you did not wish to.”

“We have found truth before, Serenity, and it profits us not. We would give much to have some truths remain lost, and we do not think you will find this truth to be any different.”

“It matters not,” Maia said again. “We do not ask this truth for ourself. We ask it for…” He hesitated, uncertain. He did not want the truth on his father’s behalf, or on his half brothers’. Finally, he said slowly, “We ask it for those who died because they were near our father. We ask it for those who are afraid, now, because their emperor fell from the sky and lay burning in a field. We ask it for those who did not want their emperor murdered. For without the truth, how can they trust that their emperor will not be murdered again?”

He could not read Celehar’s expression. The Witness for the Dead bowed, murmuring, “Serenity,” and then stepped past him and walked out of the Untheileneise’meire.

Maia stood, staring at the coffins, at the columns and tombs and up at the oculus at the apex of the dome, his head thick with half-understood emotions, his throat tight with words he could not speak, until his nohecharei advanced to remind him that the funeral was supposed to begin at sundown, and there was very little time left.

11

The Funeral and the Wake

He could not help remembering, as the sun sank into a bank of violent red clouds in the western sky, that the only time he had ever seen his father in life had been at his mother’s funeral. And he could not help remembering the disrespect the emperor had chosen to show his fourth empress, that single black stole against the imperial white.

It would be no more than justice were he to slight his father as his father had slighted his mother. Maia toyed vengefully with this fantasy, then acknowledged with a sigh that it was not in him to carry it through. He was too aware of the distress it would cause the court, the surviving family, his own household. He remembered too vividly his own distress and the deeper bitterness it had given a grief already deep enough to drown in.