The Goblin Emperor (14 page)

Therefore, he stood patiently and allowed his edocharei to encase him in the immobilizing regalia of full imperial mourning, layers of black-on-black brocade oversewn with pearls; silver rings set with strange, dark, clouded jewels; pearls for his ears and neck and wound in the braids of his hair; the Ethuverazhid Mura; and over it all, yards of black veiling that made the opals of the Ethuverazhid Mura as eerie as the moon seen through clouds. Maia looked at himself in the mirror and shivered.

Sometime in the midst of the preparations, his nohecharei had changed shifts, so that when he turned away from the mirror it was Beshelar who was waiting for him, who bowed his head as if he did not want to meet Maia’s eyes and growled, “Your Serenity.”

“Lieutenant,” Maia said, amused at the sudden resurgence of Beshelar’s stiff formality. But Beshelar merely opened the door and stood aside.

Cala was waiting in the outer chamber. He bowed solemnly and said, “Serenity, it is probably best if we go now. The Archprelate suggested … that is, the funeral is already late, and it will look well if you are there first. To pray for … that is, to pray.”

Cala, too, seemed unusually flustered, but this was not the moment to attempt to discover what was wrong. Maia merely said, “Very well,” and returned to the Untheileneise’meire, this time ascending a narrow staircase to the emperor’s balcony, which hung between the pillars like a spider’s egg sac anchored in its web.

He had a moment of vertigo, looking down at the coffins, remembering being a child looking up at the white and distant figure, the emperor. “Serenity?” Cala said anxiously, but Maia waved him away.

He rested his hands on the balustrade and took a deep breath to steady himself; he began to pray, repeating silently the prayer of compassion for the dead he had heard Mer Celehar say that afternoon, trying to say it each time as patiently and sincerely as Celehar had. Compassion was all that he could hope for. He could not pray for love or forgiveness; both were out of reach. He could not forgive his father, and he could not love his brothers whom he had never met. But he could feel compassion for them, as he did for the other victims, and it was that he sought more than anything else: to mourn their deaths rather than holding on to his anger at their lives.

Below him, the courtiers began to file in. He caught several glances up at him and then quickly away, and thought with sudden, inexpressible weariness that he had to reawaken the court as well as the government. He would have to ask someone—Csevet would know—what the court functions were and what the emperor had to do when he attended them. And did he have to order them, or did they somehow take care of themselves?

I was not meant for this,
he thought, his neck and shoulders tensing with the effort of keeping his chin up, and the scholar’s quiet voice said in his mind,
Serenity, the wreck of the
Wisdom of Choharo
was caused by sabotage.

It was a relief when the Archprelate emerged to begin the ceremony, even though Maia was guiltily aware that they were starting late. There was nothing inauspicious about beginning a funeral after sundown, so long as it was before moonrise, but there would be plenty of sticklers in the court who would consider it sloppy and disrespectful. And there could be no doubt that Canon Orseva would let them know who was to blame.

He set himself to listen to the Archprelate’s beautiful voice, grateful that between the veil and the balcony, none of the court would be able to see his face. He found his sisters, Nemriän and Vedero, in the crowd; Arbelan Drazharan and the widow empress (standing at a careful remove from each other); Ciris’s fiancée, Stano Bazhevin, standing awkwardly alone; the Princess of the Untheileneise Court and her children. The little girls were about the age he had been when his mother had died; he looked anxiously but saw nothing more than wide-eyed solemnity behind their veils. He wondered if his brother Nemolis had been a kind father, if his children had been given the chance to love him. Idra was standing very straight and dignified beside his mother; he was Prince of the Untheileneise Court now, and he seemed to feel the responsibility as much as Maia felt his own.

The Drazhada did not look up at him, except once. When the Archprelate began to speak over Nemolis’s coffin, his widow Sheveän turned her head; even through the veil, the hostility in her gaze was nearly enough to make Maia step back. She looked away, dismissing him from her attention, and Maia, his fingers tightening on the balustrade, wondered what had happened. She had not liked him at the oath-taking, but she had not
hated
him.

Compassion, he thought, fixing his eyes on the Archprelate, and sank himself again in the prayer of compassion for the dead. It saved him from thinking.

The wake, which as emperor he had both to open and to close, was held in the Untheileian. He had not been allowed to attend his mother’s wake and so had not known what to expect, but he was still discomfited to discover the laden sideboards and the center of the great hall cleared for dancing. “What must I do?” he hissed in Cala’s ear. “I can’t dance!”

“You need not, Serenity,” Cala said. “You ask the court to dance the dead to peace, and then you may sit or stand or dance as it pleases you.”

“Thank you,” Maia said, although he was not greatly comforted.

He put his veil back before ascending the dais; its obscurity felt now like blindness instead of safety. He spoke as Cala had told him, although the words felt clumsy, stilted, and he could not judge the tone of his own voice, whether he sounded sincere or petulant or bored. The court watched him with glittering, predatory eyes, but when he gestured to the musicians, they formed obediently into couples and traced swirling, sparkling patterns across the floor, patterns too elaborate for Maia to follow.

Thou must learn to dance,
he said to himself, and sank wearily onto the throne. It was not comfortable, but at least it was a seat. Beshelar and Cala took position, one at either side of the throne. He tilted his head back to ask Cala, “May you not sit?”

There was a strangled noise from Beshelar’s direction. Cala said, “Thank you, Serenity, but no. We are well.”

“What if you wished to dance?”

“Serenity,
please,
” Beshelar hissed.

“We are not, strictly speaking, members of Your Serenity’s court,” Cala said. “Were we not your nohecharei, we would not be here to begin with. So it would be the grossest impropriety for us to dance, even were there a lady in the hall who would accept us as partners.”

“Oh,” Maia said, feeling very young and stupid, and Beshelar said, sounding almost relieved, “Serenity, the Lord Chancellor approaches.”

Maia looked and there was the choleric Lord Chancellor heading for the dais, and with him was a young man, short and stocky like Chavar himself, but dressed in what even Maia could tell was the extreme of elegance, and with a brightness about him his father lacked.

They stopped at the foot of the dais. Maia beckoned them closer, resisting the impulse to make Chavar wait.

“Serenity,” Chavar said, kneeling, “may we commend to your attention our son, Nurevis?”

“Serenity,” the young man said, sinking to one knee as gracefully as he had crossed the hall.

“We are pleased,” Maia said, a meaningless phrase, but one that seemed to satisfy Chavar and his son.

They stood again, and Chavar said, “We realize that it is difficult for you, Serenity, to be thrust into the court so suddenly and with no one about you of your own age.”

Behind Chavar and conveniently out of his line of sight, Nurevis rolled his eyes and winked at Maia. Maia felt suddenly and inexpressibly lighter. He said dryly, “We appreciate your thoughtfulness, Lord Chancellor,” but did not, as he otherwise might have, remark that it would be even more appreciated were the Lord Chancellor to bend that thoughtfulness to the performance of his office.

Chavar, beaming widely and unappealingly, bowed himself out of the way, and Nurevis, coming closer, murmured, “Serenity, we
do
apologize. When Father gets an idea into his head like that, we have learned from long experience not to argue with him.”

“Not at all,” Maia said. “We are grateful. We have not … that is, there has not been a chance for us to become familiar with our court.”

“No, it’s all happened so fast, hasn’t it? Well, we can hardly go about introducing the emperor to all our closest friends, but if Your Serenity would like…” He trailed off, one eyebrow raised in friendly mockery.

“Yes?”

“We would be happy to identify people for you. We do know almost everyone at court.”

“You are very kind,” Maia said. “Please.”

Nurevis stood by the throne for the next quarter hour, providing Maia with names and bits of mild gossip. Maia listened and watched and tried to remember, although he was afraid his memory for names and faces was not as good as it needed to be. Then Nurevis excused himself, smiling, saying that it would hardly do for the emperor to choose favorites before he’d had a chance to meet everyone, and sauntered off to find a partner for the next dance.

The dais felt three times as lonely as it had before. Somehow, having been introduced to one person, Maia no longer felt that he could turn to talk to his nohecharei; Nurevis’s comment about favorites made him uneasy, and he wondered if he was already being perceived that way, having stuck so closely to his own household in the days since Varenechibel’s death.

Another reason to arrange court functions, he thought.
And
learn to dance. He was burningly aware of the glances of the young women as they swept by in their partners’ arms, unable to keep himself from imagining what it would be like to dance with one of them, to touch them as the young men of the court did.

Must
learn
to dance,
he said wryly to himself.

He was almost relieved when a page boy approached the dais, although it took him a blank moment to identify the livery as that of the Tethimada. The boy knelt at the bottom of the stairs, holding out a sealed envelope.

Beshelar said, “Shall we, Serenity?”

“Yes, please,” Maia said, and Beshelar descended the steps to take the envelope.

Given Dach’osmer Tethimar’s previous letter, Maia was gratefully surprised to find this one both short and comprehensible. It said merely,
Serenity, we fear we have offended you. Please allow us to approach and apologize?

He looked up and saw Eshevis Tethimar immediately, a tall, broad-shouldered man, in perfect court mourning down to the row of onyx beads hanging along the curve of each ear, who had placed himself carefully to be in the emperor’s line of sight. He was extremely good-looking, and something in his bearing suggested he knew it. He did not, Maia noted grimly, look in the least like a man who was worried that he had offended his emperor.

Maia saw, quite clearly, that Tethimar had pinned him in a fork as Haru the gardener pinned marsh vipers. If he refused this very reasonable request, he put himself in the wrong and Tethimar had another to add to the list of grievances the eastern lords held against the emperor. On the other hand, if he granted Tethimar’s request, Tethimar gained the advantage of appearing to be in the emperor’s favor, as being the second person to be granted an audience with him publicly. It took no great intelligence to see that if Tethimar had had any true concerns, he would not have made the request now, and he most certainly would not have asked to be allowed to approach here at the wake.

I do not like thee, Eshevis Tethimar,
Maia thought. But as best he could tell—and he wished for Csevet to advise him—he would do less damage by granting Tethimar’s request than by snubbing him. He tucked the note in his pocket and said to the page boy, “Tell your master he may approach us.” It was more formal and tedious than simply beckoning Tethimar over, but by the same token, he hoped it reduced the appearance of familiarity between himself and Tethimar.

He thought of the marshes around Edonomee: the Edonara the locals called them, although they had no name on the imperial maps, with their vipers and quicksands and endless rising mists. He thought of Haru saying—one of the few times Haru had spoken to him directly—
I hope Your Lordship never finds yourself out in the marshes, but if you do, you test
every step
before you take it. Don’t trust it just because it looks all right, or because it was all right the last time you stepped on it. Because it won’t be the same. And because the Edonara takes its own sacrifices.
And then he’d stopped and ducked his head and mumbled something that might have been an apology and lumbered off. And Maia hadn’t known how to tell him not to.

The Untheileneise Court, for all its beauty, was just another version of the Edonara.
Test every step before you take it, and trust nothing.
He thought of the boy emperors lying entombed in the Untheileneise’meire, thought of his father’s wives. The Untheileneise Court took its own sacrifices, as well.

But now Dach’osmer Tethimar was climbing the steps of the dais. He stopped in exactly the right place, knelt, murmured, “Serenity,” in a beautifully modulated baritone.

“Rise, please, Dach’osmer Tethimar,” Maia said, feeling more than ever like a loose-jointed doll swaddled and draped in the robes of an emperor. His voice sounded thin, childish, painfully hesitant in contrast to Tethimar’s.

Tethimar’s eyes were a very dark blue, almost black against the whiteness of his face, and he clearly knew their effect: as he stood, he caught and held Maia’s gaze, and although what he said was, “We thank you, Serenity, for granting us our request,” the dark intensity of his eyes added,
You were wise to do so.

It was almost comforting, though, to deal with intimidation; it was so very familiar, and Tethimar did not have Setheris’s advantages. Maia smiled pleasantly and said, “We confess, Dach’osmer Tethimar, that we were very puzzled by your letter.”

And there was a moment, before Tethimar managed to look equally pleasant and puzzled, when Maia saw that he was actually taken aback. It felt like a tiny victory. “But, Serenity,” said Tethimar, “you know, of course, that we aspire to marry your sister.”