The Goblin Emperor (15 page)

Maia had learned to play dumb from watching the staff at Edonomee deal with Setheris. “Do you?” he said.

“We had entered into negotiations with the late emperor your father,” said Tethimar, his voice rising just slightly.

“Had you indeed? No betrothal has been announced that we are aware of.”

Tethimar stared at him, and if he had been taken aback before, he was now nearly horrified. “But, Serenity—”

Maia cut him off with an upraised hand. “We think, Dach’osmer Tethimar, that our father’s wake is not a suitable place to discuss this or any other matter of import.” And he met Tethimar’s eyes squarely, knowing that his own eyes were just as disconcerting and knowing how little that actually meant.

Tethimar looked down first. “Of course, Serenity. We beg your pardon. Again.” And he managed a rueful quirk of a smile that made Maia almost like him.

Tethimar left the dais and Maia was about to relax—inwardly, for of course the emperor could no more show that he was relieved by Dach’osmer Tethimar’s departure than he could show he had been alarmed by his approach—when, his eye caught by darkness that was not mourning colors, he realized that Ambassador Gormened, his wife beside him, was approaching the throne.

He wished, again and even more desperately, that Csevet were here. He could not ignore the ambassador of Barizhan, nor refuse to speak to him, but he could imagine all too clearly what Setheris and his ilk would say about the goblin emperor—and if they were not calling him that yet, it was only a matter of time—chatting publicly with the Great Avar’s representative. Yet (he thought, his mind racing), it would counter any favor Dach’osmer Tethimar might be perceived to have gained. And there was the nesecho, tucked safely in one of his inner pockets. Avris had threaded it on a fine gold chain for him, so that it could be secured unnoticeably through a buttonhole or a belt loop, and Maia had been so overwhelmed by this kindness (for which he would never have thought to ask) that he had barely been able to stammer a thank-you. But it had been Gormened’s gift to begin with.

Initiative and audacity, Csevet had said. As Gormened stopped at the foot of the dais, Maia could see that he was a young man, goblin-stocky, with a dueling scar on one broad cheekbone. He wondered if Ambassador to the Ethuveraz was a prestigious post or a punishment.

Maia gestured to the ambassador to approach.

“Serenity,” said the ambassador, kneeling, while at his side, his wife sank into, and held, a curtsy so deep that Maia was amazed she didn’t fall over. “We are Vorzhis Gormened, Ambassador of Barizhan, and this our wife, Nadaro.” He pronounced her name goblin-fashion, with the accent on the first syllable, and Maia was ambushed by grief for his mother; she had taught him how to say her name—
CHE-ne-lo,
not
che-NE-lo
—so that there would be one person she knew who said it correctly.

“Stand, please,” he said, and watched Nadaro rise with that same iron grace. He realized he had been presented with an opportunity for a petty revenge, and he was not strong enough not to take it. “We are gratified to meet a kinsman of our mother at last. Were you close to her?”

The words were regretted as soon as spoken, but it was not the ambassador who answered. His wife said, “Her mother was our aunt, our father’s sister. We were allowed to see Chenelo occasionally as girls, as the Great Avar and our father were allies. It was not so later.”

Maia’s knowledge of the internal politics of Barizhan was sketchy, and based largely on the cheap blue-backed novels beloved of Pelchara and Kevo back at Edonomee. He did know that the Great Avar was the ruler of the country only because he held the allegiances of the avarsin, the myriad lesser rulers—more numerous than princes, but far more powerful than even the Ethuverazheise dukes—who made up the practical government of Barizhan. The shifting alliance of which Osmerrem Gormened spoke was no trivial matter.

Nadaro Gormened said, “We lit candles for her when we heard of her death. It was all we could do.” There might have been the faintest of rebukes in her words, aimed at her husband, for like any elvish woman, when she said,
all we could do,
she meant,
all we were allowed.

“Candles would have meant much to her,” Maia said. “Thank you, Osmerrem Gormened.”

She curtsied again, and the ambassador, accepting with unlooked-for tact that the audience was over, bowed and escorted her away. Maia noticed only because he forced himself to, largely consumed with fighting a stinging rush of tears. Chenelo had been dead for ten years; it was pointless, childish, to miss her so terribly. He forced his face to stay still and his ears to stay up, forced his breathing to stay even, and after a stretch of unreckoned time, the pain ebbed, and he was able to ease the interlocked grip of his fingers on each other. Able to breathe, able to look again beyond the limits of the dais, able to lose himself for a time in the swirling patterns of the dance and the arching darkness of the night outside the windows.

And then Cala hissed, “Serenity, the princess!”

Maia turned his head and saw the Princess of the Untheileneise Court making her way up the hall, Stano Bazhevin trotting behind her. Sheveän had not raised her veil, and there was no hint of peace in her carriage. The courtiers moved out of her way, most of them gracefully, so that it looked merely polite, but a few of the youngest girls almost scurried to the side of the hall, and long before he could see her face, Maia knew that the Princess Sheveän was in the same mood she had been in beside her husband’s coffin.

She did stop at the foot of the dais, her blue eyes almost seeming to burn through her veil. Maia did not hesitate in gesturing her closer, knowing that everyone in the Untheileian was watching them, whether openly or otherwise. Stano Bazhevin, awkward and hesitant again, stayed behind, her hands clenched tightly together before her breast. Maia knew that trick, although Setheris had broken him of it: hands clenched together were hands that could not fidget. Osmin Bazhevin was frightened, as she had been at the oath-taking, but this time he thought it was Sheveän she feared. Or Sheveän’s errand.

Sheveän swept a low obeisance that might have been a full genuflection or might merely have been a very low curtsy; Maia was not inclined to inquire. “Serenity,” she said, her voice low, controlled, and as frigid as the wind in winter.

“Princess,” Maia said. Back straight, hands folded, chin and ears up. No outward sign that she was frightening him.

She stood straight again and put back her veil, though only to be better able to glare at him. “We have heard things—shocking, scandalous rumors—and we have come to you that you may assure us that we have been most dreadfully lied to.”

“Princess, we do not know what you—”

“We have been told,” she said, low and poisonous, “that you allowed—encouraged!—the desecration of our husband’s body this afternoon.”

“Desecration?” Baffled, Maia had to scramble for something to say. “Princess, we assure you that no desecration has been committed.”

“Then it is
not
true that you ordered the prince’s coffin opened?”

He did not allow himself to wince. “Princess, you have been given a very imperfect understanding of our purpose.”

“You
did
open the coffin!” The gasp was half shock, half wrath, and he thought entirely theatrical.

“Princess,” he said firmly, not allowing his voice to rise, “all four coffins were opened in our presence by a canon and a Witness for the Dead. They were treated reverently. Prayers were said. There was no—”

“A Witness for the Dead?” Her voice was louder, and he knew she was playing for the avidly watching court. “What possible need could there be for
that
?”

“Princess Sheveän, moderate your voice.”

“We will not! We demand to know—”

“Princess,” Maia said sharply, and succeeded in cutting her off. He said in a lower voice, “There are reasons, but we do not intend to discuss them at our father’s wake. We will grant you an audience as soon as we may, and you will have the full and open truth.”

“Your Serenity is too kind,” she said, bitterly ironic.

“Sheveän, we are not your enemy. We respect your grief—”

“Respect! Have you wept at all? Do you mourn your family, Edrehasivar, or are you too busy gloating?”

Maia stared at her, bereft of an answer, an evasion, a deflection. He had forgotten the nohecharei, and started violently when Beshelar said, “Princess, we fear you are becoming overwrought. May we call one of your ladies to you?”

Sheveän shot him a murderous look, then curtsied stiffly. “Serenity, forgive us. We are not ourself.”

“We understand,” Maia said, and did not know if he was lying or not. “Come to us tomorrow, Sheveän, and we will talk.”

“Serenity,” she said, still unyielding, and swept away, collecting Osmin Bazhevin as she went. Osmin Bazhevin glanced apologetically at Maia over her shoulder; it was notable that the Princess Sheveän, in her dramatics, had forgotten to mention Osmin Bazhevin or Osmin Bazhevin’s (presumable) concerns for her fiancé’s body.

Maia had to take several deep breaths before he could say, in a quiet, even voice, “Thank you, Beshelar.”

“Serenity,” Beshelar said gruffly. “It is our job.”

12

The Princess and the Witness

He was in the Untheileneise’meire again, although he did not know why. He had forgotten something, he thought, something precious. He had left it by his mother’s tomb, and if the morning sunlight touched it, it would disintegrate and be gone.

So here he was in the Untheileneise’meire in the dark. There was a shaft of moonlight streaming through the oculus, and in the moonlight he could see snow falling, collecting on the lacquered coffin that stood alone in the center of the ring of columns.

To reach his mother’s tomb and the precious thing he had left there, he had to pass the coffin.

His heart beating too fast, he began to cross the Untheileneise’meire.

As he approached it, the coffin seemed to swell, until it stood taller than himself and completely blocking the diameter of the circle. He would have to climb over it, although he was weighed down by his robes and encumbered by yards and yards of billowing veil. He struggled up the side of the coffin, dragged backwards by his robes, half-strangled by the masses of veiling, and when he finally reached the top, he discovered that the lid had been removed.

Mer Celehar must be here somewhere,
he thought, and he wanted to call out to him, but his voice would not work.

The corpse lay as he had seen it, hands folded, head muffled in white lace. He would have to climb over it, but he could do that. “I mean no disrespect,” he whispered to it, and stretched one hand across to get a grip on the opposite side of the coffin.

The corpse’s hands fastened around his wrist with an iron-cruel grip. “Disrespect?” it said, its voice muffled and wet. He could see, behind the veil, the dark, ragged hole of its mouth. “Hast thou wept at all? Dost thou mourn thy family, Maia?” It dragged itself upright with its leverage on his arm. “Dost weep for
me
?”

The muffled head was coming closer; he leaned back, back, was falling, flailing, and then he was running, stumbling, through the dark and narrow corridors of Edonomee, sobs caught in his throat, and the corpse dragging itself along behind him, calling in its terrible voice, “Weep for me! Weep for thy father!”

The veil caught around his feet; he fell and the harder he struggled to get up again, the more entangling and heavy his robes became. He was thrashing helplessly, hands scrabbling for purchase on the floorboards, mouth filled with veiling. His father’s dead hand closed around his ankle.

Maia screamed and woke.

“Serenity?” Cala’s voice, Cala’s angular shape outlined against the window.

“’Tis an ironic title, in sooth,” Maia said feebly, realizing that the entangling garments of the nightmare were merely his bedsheets. His heart was hammering, and he was clammy with sweat.

“Serenity, are you well?”

The door was flung open; Maia put his arm up in a futile, instinctive attempt to shield himself from view.

“I thought I heard…” Beshelar, sounding anxious.

“He’s all right, I think,” Cala said. “I think it was just a dream. Serenity, are you well?”

“We are fine,” Maia said. “We beg pardon for alarming you.”

“Serenity,” Beshelar said, and shut the door, not quite slamming it.

“What’s the clock?” Maia said, squinting past Cala at the window.

“Half past six, Serenity. You’ve not been asleep but three-quarters of an hour.”

“No wonder I feel as if I’ve been kicked by a horse. I’m sorry, Cala. I really didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“It harms us not,” Cala said. “You should sleep, Serenity.”

Maia felt the rebuff like a drench of icy water. He sat up, reaching out a hand impulsively. “Cala, have I offended you?”

Cala was standing by the window, his hands folded in the sleeves of his robe. There was a silence, all the uglier for its unexpectedness. Then Cala said, the words blurted, stark and hard, “Serenity, we cannot be your friend.”

“Friend? Cala, I—if we have been overfamiliar, we apologize.”

“It isn’t that.” Cala did not sound happy, and his ears were flat, but he had carefully turned to look out the window so that Maia could not see his face. “It has been noticed, Serenity, that you treat your nohecharei more as equals than as servants.”

“But you are not my servants.”

“We are not your equals, Serenity. We have obligations to you which we must fulfill, and in the fulfillment of those obligations must lie the extent of our relationship.”

Now Maia felt as if he were drowning. “Cala,” he tried to say, but his voice stuck in his throat.

“It
must,
Serenity. The Adremaza spoke to us before the funeral. There have been murmurs already that you act not as the late emperor did and that he would not approve. It looks not well to the court that you chose Beshelar and us to be your guides—”