The Goblin Emperor (50 page)

After what felt like a very long time, a voice said softly, “Serenity?”

Kiru. He had never figured out how his nohecharei decided which of them stayed in his bedroom and which did not, and it seemed somehow rude to ask. “Yes, Kiru Athmaza?” He was careful not to look at her.

“You are not sleeping,” she said, a gently voiced statement of fact.

“We cannot,” he said bleakly. “It is all … If we close our eyes, we see him again.”

“Tethimar.”

“Yes. The look on his face—” He shivered and then found he was unable to stop.

“Serenity?” Kiru’s voice was closer.

“No!” he gasped.
We cannot be your friend.
“We are all right. Just … just cold.”

He could tell by the quality of her silence that she did not believe him, but if there was an advantage to being emperor, it was that she could not call him a liar to his face. He rolled onto his side, facing away from her, and curled himself into the tightest ball he could manage.
Just cold,
he told himself.
Just very cold.

Quietly, Kiru began to sing. Maia didn’t know the song—something about dead women luring faithless lovers to drown in the Tetara—but it didn’t matter. Kiru’s voice was soft and rather rough, but she held strongly to the melody, and the kindness of it made his throat hurt in a way that Min Vechin’s beautiful voice never would. If he made any betraying noises, Kiru gave no sign of hearing, and when he finally fell asleep in the gray stormy daylight that crept around the curtains, she was still singing.

He slept heavily for four hours and woke feeling better than he thought he had any right to. Over a late luncheon, Csevet told him of the progress being made against Tethimar’s conspiracy. Two of the men Ubezhar had named had killed themselves before they could be arrested, but the other four were in custody, and only one, Dach’osmer Veschar, was attempting to claim innocence. Moreover, Mer Celehar had arrived on the noon airship from Amalo and wished to see Maia as soon as possible.

“Did he
say
that?” Maia said before he could stop himself, it being quite contrary to his experience of Thara Celehar.

Csevet cleared his throat. “He is very distressed, Serenity, that he was not fast enough to prevent Dach’osmer Tethimar’s attempt to murder you. We believe that he does, indeed, wish to see you so that he may beg your pardon. Also,” and Csevet was now very carefully not looking at Maia, “we have heard that Csoru Zhasanai has thrown him out.”

“Oh dear,” Maia said. “For it
is
our fault.”

“Serenity,” Csevet said, not quite agreeing. “We do not, however, believe that Mer Celehar will mention that fact if you do not force him to.”

“Thank you,” Maia said. “When will we have time to see him?”

“Um,” said Csevet, consulting part of his inevitable sheaf of papers. “If you will grant him an audience now, Serenity—we have told everyone else that you will not be available until your nohecharei have changed shifts again.” He gave an odd, one-shouldered shrug. “Unlike an hour designated on the clock, it does not allow of arguing that five minutes earlier cannot hurt.”

“Do you, er, suffer a great deal from such arguments?”

“It is our job, Serenity,” Csevet said, and smiled at him. “Will you see Mer Celehar now?”

“Yes,” Maia said.

He took a fresh cup of tea to the Tortoise Room and sat as close to the fireplace as he could; as if to make his half lie to Kiru a truth in earnest, he was bitterly cold and could not seem to get warm. Celehar must have been waiting for the summons, for he was almost immediately there, prostrating himself on the floor.

Merciful goddesses, not again.
“Get up,” Maia said. “Please. We do not wish for—”

“We failed you, Serenity,” Celehar said, unmoving.

“You failed …
what
?” Maia pinched the bridge of his nose. “Mer Celehar, making all allowances for the upsetting nature of what happened last night, we
cannot
understand why you would say such a thing.”

Celehar looked up. “But—”

“No.”
He had to stop, as surprised as anyone else by the brusque power of his voice. He tried again: “You are not responsible for Dach’osmer Tethimar’s self-love, nor for his remarkably poor judgment. You did what we asked you to do, and you did it very well. Nothing else is within your responsibility, and we ask you, most sincerely, not to pick up further burdens.”

Celehar finally got up; he looked simply bewildered. “But if we had not … it was clearly our investigations which caused Dach’osmer Tethimar to…”

“If it hadn’t been you, it would have been something else,” Maia said. “We think he was not quite sane, and he would never—that is, he had come much too far to accept anything less than complete compliance with his wishes, and he would never have achieved it. In fact, we are grateful to you, for if your investigations had not threatened him, he might have taken the time to come up with a better plan. As he did in murdering our father.”

“Serenity,” Celehar said, appalled.

Maia looked at him. His color was bad and his eyes bloodshot. “Mer Celehar, when did you last sleep?”

“Um.” Celehar rubbed his face. “We do not … what is today?”

“We believe it is still the twenty-second,” Maia said.

“Ah.” Celehar frowned. “We must have slept on the twentieth. Yes, for we remember the Vigilant Brotherhood offered us the use of a cell.”

“Then you need to sleep,” Maia said. “We feel sure that none of this will seem so much like your fault when you awake.”

The hesitation before Celehar said, “Yes, Serenity,” was perfectly palpable, and Maia wondered how much of Celehar’s willingness to accept blame for things which were not his fault was due to Csoru Zhasanai and what must have been, at best, a very unpleasant scene.

“We will take you into our household,” he said, “for as Csoru Zhasanai is our kinswoman, so must you be our kinsman, and you have done us, moreover, a great service. Csevet, will you ask Merrem Esaran, please, to grant Mer Celehar a room?”

“Of course, Serenity,” Csevet said. “This way, Mer Celehar.”

Celehar stood frozen for a moment, then he said, his broken voice barely more than a whisper, “Thank you, Serenity,” and let Csevet herd him out of the room.

Maia sighed with relief and turned his attention to the documents Csevet had brought him, a neat summation from Lord Berenar of the progress of the investigation. Csevet had told him most of it already, but he read carefully anyway, and was glad to see that Berenar had already begun to establish innocence as well as guilt; although Eshevis Tethimar’s father was as guilty as his son, the rest of the Tethimada seemed to be guilty of nothing more than trusting the head of their House to be honorable, and Dach’osmerrem Ubezharan was distraught with horror at her husband’s scheming. Berenar added that he had advised her to petition for a divorce—scandalous advice from a Lord Chancellor, but Maia agreed; if she was not part of Ubezhar and Tethimar’s plot, she did not deserve to be left holding the burden of their shame.

And he was deeply, dizzyingly relieved that the Archprelate was not implicated. It was more than bad enough that his reign had begun with two attempted coups, one led by his Lord Chancellor, without having the Archprelate of Cetho involved as well.

When Berenar was admitted—hard on the heels of Cala and Beshelar, and Maia remembered what Csevet had said about “five minutes earlier”—he told Maia the rest of what Ubezhar had said: “The wreck of the
Wisdom of Choharo
was not, as it turns out, Tethimar’s plan.”

“It wasn’t?”

“Do not mistake us, Serenity. Tethimar intended the emperor and his sons to die. But not
then.
He intended them to die after his own wedding.”

“We beg your pardon?”

“Tethimar’s plan,” said Berenar, “was that the emperor’s airship would be destroyed as it returned to Cetho from Puzhvarno, the city nearest to the Tethimada’s manor of Eshoravee.”

“We know of it,” Maia said with a glance at Csevet, who gave him a grave nod in return. “Do you mean, then, that he had indeed been promised our sister Vedero in marriage?”

“It seems so, Serenity. Certainly he and his allies thought he had been. They intended the
Wisdom of Choharo
as … as practice.”

“Practice?”

“Ubezhar said that Tethimar wished to be certain that the device could indeed be hidden successfully. The plan was that an object of the same size and shape should be placed on the
Wisdom of Choharo,
and if it reached Cetho undetected, they would know that the actual device would be secure. But there was some miscommunication.”

“So he
intended,
” Maia said slowly, “that he should marry our sister, and then our father and brothers should be killed.”

“Putting Eshevis Tethimar in an ideal position to assume the regency for Prince Idra,” Berenar agreed.

“But then what did he intend to do with us? For he cannot have imagined that we should be allowed to attend his wedding?”

Berenar coughed, his ears dipping. “We believe, Serenity, although Ubezhar did not exactly say so, that Tethimar had all but forgotten about you. You were not regarded as a threat.”

“A lunatic inbred cretin,” Maia said sourly, and Berenar’s ears dipped even farther before he recovered himself.

“But the device wrecked the
Wisdom of Choharo,
and Tethimar was not only not married to the archduchess, he didn’t even have a signed marriage contract. You were coronated more quickly than anyone expected. And Tethimar’s attempts to regroup were blocked.”

“Repeatedly,” Csevet said with audible satisfaction.

“You would not agree to his marriage to the archduchess. The Lord Chancellor made his own attempt to seize power. The investigator you sent to Amalo discovered the man who made the device. Tethimar spent the past several days, according to Ubezhar, in seeking some way out of the snare he had laid for himself. And when he could not find one … well, Ubezhar did not want to say, but, Serenity, we believe that Tethimar had come to think that you were the author of all his problems. The last thing he said to Ubezhar was that he was content to die if it meant that you would die with him.”

“It did seem that he hated us,” Maia said, and was embarrassed by the thinness of his own voice.

“Well, no matter,” Berenar said briskly, changing the subject. “He is dead, and we believe his conspiracy will die with him.” He explained, lucidly and completely, the plans he and Orthema had made to be sure that the conspiracy was not merely uncovered, but entirely uprooted. “We advise, Serenity, that the next head of each implicated house be required to come and swear his loyalty to you personally. And we advise most strongly that the House Tethimada be extirpated. Let its holdings be divided among Eshevis Tethimar’s unmarried sisters, so that each may have a generous dowry, and let it be heard of no more.”

“How many sisters had he?” Maia said.

“Four. But the eldest, of course, is married to Prince Orchenis.”

“Yes,” Maia said uneasily. “Berenar, have you … that is, we do not believe that the prince is in any way … we do not wish to…” He subsided, unable to make himself ask,
Are you satisfied that the Prince of Thu-Athamar was not conspiring against us?

Berenar waited politely until it was clear Maia was not going to find a way to end his sentence, then said, “We do not feel that there is any reason to doubt Orchenis’s loyalty. We would recommend that you summon him and his wife here, as it is rather too important a matter to be left in any way doubtful—in fact, from our knowledge of Orchenis, we feel that he will wish to tell you, personally and unequivocally, that he is loyal—but … well, Serenity, if Orchenis had been part of the plot, we would have expected him to raise his banner upon your father’s death.”

“Ah,” Maia said. “Yes. We see what you mean.” He shook his head to clear it and said, “How old are Dach’osmer Tethimar’s unmarried sisters?”

“Serenity.” Berenar cleared his throat. “Fifteen, twelve, and seven.”

“And he had no brothers?”

“There was a younger brother, Serenity, but he died some years ago. A hunting accident, we believe, although we do not remember the details.”

“It matters not. Who becomes the girls’ guardian, then?”

“Serenity?”

“Their brother is dead; their father soon will be. Is their mother—?”

“Dead, Serenity. In childbirth of the youngest daughter.”

“And if they are to carry the wealth of the Tethimada to other houses, one does not wish to put them in the care of a Tethimadeise cousin,” Maia said. “Their mother’s house?”

Berenar looked pained. “Ubezhada, Serenity.”

“Ah. No.” He had a vision of the nursery of the Alcethmeret filled with the children of his enemies, and then the solution came to him: “Prince Orchenis.”

“Serenity?”

“He is their uncle by marriage. And if, as you say and we also believe, he is loyal, there can be no more suitable person.”

Berenar was silent, as if contemplating the idea from several sides, and then he nodded. “Yes. We concur. It will do very well.”

“Are there other matters?” Maia asked.

“We have spoken with Mer Celehar,” Berenar said, “and with the officers of the Vigilant Brotherhood who accompanied him and the prisoners.”

“The prisoners?” Maia said sharply.

Berenar consulted his notes. “Shulivar, Bralchenar, and Narchanezhen. The persons responsible for the device which destroyed the
Wisdom of Choharo
. They have been remanded to the Judiciate, but we wondered if … Serenity, it would be entirely legal to forgo trial and execute them tomorrow. The officers tell us that they do not deny what they have done, and offer no defense.”

“No,” Maia said instinctively and so harshly that he said immediately, “We beg your pardon. But no. We will not stoop to vengeance. But—”

“Serenity?”

He heard his own words and only barely believed them: “We wish to speak to them.”

32

Shulivar, Bralchenar, and Narchanezhen