The Goblin Emperor (12 page)

Maia set his cup down too hard, slopping tea into the saucer, his entire body hot with shame. “We apologize,” he said. “We spoke ungraciously and out of ill temper which we should not have inflicted on you. We should not have disparaged your service, for which we are so truly grateful. We are sorry.”

“Serenity,” Csevet said uncomfortably, “you should not speak so to us.”

“Why not?”

Csevet opened his mouth and closed it again. Then, deliberately, he set down his cup, stood up, and with infinite grace prostrated himself beside the table. Isheian watched him with alarm.

Csevet stood up again, unruffled and perfect, and said, “The Emperor of the Elflands does not apologize to his secretary. And yet, we thank you for doing that which the emperor does not.” He smiled, a warm beautiful smile that made his face suddenly, momentarily alive, and sat down again. “Serenity.”

Wordlessly, Isheian presented Maia with a clean saucer. Wordlessly, he picked up his cup and let the chamomile scour away the thick taste of sleep. Then he asked, “Who petitions for an audience this morning?”

“Serenity. The most important are the Imperial Witnesses for the
Wisdom of Choharo
.”

Maia went cold. He set the teacup down, carefully this time, and picked up a buttered crumpet, as being neither spillable nor breakable. “When do they wish to be heard?”

“They ask for the earliest time convenient for Your Serenity.”

“Oh.” He took a bite, chewed, swallowed, all without tasting. “Then by all means let them have it.”

Csevet glanced at the clock. “Nine o’clock,” he said, with perhaps a quarter twist of question.

“Yes,” Maia said.

“Serenity. We will write the necessary reply. In the meantime, you may perhaps wish to read this letter from Setheris Nelar.”

The studied neutrality of Csevet’s tone told Maia that there was probably nothing in the world he wished less, but he accepted the letter that Csevet held out to him.

Setheris’s familiar handwriting struck him like one of Setheris’s remembered blows. He picked up the crumpet again, to give himself a moment’s respite, and forced himself to eat it. He was even able to notice how good it was, although it was almost impossible to swallow past the dryness in his throat.

He could stall no longer. Grimly, he picked up the letter (taking a sullen, childish delight in getting butter on the edges) and set himself to read:

To his Imperial Serenity, Edrehasivar VII, greetings.

It is a matter of great concern to us—and also to our wife, who asks to be remembered to you—to discover what Your Serenity intends for us now that the household of Edonomee is disbanded. We dare to hope that our relegation is ended, for which we thank Your Serenity most profoundly and sincerely, and we profess our utmost ability and desire to serve Your Serenity in any capacity we may.

With great loyalty and familial affection,
Setheris Nelar

Hesero wrote that,
Maia thought. He knew Setheris’s turn of phrase, knew his mind, and while the handwriting was his, the sentiments and careful phrasing were not. He could imagine Hesero standing beside the desk, watching closely to be sure Setheris used the words she specified.

Hesero wrote it, but how was he, Maia, to answer it? He did not want Setheris in his household, but the letter was as much a request for a job as it was a plea for reassurance, and to refuse Setheris a post, no matter how satisfying the gesture would be, would spark exactly the kind of gossip he most wished to avoid.

Csevet finished the message to the Witnesses for the
Wisdom of Choharo
and rang for a page boy to deliver it. After the boy had gone, Maia said, “Csevet, we must speak with you.”

He felt the other four people in the room freeze into alertness. He had failed to keep his distress out of his voice. He might as well, he thought defiantly, make the experiment now, and added,
“Alone.”

Telimezh and Dazhis exchanged a look rich with consternation, and Telimezh said, “Serenity, we cannot—”

“Why not?” Maia demanded. “What attack do you fear?”

“Serenity, it is our oath. We are sworn to guard you, just as we are sworn to silence about anything we may witness. We will not betray you.”

Truly,
Maia thought,
that is not my fear. Shall betray myself, but I would not have it be to you.
He said, “Can you not guard us just as well from the other side of the door?”

“Serenity,” Telimezh said; his ears were flat against his head with unhappiness.

“An we command it?”

“Serenity,” Dazhis said, bowing. “If you were to die in our dereliction, know that we would kill ourselves at the feet of your corpse. Do you wish that?”

He felt frustration like a black weight pressing against his chest. But if he could win only by wronging his nohecharei, then he could not win at all. “No, of course not,” Maia said wearily. “Isheian, would you?”

“Serenity,” she said, bowing, and left by the servants’ door.

He looked at the three of them, Csevet, Telimezh, Dazhis. He wished dully that it were Beshelar and Cala instead; they had already seen him at his worst.

“Know then,” he said, dropping his gaze to the tablecloth, “that Setheris Nelar served as our guardian these past ten years since the death of our mother, and he…” He could not say it, and finished hastily and lamely, “We love him not.”

Into the puzzled silence, Telimezh said, “No reason you should, Serenity. He is not a cousin of your house, and—”

“No! We mean—” He stopped, gripping his hands tightly together in his lap. “Plainly, I hate him, and I will not have him near me.”

He looked up. Telimezh and Dazhis seemed simply shocked; Csevet, who had seen the household at Edonomee, however briefly, allowed his eyebrows to rise in token of enlightenment. He said, “You have not told us this for your pleasure, Serenity. What is your wish?”

“We wish a post for him so that he may live honorably and comfortably, and we need neither see him nor receive his importuning letters.”

“Serenity,” Csevet said very gently, “if you wish not to be troubled with this man, you have only to say so.”

“No, that is not what we mean. He has done no wrong.” The memories of a thousand separate cruelties mocked him, but no one save Maia himself had ever counted those as wrongs, and it was unjust to have them declared wrongs now, merely because he could. “We do not wish him unhappy or ill-used. Merely
away.
”

“Serenity, we will see what can be done.” Csevet paused and added, as one who did not wish to speak and suspected that he would make trouble for himself thereby: “You know that such is properly the Lord Chancellor’s concern.”

“Then take it up with him. We care not, an it be done.”

“Serenity,” Csevet said, bowing. He glanced at the clock. “Nine o’clock approaches.”

“Then we must go,” Maia said, nothing loath to be released from this uncomfortable interview. “We thank you all.”

“Serenity,” they replied, bowing, and Telimezh turned to open the door.

The Michen’theileian proved not to be the copy in miniature of the Untheileian that Maia had feared. It was more lavishly appointed than he cared for, in ivory and gold, which would emphasize his dark coloring, but it was sensibly furnished with a long table and massive padded chairs, was well heated, and was not, withal, a bad room in which to do business.

The Witnesses for the
Wisdom of Choharo
were there when he and his nohecharei and secretary arrived: two men and a woman, all dressed with shabby respectability and all wearing scholars’ keys around their necks. Although, unlike the prelacy and the mazei, scholars did not swear oaths of poverty, it was rare for one to attain great wealth. Setheris had said this was because they were fools, but Maia looked at the tired, drawn faces of the Witnesses and saw no foolishness.

They had gotten only as far as introducing themselves—Pelar, Aizheveth, Sevesar, all scholars of the second rank—when Chavar arrived, indignant, slightly out of breath, and trailing secretaries as a peacock does his tail. There was a lengthy delay while Chavar settled himself and sent his secretaries on unnecessary errands to demonstrate his own importance. Maia wondered if he had behaved so in Varenechibel’s service, and was inclined to doubt it. But at last the Lord Chancellor pronounced himself ready, and Maia nodded permission for Mer Sevesar, the seniormost scholar, to begin.

Mer Sevesar wasted neither time nor breath in equivocations. He stood, bowed to emperor and Lord Chancellor, and said, “Serenity, the wreck of the
Wisdom of Choharo
was caused by sabotage.”

“Preposterous!” Chavar cried, but Maia raised a hand to silence him.

“How do you know?” he asked Sevesar. “And what did they do?”

The answer was lengthy and sometimes difficult to follow, but Maia grasped the gist of it. The Witnesses, in examining the wreckage, had found the charred and partially melted remains of an object that, Sevesar said emphatically, was no part of the construction of any airship in the Elflands. He referred to it as an “incendiary device,” though neither Maia nor Chavar fully grasped what that term meant. After some futile back-and-forth that made things, if anything, more obscure, Min Aizheveth spoke up suddenly, impatience in her tone, “It ignited the hydrogen.”

“Merciful goddesses,” someone said faintly.

“It could not be … accident?” Chavar said, for once sounding neither pugnacious nor contemptuous.

“No,” Sevesar said. He bowed to Maia. “Serenity, we are most sorry, but we thought it best that you should know immediately.”

“No, you were right,” Maia said. He was hollow, cold; the emotions he should have felt were not there, their absence crippling. It was an effort to think of the right words to say. “We commend you on your dedication and your patient zeal. And we thank you for finding the truth.”

“We have found only a small part of the truth, Serenity,” Sevesar said. “We do not know who did this thing, or why. We know only that it has been done.”

“Yes,” Maia said. “But those questions are not within the purview of your Witnessing, and we cannot ask you to answer them. You have witnessed for the
Wisdom of Choharo,
and you have witnessed truthfully and with honor.”

“Serenity,” the three scholars said, bowing. He thought they seemed grateful to escape, and he did not fault them for that. They must have been expecting to be blamed, or to be asked questions to which they could not possibly have the answers. He wished only, unworthily, that he could escape with them. The silence in the Michen’theileian when they had gone was like a wound, draining away all the life in the room. Everyone had become unnaturally careful not to catch anyone else’s eye.

Maia said, “What must we do?” and thought of Setheris standing drunken in the door of his room in Edonomee. But he had used the plural this time; this was a decision he neither could nor should make on his own. He looked at Chavar.

Chavar was splenetic again, which was no comfort. “We must find out who perpetrated this vile and contemptible crime.”

“Yes,” Maia said, “but how?”

Chavar sputtered, his fine rhetoric deflated. Maia looked around the table at all those secretaries he did not know, and said, “We do not know how to go about this. We know that when there is a murder, one asks the judiciar to send a Witness for the Dead, but to which judiciar’s sovereignty does this belong? The place where the
Wisdom of Choharo
crashed? The place from which she left? The place to which she was going?”

It was not a trivial question. Maia knew, from Setheris and from newspapers, how jealous judiciars were of their sovereignty, and for the death of an emperor … no matter which judiciar was chosen, the others would be offended, and doubtless the Judiciate of the Court would be offended along with them.

Chavar said, “And what will happen if the inquiry should need to cross jurisdictional boundaries? We have seen that happen occasionally—there was a case of theft in which the guilty party was a bargeman, for instance—and it was … badly handled. There were satires”—which he said in the tone another man would have used for the word “cockroaches”—“and we only wish we thought matters would have improved since then.”

“We do not wish our father to be the target of satires,” Maia said firmly.

Chavar gave him a look that was almost approving.

“Perhaps,” Csevet said hesitantly. Chavar glared, but Maia made an encouraging gesture, and Csevet continued, “Perhaps the answer is not to try to choose
one
Witness for the Dead. After all, Varenechibel was the emperor of all the Elflands.”

Chavar went from anger to approbation in no more than the space of time it took for him to comprehend Csevet’s idea. Maia watched, in something less comfortable than amazement, as Csevet’s suggestion was seized, gutted, and remounted at a vastly inflated size. Chavar was creating a pageant of investigation, involving all the highest ranked Witnesses in the Judiciate of the Court. He sent secretaries scurrying to arrange for the Witnesses to view the bodies of the emperor and his sons before the funeral. Maia nerved himself to mention that the bodies of the airship crew and Varenechibel’s servants were already buried, but Chavar just said, “Leave it to the Witnesses, Serenity,” and swept himself and his secretaries out on a tide of barked orders and demands for information.

The silence in the Michen’theileian when he was gone was as heavy as a velvet pall. Maia noticed the way in which the investigation had become Chavar’s property, to be managed and controlled as he saw fit. The emperor would be reduced to petitioning for information—or simply leaving it entirely in the Lord Chancellor’s hands, which was surely what Chavar expected and desired.

Into the velvet weight of silence, Maia said, “Was that your intent?”

Csevet froze in the middle of tidying a stack of papers, his white, ringless hands suddenly tense. “Serenity?”

“You worked for Lord Chavar for many years. You have already showed that you know how to … to manage him. Did you intend for him to take over as he did?”