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.

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.”

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.”