23

The Opposition of the Court

Maia never came nearer to open rebellion than he did over the dinner party hosted by the Presider of Blood, the most powerful member of Parliament. It was not merely that he did not wish to go—for his imperial reign had been one obligation after another that he did not wish to fulfill; it was that he was almost ill with fear at the thought of it. It took all of Csevet’s considerable powers of persuasion to get him out through the grilles of the Alcethmeret, and if it had not been for his nohecharei, Maia knew that he would have pretended to become lost and accepted every unpleasant consequence thereof, simply in order to escape. But the emperor had no such recourse and was condemned to a punctual appearance at his host’s door.

The Marquess Lanthevel, the Presider of the House of Blood, was tall and thin, with graceful, long-fingered hands that Maia could only envy. His eyes were vivid blue, and he dressed to accentuate them: blue brocade jacket and lapis lazuli beads. His bow, when Maia and his nohecharei were ushered into the Lanthevadeise receiving room, was perfect and crisp. “We are pleased at last to meet you, Serenity. You have not the look of your father.” Said so blandly that the insult could almost pass unnoticed.

“No,” Maia said, “we are generally agreed to favor our mother.”

Lanthevel’s lips quirked in the slightest of smiles, as if conceding a point to an opponent. “And of course,” he continued, with a gesture as softly elegant as an unfurling rose, “Your Serenity knows Lord Pashavar and Captain Orthema, but you must allow us to present our niece, Dach’osmin Iviro Lanthevin; Osmerrem Ailano Pashavaran; and Merrem Reneian Orthemo.”

The greetings were all formal and correct, and Maia returned them in kind while trying to keep his glass-edged panic from showing. He had known there would be other guests, but he had not expected Pashavar, who terrified him more than the rest of the Corazhas put together.

Pashavar’s wife, a head taller than her husband, had the grim look of a woman determined to do her duty despite her personal feelings. Dach’osmin Lanthevin gave him what might have been a sympathetic quirk of a smile; she was in her forties, a short, brisk, graceful woman who dressed her hair with pale jade combs.

He was disconcerted by Captain Orthema, whom he had never seen before without the sun mask of a knight of Anmura—and had certainly never imagined trying to have a conversation with. The captain’s name, Maia knew, was Verer Orthema. He came from far eastern Thu-Tetar, and there was a good deal of goblin in him. His skin was not as dark as Maia’s, having only a faint silvery cast, but his hair was black, and his eyes, under heavy brows, were so deep an orange as to be nearly red. He had campaigned several times against the barbarians of the Evressai Steppes before accepting his present position, and bore reminders of warfare on his face: a scar slanting across his forehead and another slashing from one cheekbone to the other across the bridge of his nose. Although he was almost sixty, his posture was still erect and his stride still vigorous and graceful.

His wife was much younger, only a few years older than Maia himself, and he thought, from the drape of her soft rose dress, that she might be pregnant. She did not look higher than the emperor’s collarbones, and he supposed he could take some comfort in the fact that there was someone in the room more terrified than he was.

It was the duty of the unfortunate emperor to begin conversation; although that rule got bent and rather sloppy at some of Nurevis’s parties, the cold shine of Lanthevel’s vivid blue eyes said there would be no such mercy here. Maia had tried to prepare—as he always tried to prepare—with lists of innocuous but encouraging questions; they all seemed feeble now, like the efforts of a mouse to make conversation with a roomful of hungry cats.

The silence was deepening from awkward to lethal; Maia looked around desperately for something that could at least provide an unexceptionable remark; and saw a wall hanging, not very large and the colors faded with age, but he had taken a step toward it before he knew what he was doing. “We beg your pardon,” he said, but could not wrench his gaze away from the delicate embroidered vines and strange wheel-like flowers. “Will you tell us about this wall hanging? Our mother did embroidery like this.”

“Did she?” said the Marquess Lanthevel, an odd note in his voice. “That is a wedding stole from Csedo, dated to the reign of Sorchev Zhas.” And before Maia had to ask, he added, “Some sixty to a hundred years before Edrevenivar the Conqueror crossed the Istandaärtha.”

Maia stepped a little closer. The stole, protected behind a pane of glass, was stained and frayed, and the colors, which must once have been as bright as a celebration, were now almost indistinguishable, red from blue from yellow from green, but his memory supplied a purple cast to the red, a deep golden yellow, a jewel-like blue. Chenelo had used two shades of green, to give the effect of sun and shadow, but it was impossible to tell if the long-ago embroiderer had done the same.

Lanthevel said, “Do you have any pieces of the empress’s working?”

“No,” Maia said, and forced himself to turn to face his host. “All her personal belongings were burned when she died. We believe it was at our father’s command.”

“He left you nothing for remembrance?” Pashavar said. He used the ritual word, “ulishenathaän”: a token of a dead person.

“No,” Maia said. “Possibly he thought we were not old enough to need one.”

Pashavar snorted inelegantly, drawing a frown from his wife.

“No one who knew the late emperor your father,” she said, “could help but deplore his fourth marriage—not through any fault of the Empress Chenelo’s, for indeed we have never heard anything to her discredit, but simply because he should not have made it. The Empress Pazhiro would have been the first to condemn his behavior.”

“The third empress was a close friend of our wife’s,” said Pashavar.

Captain Orthema made a noise that might from another man have been called a sigh. “It is possible to be friends with a man—indeed, to care for him deeply—and yet disapprove of his conduct. We have always felt that the late emperor’s treatment of you, Serenity, was foolish, for it created discontent where there was no need to, and we know Lord Pashavar advised him strongly to bring you to the capital.”

“When your mother died,” said Lord Pashavar, “again when you turned thirteen, and again when you turned sixteen. But he would not listen to us.”

“He was always very stubborn,” said Lanthevel. “It is a Drazhadeise trait.”

Edrehasivar the Obstinate, Csevet had said.

“We thought,” said Dach’osmin Lanthevin, “although perhaps it is fanciful, that he had come to associate you not with your mother—for indeed, he did not know her—but with the Empress Pazhiro and her stillborn child. That it was not vindictiveness that drove him, but grief.”

The damned whelp looks just like his mother.

“It is a kind thought,” Maia said. “As we were given no chance to know our father, we cannot speak as to its truth.”

“A very polite way of saying you disagree,” Lanthevel said. “Tact is a fine trait in an emperor. Varenechibel had it not.”

“Put tactfully,” Pashavar said, and for the rest of the time until dinner was announced, Lanthevel and Pashavar told Maia stories of his father, giving him a glimpse, at least, of the man Idra and Vedero and others who had loved him had known. But Maia kept thinking about the wedding stole, and after the sliced pears in yoghurt were served, he asked Lanthevel, “How did you come by that wedding stole? And—forgive us if this is an impolite question, but why do you hang it in your receiving room?”

“Not impolite at all,” Lanthevel said. In fact, he seemed pleased. “Your Serenity knows that we are a scholar of the University of Ashedro?”

“We did not know,” Maia said. “We had understood that scholars mostly remain in the universities.”

“True,” said Lanthevel, “but our elder brother became a votary of Cstheio when he was forty.”

“Oh,” Maia said.

Lanthevel made a small, ironic nod of acknowledgment. “A scholar may be plucked from his university to sit in the Parliament, but not so a votary. We have found, though, that we are able to continue our studies at least in small ways—and perhaps that makes them more precious to us.”

“But what do you study, Lanthevel?” Pashavar interrupted. “You’ll talk all night and still not have answered the emperor’s question.”

“Have some more wine, Lord Pashavar,” Lanthevel suggested. “Your disposition hasn’t mellowed yet.”

Pashavar laughed, like a crack of thunder; Maia realized that these two men were genuinely friends, and they were doing him the honor, and the great kindness, of letting him see their friendship.

“As it happens,” Lanthevel said, collecting the attention of the table, “we study neither textiles nor the history of Csedo—our studies are in philology—but a close friend left us the stole as an ulishenathaän, and we treasure it.”

“Forgive us again,” Maia said, dogged because he was trying not to imagine having one of his mother’s embroidered pillows to remember her by, “but what is philology?”

The silence was sharp; Lanthevel’s raised eyebrows said he suspected Maia of mockery, and Maia said, “We ask in all sincerity. Our education was somewhat erratic.”

“Did you not have tutors?” said Pashavar.

“No, only Setheris,” Maia said, realizing too late to catch himself the insult in using his cousin’s given name unadorned.

Pashavar snorted. “Setheris Nelar must have made the worst teacher the empire has ever seen.”

“No, he was a very good teacher, when he could be bothered.” Maia bit his lip, appalled, and only then realized that the warm drifting feeling in his head meant that he was beginning to get drunk. Lanthevel’s wine was stronger than he’d thought.

“Yes, but how often could he be bothered?” Pashavar said, with a horrible sharp knowingness in his eyes. “We remember Setheris Nelar and the self-importance he wore like a crown.”

“We remember,” Dach’osmin Lanthevin put in, earning herself a frown from Osmerrem Pashavaran, “his bitter feud with Lord Chavar.”

“Osmer Nelar wished to be Lord Chancellor,” said Pashavar, “having realized he would never rise as high or as fast as he wished in the Judiciary.”

“Arrogance,” Lanthevel said.

“Yes,” said Pashavar, “but we do not know that he was any less qualified than Chavar.”

Lanthevel waved this piece of obvious provocation aside. “It is true that Lord Chancellor is in many ways a political post, but it cannot be assumed without some knowledge of the workings of the chancellery, and Osmer Nelar had none.”

“But the opportunity was there,” said Pashavar, answering a question Maia was not quite brave enough to ask. “Lord Chancellors do not come and go like dayflowers. If he did not try then, it might easily be forty years before another such opportunity arose. Osmer Nelar was ambitious—and arrogant, as Lanthevel says—and his wife drove him. Or, at least, so Varenechibel always believed. He would not let her accompany her husband to Edonomee because, he said, he did not want them scheming together—instead, her energies were consumed in trying to get her husband recalled, and his were spent in…” He raised his eyebrows at Maia, but Maia had another question.

“What did he do? He would never talk about it, and no one at Edonomee had the least idea.” He’d heard Kevo and Pelchara speculating more than once, but the very wildness of their stories—and the freedom with which they attributed to Setheris the most appalling and extravagant of vices—marked them as make-believe.

“Ah,” said Pashavar, and looked at Lanthevel. “You had the story from Chavar, Lanthevel, and he had it direct from Varenechibel.”

“Yes,” said Lanthevel. “Osmer Nelar made some attempt to persuade Varenechibel against Chavar—which we could have told him was doomed from the outset. But Osmer Nelar said something which Varenechibel construed as an attempt to exert undue influence on the emperor.”

“Treason,” Maia said, his mouth dry from more than just too much wine. Setheris had been exceptionally thorough in teaching Maia about the different kinds of treason—exceptionally thorough and exceptionally vicious.

“Yes,” said Pashavar. “And your next question, Serenity, is why Osmer Nelar’s head still graces the top of his neck.”

“Are you still outraged about that?” Lanthevel said, and Pashavar brought his fist down on the table, rattling the dishes and making Maia and Merrem Orthemo jump.

“The emperor is not above the law,” Pashavar said, glaring at Lanthevel with his ears dangerously flattened. “The emperor is the law. It sets the vilest kind of precedent for the emperor to ignore due process in that way.”

“We do not understand,” Maia said as humbly as he could.

“Osmer Nelar was never formally charged with treason—or with anything else,” said Captain Orthema. “He was confined in the Esthoramire at the emperor’s command for some three or four months and then relegated to Edonomee, as Your Serenity well knows. It was much the same with Arbelan Zhasan and with the Viscount Ulzhavel and many others.”

“My dear Orthema,” said Lanthevel, “are you actually offering a criticism of the late emperor?”

“No,” Orthema said without the slightest hint of offense at the baiting. “Merely stating a fact which Edrehasivar knows to be true.”

“Yes,” said Maia. “Did the Viscount Ulzhavel die in banishment? For we do not recognize the name.”

“He despaired,” said Lanthevel “and killed himself.”

“Not the revethvoran?” Maia said, alerted by Lanthevel’s phrasing.

“No, for that would have required Varenechibel’s command, or at least his permission, and Ulzhavel did not believe he would be granted even that.”

“Ulzhavel was unstable,” Pashavar said. “He got it from his mother’s line. But. That does not change the fact that he and many of Varenechibel’s other enemies were treated in a way we most heartily condemn.”

“And you are confident,” said Lanthevel, “that Edrehasivar will not throw you in the Esthoramire for criticizing the late emperor his father?”

“Ha!” said Pashavar with such force that Maia was not sure whether it was an exclamation or a laugh. “If Edrehasivar wished to start throwing people in the Esthoramire—or, better yet, the Nevennamire—we are not where he would start.” He gave Maia a sidelong look that was angry and mocking, but not entirely unkind. “Are we?”

“No,” said Maia, “but we could always change our mind.”

There was a moment of arrested silence, and Maia worried that he had judged Pashavar incorrectly; then Pashavar and Lanthevel burst out laughing, and Pashavar saluted Maia with his glass. “So the kitten has claws, after all.”

Maia smiled as best he could, grateful his skin was too dark to show a blush, and Orthema said quietly, “Just because a cat doesn’t scratch you doesn’t mean he can’t—as you well know, Lord Pashavar.”

“We are rebuked,” said Pashavar, still smiling.

“And there is a question we have not answered,” Lanthevel said. “Philology, Serenity, is the study of the origins of words.”

“The origins of words?” Maia said.

“We study how languages change,” said Lanthevel. “Why a word has one form among the silk farmers of the east and another among the herdsmen of the west. Why some words stay in use from generation to generation, while others are discarded. For example, for we see that you are still dubious, the word ‘morhath’ is the word for ‘sky’ that was used in the court of Your Serenity’s great-great-great-great-great-granduncle, Edrevechelar the Fourteenth. But no one uses it now or even knows its meaning. Our study is to track the course of its disappearance and the emergence of the word that took its place.”

“Actually,” Orthema said mildly, “that’s not quite true. We know the word ‘morhath’ because we heard it used by the Evressai barbarians.”

“You did?” said Lanthevel, all but pouncing on him, and Maia became less worried that this was an elaborate joke to discomfit the emperor. For one thing, he didn’t believe Orthema would be party to any such joke; for another, Lanthevel had become so intent on extracting details from Orthema that he seemed almost to have forgotten the emperor’s existence. Maia bent his head over his plate and listened as Orthema was slowly encouraged to speak, to describe the people he had spent much of his adult life fighting.

The Evressai Wars had been going on since the reign of Maia’s grandfather. The initial cause had been the refusal of the people of the Evressai Steppes to acknowledge Varevesena as their emperor or to pay tithes to the empire. The wars had continued on and off for more than eighty years because the barbarians could not drive the elves out, nor take the Anmur’theileian, the great fortress that had been under siege before it was even built, and the elves could not catch the barbarians.

“You cannot imagine, Serenity, how vast the steppes are. And the Nazhmorhathveras—that is how they name themselves, the People of the Night Sky—the Nazhmorhathveras do not build, nor fortresses nor towns nor even roads. They live in tents and they travel in groups of no more than twenty or thirty. Even if our scouts find a meeting of several houses, they will be scattered and gone before a battalion can reach them. And the Nazhmorhathveras are masters of the art of ambush. It is like trying to hold sand in your fist.”

“If the steppes are so vast, why do the Nazhmorhathveras not simply vanish into them?” Maia asked. He feared it was a stupid question, but it was beginning to seem to him that asking stupid questions was what an emperor’s job consisted of.

“Brute stubbornness,” snapped Pashavar.

“No,” said Orthema, “it is not that simple, though we did not understand the truth until we thought to ask a prisoner why the Nazhmorhathveras call the Anmur’theileian ‘Memory of Death.’ We had thought”—and he used the plural, with a gesture that seemed to encompass generations of knights and foot soldiers fighting and dying far from home—“that they named it that for the uncounted Nazhmorhathvereise dead. But this prisoner … do you know anything, Serenity, of the witches of the steppes?”

Maia shook his head; before he remembered that it behooved the emperor—as it behooved everyone (Setheris had said) not raised by goblin mudwalkers—to make a clear spoken response when asked a question, Orthema was speaking again: “The witches are the holy men and women of the Nazhmorhathveras, and they are always albino.”

The hiss of indrawn breath was from Dach’osmin Lanthevin; Lord Pashavar’s expression merely became more dour, and he muttered, “Barbarians,” just softly enough that Maia could not be certain he meant to be heard.

Orthema shrugged a little in acknowledgment—though not, Maia thought, in agreement—and continued: “We captured a witch, by pure stupid luck, nothing more, and for all that he was half-blind, he fought like a nazhcreis, the night-hunting cat of the steppes, which indeed was his usename. Our soldiers were wise enough not to kill him, and certainly his people bargained for his return as they had bargained for nothing and no one else.”

Orthema paused for a long swallow of wine. “But bargaining of that sort takes time, and we took over the care of the prisoner to ensure that he was not ill-used, for the common soldiers considered him an abomination and many of our fellow knights expressed the same opinion.”

“Which you did not share,” Maia said gently.

“Serenity,” Orthema said with a much more uncomfortable shrug. “We, too, have been called an abomination.” And he made the barest gesture toward his fierce orange-red eyes.

“But that’s—” Dach’osmin Lanthevin began, and stopped suddenly.

“Ridiculous?” Pashavar said dryly. “There were many mutters of ‘abomination’ when Varenechibel’s fourth empress bore him a child.”

“Please,” Maia said before Pashavar could embarrass the table further. “We wish to hear Captain Orthema’s story.”

“Serenity,” Orthema said with a slight inclination of his head; he seemed pleased. “We do not think that Nazhcreis Dein ever entirely trusted us, but he appreciated our care, and one day we asked him why his people called our fortress Memory of Death. For a long time he did not answer, and we thought perhaps he would not—for there were many questions he would not answer—but finally he said, ‘Because it is built on our dead.’ He gave us an unpleasant smile—we remember it still, for he was sharp-toothed, as all his people are. ‘We also call it Carrion-Bones.’ And finally, Serenity, we understood that he was speaking literally. The Anmur’theileian is built on a great outcropping of rock—they are scattered throughout the eastern steppes, like isolated mountains—and in truth we cannot fault our predecessors who chose to build there, for it offers both vantage and defense, which are otherwise not easily to be found. But what those builders did not know—or did not care, if they did know, and we have our suspicions—was that it was the custom of the Nazhmorhathveras to carry their dead to the top of this rock and leave them there to be stripped by the vultures and the nazhcreian. The rite of adulthood, Nazhcreis Dein told us, was to spend three days and three nights atop the rock with the dead.”

“We built our castle on their ulimeire?” Maia said, horrified.

“Essentially, Serenity, yes.”

“And is this the only rock that will do for their barbarian rites?” Pashavar said.

“That’s not the point,” Maia said, more sharply than he had ever imagined speaking to Pashavar. “Just because there is a ulimeire in Cetho does not make the tombs in the Untheileneise’meire less sacred.”

“Point taken,” Pashavar said sourly.

“But if that is true,” Maia said, “why have we not returned their ulimeire to them?”

Everyone stared at him in horror. “Serenity,” Orthema said finally, clearly struggling for words that would not be insulting or provoking, “it is not that simple.”

Pashavar, uninterested in tact, said, “Would you concede defeat in a war which is not of our making and which has claimed the lives of thousands of elvish men?”

“But the war is not of the making of anyone now alive,” Maia objected.

“Every effort was made by the late emperor your father to achieve peace,” said Lanthevel. “The barbarians—yes, yes, Orthema, the Nazhmorhathveras—refused.”

“Yes,” Maia said, “and were these efforts through the current Witness for Foreigners or the previous one?”

There was a short, appalled silence before Orthema rallied. “Serenity, if we simply yield to the Nazhmorhathveras, they will consider the towns of the badlands as no more than prey, as they did before the Anmur’theileian was built, and the people of the badlands are your loyal subjects and deserve protection.”

Before Maia could answer, Dach’osmin Lanthevin said, mildly but with a hint of steel all the same, “We feel that this discussion is better suited to the Michen’theileian or the Verven’theileian than to our dining room.”

“Of course,” Maia said. “We beg your pardon.”

There was another uncomfortable silence, in which Maia was reminded again that emperors did not apologize, and then Merrem Orthemo said bravely, “We are the daughter of the mayor of Vorenzhessar, which lies in the western badlands. We remember our grandmothers’ stories about the Evressai raids, and we assure Your Serenity, you have no stauncher subjects than the people of Vorenzhessar and towns like it.”

“Thank you, Merrem Orthemo,” Maia said. “It is a quandary and we must think on it carefully.” But she had also given him an opportunity to shift the conversation with some grace: “Then your town predates Ezho?”

“Oh, yes, Serenity.” And when she smiled, he could see that her canine teeth were long and sharp, as Orthema had said of Nazhcreis Dein. “Both our house and the house of our mother’s line have lived for centuries in the badlands. There were always people there, even before gold was discovered and the elves came. It is merely that now there are a great many more.”

The Ezho gold rush provided innocuous conversation for the rest of the meal; even Osmerrem Pashavaran unbent enough to tell the story of one of her grandmother’s brothers, who had gone north looking for gold and had found the mineral springs at Daiano instead—“which made him far more wealthy than a gold strike could ever have done, although even when he was a very old man, he would go out prospecting whenever he had the chance. But he never found gold.”

“Our mother went to Daiano for the waters,” said Dach’osmin Lanthevin. “They did not keep her alive, but they reduced her pain substantially, and for that we will always be grateful.”

Maia wondered if the springs at Daiano could have helped Chenelo, and he lost several turns in the conversation to a wash of futile anger at his father, who would never have granted her permission to try them.

His attention was reclaimed by a question from Lanthevel: “Serenity, do we understand correctly that you have halted negotiations over the Archduchess Vedero’s marriage?”

Maia’s ears flicked, causing a delicate chime from his silver and jade earrings. “Our sister is in mourning.”

“But you have broken off entirely the agreement with the Tethimada, which we have heard was very close to completion.”

“Do you trust your sources, Lanthevel?” Pashavar asked, and Lanthevel made an acknowledging gesture.

“But still,” he said. “It seems a little rash, Serenity, when you will only have to begin again from the beginning, and very likely from a less advantageous position.”

“We see nothing advantageous about our current position. And our sister does not want to be married.” He cursed the wine even as he saw everyone at the table become alert.

“For a woman of blood,” Osmerrem Pashavaran said harshly, “marriage is not about wanting. The archduchess knows that.”

“So did our mother,” Maia said. “We think it enough to inflict marriage upon our empress.”

“You would have done better to choose a daughter of a more traditional house,” Osmerrem Pashavaran said. “The Ceredada girls have just as many ridiculous notions as your sister.”

“We do not find our sister’s notions ridiculous,” Maia said. He took a deep breath and tried to let go of the scarlet-eyed rage that had swept over him. Osmerrem Pashavaran didn’t look like she minded a bit, but he was scaring Merrem Orthemo. “We do not think marriage is the only thing women are fit for, even if you do.”

“It is a vexed question,” said Lanthevel. “As is the question of what should become of women who—for whatever reason—cannot find a husband.” His gaze crossed his niece’s.

Dach’osmin Lanthevin said, “It is hard to find occupation when one has been trained for nothing but childbearing and then has no children to bear.”

“All women have duties,” Osmerrem Pashavaran snapped, although the betraying pinkness at the tips of her ears showed that she had not meant to hit a sore spot for the Lanthevada.

“But what do those duties consist of?” Dach’osmin Lanthevin pressed. “Does a woman not have a duty to use her talents, even if they are not talents for the care of children?”

“We had no idea you were so forward-thinking,” Osmerrem Pashavaran said sourly, making “forward-thinking” sound like the vilest of insults.

“We have had a certain amount of time to consider the matter,” Dach’osmin Lanthevin said. It was clear she was not backing down, and so it was a relief that she chose to turn the conversation to trivial matters while the plates were cleared.

Dessert was a cake made with spices from Anvernel, and from the natural silence of enjoyment, Maia dared finally to approach the subject of the bridge; as he’d expected, Pashavar denounced it instantly, but he had not expected him to describe it as a “cloud-fancy of Varenechibel’s. It will come to nothing except the waste of a prodigious amount of money.”

“We did not know our father was interested in the building of a bridge.”

“Oh yes,” said Lanthevel. “He felt that if a way was not found to bring the east and the west together, the Ethuveraz would split apart again. And we think he could not help but see that the Istandaärtha would always be a weakness unless a way could be found to bridge it.”

“True enough,” said Pashavar, “but not an excuse for encouraging every crazed gear-head he came across.”

“We have spoken to the gentleman of the Clocksmiths’ Guild,” Maia said. “We do not think he is crazed.”

“Oh have you now?” said Pashavar, and Maia braced himself. But Pashavar did not seem displeased. “We have thought you were too rule-abiding to be a good ruler—a paradox, you see—but perhaps we were wrong.”

“But you’re the Witness for the Judiciate!” Maia protested, which made everyone laugh.

“We said rule, not law,” Pashavar said tartly. “There is a difference, Serenity. An emperor who breaks laws is a mad dog and a danger, but an emperor who will never break a rule is nearly as bad, for he will never be able to recognize when a law must be changed.”

“We see,” Maia said, although he was not entirely sure he did.

“We do not by any means condone it as a habit,” Lord Pashavar said.

“It would be very disruptive,” Maia said with deliberate demureness, and that made them laugh again.

“So,” said Pashavar, “you have spoken to the clocksmith. We suppose this means you wish the clocksmith to speak to the Corazhas.”

“Yes,” Maia said.

“And you would prefer we did not stand in your way.”

“Yes, we would.”

“Have some brandy, Pashavar,” Lanthevel said. “It will make it easier to swallow your objections.”

“If your brandy were not so excellent, Lanthevel,” Pashavar said, “we would refuse on principle.” He said to Maia, “This does not change our opinion.”

“Of course it does not.”

“And it does not change either our advice or the vote we will cast.”

“We would not expect it to. We merely wish the clocksmiths to have a fair hearing.”

“Hmmph,” Pashavar said, mostly to his brandy snifter, but Maia took it as a capitulation, and indeed, at the next meeting of the Corazhas, when he took his courage in both hands and brought the matter of the Clocksmiths’ Guild and the bridge forward again, Pashavar did not block him, and the Corazhas agreed that the clocksmiths’ ideas should be heard. It was not a unanimous agreement, but Maia had never expected it would be. What mattered was that, without Pashavar to back him, Bromar could not rally enough support to manage the veklevezhek Merrem Halezho had spoken of.

It was an accomplishment on a day that was otherwise full of frustrations. First, Chavar had had to be pinned into confessing that the investigation into the wreck of the Wisdom of Choharo was making no headway. “They just need more time, Serenity,” Chavar said, and Maia thought that earnestness sat very badly on him. And then Maia had had an audience with Lord Bromar that went nowhere and achieved nothing except confirming Maia in his opinion that Bromar was an idiot—and, no doubt, confirming Bromar in his opinion that the emperor was a madman. Peace with the Nazhmorhathveras was not even to be considered, and if the Anmur’theileian was built on a barbarian ulimeire, Bromar’s blank expression said even before he opened his mouth that he had no idea why Maia considered that either distressing or important. The idea of negotiating with the Nazhmorhathveras didn’t even get far enough for the Corazhas to ridicule it.

Maia returned to the Alcethmeret that evening tired and frustrated, but he reminded himself to be pleased that at least he had gotten the clocksmiths their hearing. Mer Halezh would be pleased, too, and Merrem Halezho. He did not know if Min Vechin would be pleased, and he shied away from wondering. Better not to think about her.

Winternight was less than two weeks away; Maia dined privately with Arbelan Zhasanai for the final time until after the last of the guests and dignitaries had left the Untheileneise Court—which would be a week or more after the solstice. “The celebration keeps expanding,” he said. “Like the story about the weaver-woman’s cat.”

“Yarn around every stick of furniture in the house?” Arbelan said, smiling.

“Exactly,” Maia said.

“Did your mother tell you that story?”

“Of course,” Maia said. “She had a picture book with many wonder-tales in it—destroyed, we suppose, along with her other things when she died. She had brought it from Barizhan.”

“You miss her,” Arbelan said.

“Of course,” Maia said again. “We loved her very much.”

Arbelan was silent for a moment, contemplating the wine in her glass. “We miscarried once,” she said.

Maia managed not to stare at her, developing a rapt interest in his own glass, and she continued, “It was as close as we ever came to giving Varenechibel a child. He never knew of it.”

Maia had to clear his throat. “How far along?…”

“Four months, maybe? Only just long enough that we knew for certain it was a miscarriage. Long enough that we had begun to dream—not of Varenechibel’s approval, for we had then been married to him ten years and we did know better, but of the child. Of the stories we would tell our child, the songs we would teach him. Or her.” She stopped, then said fiercely, “We would have cherished a daughter.”

She knew, then, of Varenechibel’s disregard for his daughters and granddaughters. “Our mother,” Maia said carefully, “told us once, very shortly before she died, that she did not regret her marriage to Varenechibel because it had brought her us. We have never been sure that she should have felt that way, although we know that she told us the truth. She, too, would have cherished a daughter.”

“Yes,” Arbelan said. She sounded satisfied, as if he had answered a question that had been worrying her, which made him hope that perhaps she would answer a question for him in turn. He said, “Do you know your great-niece Csethiro?”

“The one who is to become your empress?” Arbelan said, her eyebrows raised mockingly. “We do not know her well—we know none of our family very well anymore, for while they were not forbidden to visit us at Cethoree…”

“Yes,” Maia said, remembering what Berenar had told him about Arbelan’s brother.

“We know nothing to Csethiro’s discredit,” Arbelan said, watching him now as if she was not sure what he wanted from her.

“No, we are sure not,” Maia said. “We just wondered what sort of a person she is.”

“Ah. We are sorry, Edrehasivar. She wrote us a most dutiful letter upon the signing of your marriage contract, and we hope that perhaps we may come to know her better, but we can tell you nothing except she is our brother’s grandchild and she is two-and-twenty.”

Three years older. It was not so much, really, although it felt like a yawning abysm. And dutiful, which he had witnessed for himself.

“Thank you,” Maia said, and hoped he did not sound as desolate as he felt. Dach’osmin Ceredin had warned him about Min Vechin, but he wanted a dutiful companion no more than he wanted a mercenary one. He wanted a friend, and that, it seemed, was exactly what he could not have.

He retired to bed early that evening. Nemer and Avris braided his hair while Esha tidied away the day’s jewels and fetched a hot brick for the emperor’s bed. Maia said good night to Dazhis, who guarded the outer chamber this evening, and then good night to Telimezh, who took his preferred position in the window embrasure and said softly, “Sleep well, Serenity.” Maia then lay and silently repeated the prayer to Cstheio until he fell asleep. It was as close to meditation as he could come.

His dreams were chaotic nonsense; he woke suddenly and was not sure what had woken him. Some noise—a choked cry? It was pitch black in his bedroom, no hints of dawn creeping around the curtains. He held his breath, straining to hear, but there was nothing.

“Telimezh?” he whispered into the darkness, telling himself that he was a fool, a coward, as bad as a little boy … but Telimezh did not answer.

At that moment, Maia stopped trying to believe nothing was wrong.

“Telimezh?” He sat up, shoved the bedclothes back. He knew without any need to wonder that if Telimezh had had to leave the room for any reason, Dazhis would have taken his place. Therefore, Telimezh was in the room, but unable to answer him; Maia was thinking confusedly of the fits suffered by one of the men who had sometimes helped Haru in the grounds of Edonomee, and his principal concern, as he groped for the bedside lamp, was to be sure Telimezh was not asphyxiating on his own tongue.

But then the door slammed open, and he realized that he was worried about the wrong thing. The light was blinding; he got one hand up to shield his eyes, struggled upright, and immediately fell over Telimezh, who was lying on the floor, either insensible or dead.

Hard hands grabbed him, dragging him to his feet, and he had a blurry glimpse of the Drazhadeise crest before a bag dropped over his head. His hands went up to it automatically, but they were caught and pulled back down.

“None of that, Your Grace,” said a voice he did not recognize. “We’ve no orders to hurt you, nor desire neither, but we won’t hesitate if you make it necessary. Understand?”

Maia tried to answer and got a choking mouthful of the bag. He nodded, and the voice said, “All right, then—let’s go.”

He did not know where they took him. There were hallways, and stairs—down which he nearly fell—and a doorway they bent him double to shove him through, and more stairs, narrow and cold, and the scent of stone and water, and then a raised door lintel that he stubbed his toes on and fell, sprawling on cold flagstones. He was lifted to his feet again and the bag was jerked off his head, leaving him blinking at his sister-in-law Sheveän Drazharan, Princess of the Untheileneise Court.

He was not surprised to see her. The Drazhadeise crest had pointed to either Vedero or Sheveän, and aside from the fact that he would not have believed it of Vedero, her household, that of an unmarried woman still under the protection of the head of her house, did not include armsmen. And Vedero had never sought to deny his right to the imperial throne. Sheveän had, and his hope that her muttering and discontent would come to nothing had clearly been ill-founded.

He did not speak, aware that he must be a ludicrous figure in nothing but his nightshirt and with his hair braided down his back, and unwilling to give her further ammunition, either by saying something half-witted or simply by being unable to control his voice. Besides, he was wearily certain he knew what she would say. She stared back at him, her eyes hard, and they might have remained thus for some time, save that a door opened behind her and a man came in.

Uleris Chavar, the Lord Chancellor of the Ethuveraz.

Sheveän’s presence had not surprised Maia; Chavar’s did. But that was foolish and naïve: Chavar had been opposed to him from the first.

“Your Grace,” Chavar said stiffly. “We are sorry for this necessity, but we believe it is what the emperor would want.”

He meant Varenechibel.

“You are not fit,” Sheveän said furiously. “Consorting with goblins, dishonoring the dead.”

“Using your influence to promote the most ludicrous and impossible schemes,” Chavar finished. “We cannot let you bring the Ethuveraz into chaos and ruin, as you will most surely do if you are not stopped. We have the papers ready for your signature.”

“Papers?”

“For your abdication,” Chavar said impatiently.

“You will abdicate in favor of our son,” Sheveän said, her voice still tight with the fury she had been nursing for months, “and retire to a monastery in northern Thu-Cethor.”

“Dedicated to Cstheio,” Chavar said; he seemed reluctant to let Sheveän go uninterrupted for long, whether because she was a woman or for the very good reason that he was afraid of what she might say. “The monks take a vow of silence.”

The terrible thing, worse than anything else, was that he was tempted. Silence, austerity, the worship of the Lady of Falling Stars. No responsibility for anyone but himself. What stopped him from capitulating then and there, signing anything they wanted, was not desire for the throne, nor even care for his subjects. It was knowing in the cold marrow of his bones that no matter what Chavar promised—or even believed—Sheveän would have him murdered as soon as she could find someone to do it.

Then other considerations caught up to him: the fact that Idra was a child still; that regencies in the Ethuveraz were a tradition of disasters; that Chavar’s policies would lead to the ruin he accused Maia of fostering; that they still did not know who had blown up the Wisdom of Choharo; that, truly, the last thing anyone needed was another new emperor before Winternight.

He asked abruptly, “What did you do to our nohecharei?”

“Lieutenant Telimezh is unharmed,” Chavar said. “A soporific cantrip, nothing more.”

“And Dazhis Athmaza?”

Sheveän laughed, as brittle as new ice. “Who do you think performed the cantrip?”

Maia was swamped with the sick heat of humiliation and betrayal. If even his nohecharei turned against him, maybe Chavar and Sheveän were right. Maybe he merely deluded himself that his rule was preferable to their alternative.

Pull thyself together. The voice was sharp, contemptuous—the voice he thought of as Setheris, but Setheris would be exulting in his downfall. Perhaps, he thought in half-hysterical whimsy, it was the Emperor Edrehasivar VII, rebuking Maia Hobgoblin as a steward would a scullery boy.

Pull thyself together. It is not for thy Lord Chancellor to decide whether thou art emperor or not—and even less for thy sister-in-law.

He stood straighter, look Chavar squarely in the face. “We would speak to Idra.” Chavar’s eyes bulged, and Maia found he was detached enough now to be gratified by it. “If you wish to maintain this charade of abdication, we will speak to our successor. Otherwise, kill us and have done with it.”

“Do not speak recklessly, Your Grace,” Chavar said.

“We do not, we assure you. Let us speak to Idra or murder us. It is your choice.”

Chavar and Sheveän retreated into a whispered discussion, quite heated, which resulted in a pair of armsmen being sent to fetch Idra. Maia was relieved by the evidence that Idra had not been involved in his mother’s plotting, and found himself thinking again about the nightmarish regencies of previous centuries. It was a rare child emperor who survived to see adulthood; he did not like Idra’s chances of joining their number.

It was some ten or fifteen minutes before the Prince of the Untheileneise Court appeared, wrapped in a dressing gown that must have belonged to his father. “Mother, what’s toward? Why do—” And then he recognized Maia, and he became very still, his gray eyes going wide.

Maia said, “Greetings, cousin.”

“Serenity,” Idra said, and managed a passable bow. “Mother, what is the meaning of this?”

She did not answer immediately, and Maia wondered when—and what—she had been planning to tell him. Would she have woken him in the morning with the news that he was emperor? Idra waited, and finally Sheveän said, “It is what your grandfather would have wanted. You know he regarded you as his heir as much as your father.”

“You are deposing our uncle,” Idra said flatly.

“He isn’t fit,” Sheveän said. “A half-breed upstart with neither wits nor manners—he is no emperor, Idra!”

“He will ruin the Ethuveraz,” Chavar struck in. “He has no notion of business or statecraft.”

Idra was frowning. “Surely that is the purpose for which an emperor has advisers.”

“You do not understand,” Chavar said.

“No one expects you to,” Sheveän added. “You are a child still.”

“We are only four years younger than our uncle,” Idra said. “And if we do not understand, as he does not understand, how is it that we will be a better emperor than he?” Setheris had taught Maia a smattering of rhetoric and logic, enough that he could see Idra had been much more carefully taught.

“You will have regents, Idra,” Sheveän said.

Idra’s eyes met Maia’s. Alarm was visible in his face and ears; and Maia wondered if he, too, had been taught the histories of Beltanthiar V and Edrethelma VIII and all those other wretched boys entombed in the Untheileneise’meire. Idra said, “And what will become of our uncle, Mother? Will you … will you have him murdered?”

“Of course not,” Sheveän said much too warmly.

“He will go to a monastery in northern Thu-Cethor,” said Chavar. “The monks will treat him kindly.”

Idra was silent for some moments, still frowning. Then he said, “No.”

“What?” said Chavar and Sheveän in ragged chorus.

“No,” Idra said again. “We will not usurp our uncle’s throne.”

“Idra!” Sheveän said, but Idra let her get no further.

“We do not think this is what our grandfather would wish.”

“Idra, you know how he felt about—”

“He was an emperor,” Idra said, glaring at his mother. “He would not wish for the laws to be broken in this manner, and merely for personal preferences. And our father would be ashamed of you.”

It was an oddly childish note against his very adult reasoning, and that made it a particularly vicious blow. It was the first time Maia had seen Sheveän discomfited by anything. She did not answer; Chavar said, “You do not understand the larger reasons—”

“You dislike his policies,” Idra said. “The entire court knows that, Lord Chavar. But our tutor, Leilis Athmaza, says that that does not mean the policies are bad. And we do not see how you can know that the policies are bad when Edrehasivar has been emperor less than a quarter of a year.”

“You know nothing of—”

“Which is why we cannot feel we would be a better emperor than our uncle,” Idra said. “We will not do it.”

Chavar was beginning to look panicked. “Do you know what you are doing to your mother, boy? Do you know what will happen to her?”

The same thing that will happen to you, Maia thought unkindly. But he did not speak. He had to know if Idra could hold to his decision.

Idra said unhappily, “We cannot change what she has done. And surely, Lord Chavar, that is an even worse reason to usurp our uncle than those you have already put forward.”

Sheveän said, “Idra, we have come too far to stop now. It is already too late for your qualms.”

“Mother,” Idra said, and Maia was startled to realize Idra was every bit as furious as Sheveän, “it is useless to say we have done anything. We knew nothing of this. If we had known, you would not have ‘come too far to stop,’ for we would never have agreed to what you have done. We cannot believe you would do this to us.”

“To you? Idra, we did this for you!”

Idra stepped jerkily back, like a cat discovering it has put its paw in something sticky. “Mother,” he said softly, “that is a terrible lie.”

Sheveän’s face went bone-white, and she snarled, “Enough of this. Talar, take the archduke away.”

It was obviously a euphemism, and Maia suspected it was a prearranged one. If she’d had the sense, or ruthlessness, to use it instead of allowing Idra to be brought into the room, it might have worked, but the armsmen had been listening, and they were uncertain now, looking from Sheveän to Idra in obvious expectation of having the order countermanded.

“Talar,” Idra said, “we regret to be forced to ask you not to take orders from our mother any longer.”

“Idra!” Sheveän looked as much shocked as angry—as if it had never occurred to her that Idra would actively defy her. Idra looked back at her without any outward sign of distress, but Maia could see that he was starting to tremble.

I never meant to make thee choose, he thought miserably, and the captain of the armsmen said, “We didn’t know, Your Highness.”

“We will speak of that later,” Idra said. “Serenity, what are your commands?”

At that moment, perhaps anticlimactically and perhaps not, the Untheileneise Guard kicked the door down.

Later, Maia was told the story of how Nemer, struck down by Sheveän’s men, had roused himself from the cold marble floor. He had crawled to Telimezh; finding that Telimezh could not be woken, Nemer had managed, despite a severe concussion, to crawl or stagger or fall down three flights of stairs to the pneumatic station, where there was always a girl on duty. The girl had first sent an urgent message to the Untheileneise Guards’ pneumatic station, then roused her relief, who woke the Alcethmeret. Not surprisingly, it had been Csevet who had thought to wonder where Sheveän Drazharan was and what company she was keeping, and from there the rest was inevitable. Maia had only to keep the guardsmen from arresting Idra along with Chavar and Sheveän and Sheveän’s armsmen.

It was not yet dawn, although Maia would not have been surprised to find the sun setting. He gave orders for Idra and his sisters to be moved into the Alcethmeret; had guards sent to watch, though not to arrest without good reason, the Chavada and lesser Drazhada who lived in the Untheileneise Court—and what was he supposed to do about Nurevis?; directed a doctor to be fetched to Nemer; and then said defiantly to Csevet, “Everything else can wait another four hours,” and went back to his cold, disordered bed.

Where he did not sleep, but lay and made miserable lists of all the things he would have to deal with, starting with the appointment of a new Lord Chancellor and ending with Dazhis.

The thought of Dazhis propelled him out of bed again. Beshelar said, “Serenity?” sounding more than a little startled.

It had barely even registered on him that Beshelar and Cala had been, along with Csevet, the first of his household to reach him in the warren of cellars under the apartments of the Prince of the Untheileneise Court. That was how accustomed to his nohecharei he had become: he didn’t even see them. He certainly hadn’t seen Dazhis’s discontent, and it must have been obvious if Sheveän and Chavar had been able to exploit it.

Perhaps he merely thought thee unfit to rule—but he shoved that thought away and demanded of Beshelar, “What will happen to Dazhis?”

Beshelar now looked both startled and unhappy. “Serenity, that is a matter for the Athmaz’are, not—”

Maia stalked across to the bedroom door and flung it open. Cala, alone in the outer room, jerked to his feet. “Serenity, are you—” He had been crying.

“What will happen to Dazhis?”

Cala’s color went from bad to worse, but he made no attempt to evade the question. “Serenity, he will commit revethvoran.”

Revethvoran. Suicide according to the strict rituals of Ulis. The world wavered distressingly before Maia’s eyes, but Cala grabbed his arm and all but forced him to sit. “Put your head down,” Cala said, and he did not sound at all like he was talking to an emperor. “Deep breaths. That’s it.”

“We beg pardon,” Maia said, aware of Beshelar looming in the doorway. “We did not mean to.”

“Of course not,” Cala said, and Maia was weakly grateful for the kindness in his voice. “It was a shock, Serenity. We are to blame.”

“No. For we did ask. Is there anything we can do? Can we petition the Adremaza for clemency?”

“Serenity.” Cala stopped, and when Maia dared to straighten up, he saw that Cala was struggling for words.

“It was a foolish question,” he said, wishing to free Cala from the necessity of answering.

“No, Serenity, not foolish. But … Dazhis broke his oath as a nohecharis, and he did so not merely by carelessness, but by choice. He chose to betray you, and that is not something—it is not the Adremaza’s decision, Serenity, nor is it yours. Nor anyone’s. It is the oath itself.” He paused, swallowed hard, and added, “If you had died, we”—the plural, and with a flick of a gesture to include Beshelar and the absent Telimezh—“would be committing revethvoran with him.”

“It is his deserving,” Beshelar growled.

“Oh,” Maia said.

Cala said gently, “Dazhis is not the only one who broke an oath last night.”

“No,” Maia said, but Dazhis was the only one he had liked. Childish nonsense, this prattle of “liking.” He shook his head. “May we see him? Before—” He had to stop, swallowing hard against the knot in his throat.

“He must come to beg your pardon, Serenity,” Cala said, “to make what peace with you he can.”

“We hope he will beg Telimezh’s pardon as well,” Beshelar said.

“Yes,” Cala said. “That is another broken oath.”

“Why?” The question burst out with such force that it left Maia’s throat raw. “Why did he do it?”

“Truthfully, Serenity,” said Cala, “we cannot imagine. We would—” He stopped quite dead, then lifted his chin and said, “I would never do such a thing. I cannot imagine hurting you in that way. Even if it were not a matter of an oath.”

“Nor can I,” Beshelar said, although he sounded like the words were being dragged from him by main force, and he was quick to change the subject. “Serenity, you need to sleep. We can summon Doctor Ushenar to prescribe a sleeping draft, if you think it would help.”

“No,” Maia said. “We cannot sleep now. We should not have abandoned our duties as we did.”

“Serenity,” Cala protested, “you have abandoned nothing.”

“And fainting will not accomplish anything,” Beshelar said roughly. “We will have Doctor Ushenar sent for.”

“No!” Maia said. “We wish no doctor.”

“Then at least lie down again,” Cala said. “If you wish, you may tell us of the plans you need to make and we will act as your secretary.”

It was so obviously a sop to a tantrumy child that Maia flushed and pulled away. “No, we thank you. Summon our edocharei, please.”

Avris and Esha were as disapproving as Beshelar and Cala. Maia asked pointedly after Nemer. “He is resting, Serenity,” Avris said, and added, every bit as pointedly, “As you should be.”

“We are entirely unharmed,” Maia said, “and we are not so frail that one night’s interrupted sleep will send us into a decline.”

“You should look more carefully into your mirror, Serenity,” Esha said tartly.

“We do not recall soliciting anyone’s opinion,” Maia said, knowing his anger was disproportionate but unable to banish it. “There is much to be done, and we feel it ill behooves us to coddle ourself.”

His edocharei did not attempt to argue further, and Maia descended to the Tortoise Room in a state of cold banked fury he could never remember feeling before in his life. Csevet either observed it or had been warned, for he made no remonstration, but was entirely businesslike. “Serenity, we regret that there is clear evidence Osmin Bazhevin knew of the Princess Sheveän’s plot.”

“Osmin Bazhevin?” Maia said blankly. “What does … oh.”

“She confessed as soon as the Untheileneise Guard entered the princess’s apartments. She knew the whole, but was too afraid of the princess to speak.”

“The woman is an idiot,” Maia said before he could stop himself.

Csevet’s ears twitched, but he merely said, “Yes, Serenity,” and waited.

“Put her in the Esthoramire with Sheveän,” Maia said, and closed his teeth sharply on the words that wanted to follow. It was unfair to call Osmin Bazhevin ungrateful when all he had done was allow her to pick the least repellent of the unattractive options before her. But he had given her a choice; he had permitted her to live with Sheveän even though he had doubted the wisdom of it. And he was so very tired of betrayal this morning.

Csevet cleared his throat. “Also, Serenity, it has been necessary to detain most of the Lord Chancellor’s staff, including your cousin, Osmer Nelar.”

“We only wish we were surprised,” Maia said. “How much of our government is complicit, do you think?”

“The Witness for the Prelacy,” Csevet said promptly. “The monastery seems to have been his idea.”

“We must thank him,” Maia said bitterly. His discontent had been easier to ignore when he had been unable to imagine an alternative.

“The other Witnesses of the Corazhas are uncompromised, Serenity. They send you messages of support, as do the members of the Parliament—most particularly the Marquess Lanthevel. Our staff is pursuing every tendril of this plot.” He hesitated, and Maia made a conscious effort to stop scowling.

“What is it, Csevet?”

“We wish only to assure Your Serenity that we have no doubts of the loyalty of your household and secretaries.”

“Except for Dazhis.”

“Serenity,” Csevet agreed unhappily. “And we … we would like to assure you, Serenity, of our faithfulness. If you have any doubts, we will resign our post. We would not—”

“Csevet, stop!” Maia stared at him. “Why on earth would you think we doubted you?”

“Not that, Serenity, but we came to you from the Lord Chancellor and we know … we know that when you chose us as your secretary, you chose between us and Osmer Nelar. We do not wish you to feel that you are stuck with—”

“We do not,” Maia said firmly. “We could not ask for a better secretary, and it has never once occurred to us to doubt your loyalty. Nor do we do so now.” He managed a ragged quirk of a smile. “Were you part of Lord Chavar’s plot, it would have been much better executed.”

He saw the weight fall off Csevet’s shoulders, and Csevet’s returning smile was better than his own. “Then, Serenity, there is one other personal matter which we think you might deal with this morning.”

“Oh?” Maia said.

“The children, Serenity. Prince Idra and his sisters. They have been installed in the Alcethmeret’s nursery as you instructed, but the maid assigned to them says they are very fearful and anxious. We think it might help them greatly if you were to speak to them.”

“And what are we to say?” Maia asked dismally. “Never speak of your mother the traitor again?”

Csevet said, “They understand what their mother has done, Serenity. Even Ino, the youngest. We think they would be calmer if they knew you did not blame them.”

“But of course we do not,” Maia said.

“Then that is what you should say.”

“But we cannot—Csevet, we know nothing of children!”

“Serenity,” Csevet said, “they have no one else.”

The truth of it drove Maia to the Alcethmeret’s nursery, which was in a side wing off the ground floor with its own set of vast grilles. Empresses, Maia had noticed, might live where they liked in the Untheileneise Court—neither Csoru nor Arbelan had ever lived in the Alcethmeret, nor had Varenechibel’s second wife, the Empress Leshan—but an emperor’s heirs were a different matter. Perhaps I should have had Idra here from the start, he thought, but he knew he could not have done it.

There were a pair of guardsmen at the grilles and another at the door to the nursery sitting room. Maia was relieved to see that no one was taking any chances with the children’s safety. One of the guards opened the door and announced, “His Imperial Serenity, Edrehasivar the Seventh.”

Yes, because that will make frightened children feel much safer, Maia thought—but he could not rebuke the guard merely for doing the correct thing. He entered the nursery, Cala preceding him and Beshelar following, and found Sheveän’s children had risen to meet him, each of the girls clutching one of their brother’s hands. Idra bowed, and Ino and Mireän curtsied, all without releasing each other. All three of them were red-eyed and rather blotchy. The Alcethmeret was full of crying people today.

“Please sit down,” Maia said, feeling gawky and ill-bred and dark as stormclouds. He sat down himself, in a shabby armchair, and waited until the children were seated again on the sofa. He took a deep breath, grateful that Beshelar had closed the door, and dropped formality. “My name is Maia. I hope that you will feel you can call me by it.”

The little girls’ eyes widened. Idra bit his lower lip, then said carefully, “Thank you, Maia.”

He couldn’t reckon how long it had been since anyone had called him by his own name—and there had been only Setheris anyway, since Chenelo’s death. The familiar-first felt strange and stiff to his tongue and teeth and lips. “I am very sorry about what has happened.”

“It isn’t your fault!” Idra flared up, immediately outraged, and Maia had to blink hard to keep his composure.

“Your mother would not agree,” he pointed out, “and we—I do not know what she may have said about me.”

Idra took his meaning. “She did not speak of you to us,” he said—plural, not formal. “We know only that you are our half uncle, the emperor.”

Maia forgot himself far enough to make a face. “It sounds so stuffy,” he said apologetically, and was startled and pleased when Ino giggled, though she immediately hid her face against her brother’s arm. “And I don’t feel I can properly be your uncle; I’m only four years older. Will you call me cousin, instead?”

“If you wish it,” Idra said a little doubtfully.

“I do,” Maia said.

“Cousin Maia,” said Mireän, “what’s going to happen to Mama?”

Maia flinched, then told the truth: “I don’t know, Mireän. I do not wish to have her executed, but I do not know if she can be trusted.”

“Even if…” Idra swallowed hard. “She would have to be imprisoned, wouldn’t she?”

“Yes,” Maia said. “And she would be forbidden to speak or write to you.”

“I am your heir,” Idra said somberly.

“Yes.”

“What about Ino and me?” Mireän asked. “We aren’t your heirs.”

Maia met her eyes, although it wasn’t easy. “Mer Aisava, our secretary, tells us—I beg your pardon. Mer Aisava tells me that you understand what your mother was trying to do.”

“She was trying to make Idra be emperor,” Ino said. “But Idra doesn’t want to!”

“I know,” Maia said.

“And she was going to have you sent away,” Mireän said. “Like you’re going to do to her.”

“Like Papa and Grandpapa got sent away,” Ino said, her eyes filling with tears. “So they can’t come back.”

Maia looked at Idra, who said simply, “It was wrong,” before he got out his handkerchief and turned to tend to his younger sister.

“Because you’re emperor,” Mireän said. “We saw you get crowned and everything. And I still don’t understand how Idra could be emperor if you weren’t dead.”

“I did tell thee, Miree,” Idra said, perhaps a fraction too quickly. “Mama wished Cousin Maia to abdicate.”

“Yes, but I don’t—” Mireän began, having her full share of the Drazhadeise stubbornness, then encountered a glare from her brother and subsided.

As he could not honestly reassure Mireän, and yet had no actual proof that Sheveän would have murdered him, Maia thought he would do better to leave that ugly question alone. They would have to come to terms with it on their own. He said, “I wished you to know that I do not blame any of you. I know that you must be uncomfortable and unhappy, and I am sorry for that. Idra, is there anything I can do?”

He trusted Idra not to make impossible demands, and Idra, after careful thought, said, “Might we have some of our own household about us? Not the armsmen, we understand that perfectly, but my tutor and the girls’ nursery maid?”

“Oh, please, Cousin Maia,” Mireän said, “Suler doesn’t dislike you or anything,” as Ino said with perfect conviction, “Suler wouldn’t do anything wrong.” Maia noticed that the little girls clearly loved their maid in a way they did not love their mother. But of course it was their maid who took care of them; Sheveän was not Chenelo, Barizheise and alone, to tend her children herself.

“I will see what I can do,” he said, and got up, uncomfortably aware of the duties that were undoubtedly mounting up on the other side of the nursery grilles.

“Thank you, Cousin Maia,” Idra said, with Ino and Mireän a soft chorus behind him. Idra bowed and the girls curtsied, and Maia left them still clinging to each other in the cold and shabby nursery of the Alcethmeret.