28

A Letter from Mer Celehar

Apparently, when left to their own devices, goblins liked to have meals that lasted for half a day, one course of tiny, beautiful foods after another. They also disdained the business of seating all the guests around a table and making them stay there, preferring to set the courses out on small tables where one could sit if one chose, but one could also simply wander the room. It unnerved Maia, because he couldn’t tell how to be polite.

He observed that the elvish courtiers in attendance were all from lesser families, and almost all from the western principalities, the exception being a lord of the Zherinada from the southern borders of Thu-Tetar. All of them seemed to speak fluent Barizhin, as well, and Maia sat and thought about all the things he was missing due to the protocols and safeguards that kept the emperor separated from all but the very highest tier of his subjects. They were not comfortable thoughts.

Ambassador Gormened approached, dropped to one knee.

“Please,” Maia said, and only barely stopped himself from saying don’t. “Please rise, Ambassador.”

“Thank you, Serenity.” The ambassador looked worried. “Are you well? May we fetch you anything?”

“No, we thank you. We are well.” And of course he was worried: the emperor sitting in a corner like this. Maia screwed up his courage and asked, “Will you introduce us to someone?”

“Of course, Serenity. To whom?”

“Anyone,” Maia said helplessly.

“Any … oh.” The ambassador’s expression was briefly distant; then he said, “Perhaps Your Serenity would be pleased to join our wife? She is speaking to the wife of the Hezhethoreise captain.”

“We would be very pleased,” Maia said. He was grateful not to be dropped into any of the heavily political and financial conversations being pursued in various parts of the room, even if he suspected Gormened’s motive was to spare the lords and merchants the emperor’s presence, and he gladly followed the ambassador to the widely bowed window recess, where Osmerrem Gormened sat with a young goblin woman. Maia wondered if he ought to inflict himself on them, but both women rose and curtsied with perfect composure, and Merrem Vizhenka smiled and said in excellent, if heavily accented, Ethuverazhin, “We are most pleased and honored to meet you, Serenity.” Her skin was charcoal gray, not quite the perfect goblin-black, and her eyes were pale yellow. She was much taller than Osmerrem Gormened—an inch taller than Maia himself—and her figure was opulent, even in a heavy winter court dress.

“Thank you,” Maia said. “We are glad to be able to welcome the Avar and his people.”

It was a trite sentiment, and awkwardly phrased, but Merrem Vizhenka did not seem to notice. She said, “Is he what you expected, your grandfather?”

It was not a question Maia had been prepared for anyone to ask, and that must have shown on his face, for she said, “We should inform you, we suppose, that we are your aunt.”

“Aunt?” Maia croaked.

“We are the Avar’s youngest daughter.” She cleared her throat. “He was not married to our mother.”

“Then you aren’t the mad one?” Maia said and was immediately mortified, but Merrem Vizhenka threw her head back and laughed; her laugh was very like the Avar’s.

“No, our sister Thever does not travel,” she said. “And we would not call her mad, though much given to nervous fancies.”

“Have we other aunts?” He did not need to ask about uncles; even an illegitimate son of the Great Avar of Barizhan would have been brought to the emperor’s attention.

“Three others,” Merrem Vizhenka said. “We doubt your mother knew of them, any more than she knew of us. It is only since her death that the Avar has chosen to acknowledge us. Your aunt Ursu is a sea captain’s wife; your aunt Holitho is in the Convent of the Lighthouse Keepers in Urvekh’; and your aunt Shaleän, the oldest of the Avar’s daughters, ran away in her youth, disguised herself as a boy, and became a sailor. She is now a sea captain, and in truth no one in Barizhan quite knows what to do with her. The Avar acknowledges her, but he does not discuss her.”

“What is the name of her ship?” Maia asked, and learned the difference between Merrem Vizhenka’s polite smile and her real smile.

“Her ship is the Glorious Dragon, and her home port is not in Barizhan at all. Shaleän has a wife in Solunee-over-the-Water.”

Osmerrem Gormened said mildly, “Nadeian, perhaps you should not explode all your boilers at once? He is your nephew, not your enemy.”

“But we wish him to know,” Merrem Vizhenka said passionately. “And how will he know if we do not tell him? For we know full well the Avar’s ministers have decided it is better that we his daughters not be spoken of, even if we are acknowledged. Besides, why else would Vorzhis introduce him to us and then leave?”

Maia was also wondering that, and had come up with no more plausible answer. Osmerrem Gormened sighed. “Our husband is ever serpentine. But, Nadeian, we do not wish you to get in trouble.”

“She will not,” Maia said. “We are grateful—thank you, Merrem Vizhenka. We loved our mother very much, and we are glad to know of her sisters.” He managed to smile at her. “We are glad that you told us.”

“Then we care not for the ministers,” said Merrem Vizhenka. “There was not time between the Avar’s decision and our departure for messages to reach either Holitho or Shaleän, but Ursu and her children send warm regards and their hopes that perhaps someday they may meet you.”

“It is very kind of them,” Maia managed, feeling a rush of prickling tears, which he blinked back. “Will you tell us of the Convent of the Lighthouse Keepers? For we have not heard of it before, and are curious.”

Merrem Vizhenka agreed willingly, and she was still explaining the treacherous rocks and currents of Urvekh’, and the three lighthouses maintained by the votaries of Ashevezhkho, the Barizheise goddess of the sea, when Csevet apologetically approached. “Serenity, ladies.” He knelt. “Serenity, we regret the intrusion, but there is a matter which we think you will wish to attend to.”

And if Csevet thought so, he was most probably correct. “Excuse us, please,” Maia said to Osmerrem Gormened and Merrem Vizhenka. They rose with him and curtsied, and he followed Csevet out of the ambassador’s dav. The Hezhethorei on guard saluted magnificently.

Csevet led him to a small withdrawing room, hung with badly faded pink silk wallpaper. It had clearly not been used in a very long time, and Maia supposed that was as good a promise of privacy as could be had without making the long journey back to the Alcethmeret—and an absence that prolonged would lead to inquiries, from the ambassador if from no one else.

“Serenity,” Csevet said, “a letter has arrived from Mer Celehar.” He held it out—a thick sheaf of brownish paper—and Maia exercised all his good breeding and did not snatch it out of Csevet’s hand. The seal was broken, and he raised his eyebrows at Csevet.

“No, Serenity. It was broken when it reached our hands. We have set an undersecretary to make inquiries, but it is not likely anything will come of it. Someone was probably well paid to learn its contents, and also well paid to hold his, or her, tongue. The, er, clumsiness of the method also suggests that this is someone who has not made a habit of reading other persons’ mail clandestinely, so there is little hope of finding out on the basis of other crimes.”

“Could you have done it more neatly?”

“Yes, Serenity,” Csevet said, sounding almost offended. “We do not wish to alarm you, but it is common practice among many of the great houses to ‘buy’ couriers, and pneumatic operators, and many other such persons. We guard the probity of your household as best we can, but it would be naïve to think your mail was not routinely being read.”

“We thank you,” Maia said, a little dismally, and opened Celehar’s letter:

To the Emperor Edrehasivar VII, greetings and loyal good wishes.

We realize, Serenity, that you may be vexed with us for our hasty departure from the Untheileneise Court. We ask your forgiveness, but we could do nothing else when granted a message so unmistakable. We do not and cannot consider ourself worthy of Ulis, but it is clear that He finds us, if nothing else, a suitable tool.

We write to you, Serenity, as we would once have written to our superior, so that you may understand how we came to the conclusions that we did and so that, if something should happen to us before we are able to speak with you again, you will nevertheless have a record of our findings.

We came to Amalo because our dream showed us that we were making a fundamental error in pursuing our inquiries among the families of the crew of the Wisdom of Choharo, for her home port was Cetho, and her destruction did not find her in Cetho—she did not reach Cetho on her last flight. It found her in Amalo.

We knew also that we would have to proceed carefully. While the families in Cetho were very willing to speak to a Witness for the Dead, almost desperate to help us in any way they could, people in Amalo would have no such willingness, and the person we sought might even be driven to flight. Therefore, we took a cheap room in the Airmen’s Quarter and began looking for work.

We had not realized, Serenity, that Amalo was so deeply involved in the manufacturing of airships, but it is apparently the chief source of the principality’s revenue, and nearly a third of the city’s citizens are involved in one way or another. We had no difficulty in finding employment in one of the hangars where the ships come to be tested when they are new, and where they come to be repaired, and to be refitted after they have been in service five years. We were able to learn very quickly that the Wisdom of Choharo had in fact undergone such a refit barely a week before she was destroyed—in preparation, of course, for serving the emperor.

We followed this trail further and discovered that the airship which bore His Serenity to Amalo, the Strength of Rosiro, had not been refitted, or repaired, in the months before her service as an imperial vessel, as she had been refitted entirely only last winter. While inconclusive in itself, this was nevertheless useful information, for it suggested that the device had been planted on the Wisdom of Choharo during her refitting. We had already determined that the device must have had a clock of some kind attached to it to ensure that it would not explode until the emperor was on board, for the idea that one of the crew members had chosen to commit suicide in order to murder the emperor, an idea which we know the Lord Chancellor’s investigation has been pursuing strenuously, was an idea for which we could find no support either from the dead or in our conversations with the families. Regardless of when the device was put on the ship, it would have to have been so carefully hidden that the Emperor’s nohecharei would not find it. Therefore, if it was governed by a clock, we could see no reason that the clock could not have run for a week, or even two. We decided we would have to learn more about the workers who refitted airships, and particularly those who had refitted the Wisdom of Choharo.

It was not difficult to gain a position on a refitting crew, nor was it difficult to encourage our coworkers to talk. In truth, they needed little encouragement at all, merely the occasional question to turn their talk in the direction we wished. We have learned much more about airships than we ever thought to know, and we have also learned a great deal about the men and women who work on them. Most of it was irrelevant to our purpose, but we learned that among the airship workers of Amalo, there is a devoted following of the philosopher Curnar. We had not previously known much of Curnar, and we find we do not care for his teachings. He argues that the gods are made by men rather than the other way around and—that being so—there is no reason why men cannot make themselves gods as well. He says that rank and wealth and power are the ways in which men aspire to godhood, and that the power that one man accumulates can be taken by another man. And that it should be, if the first man is not striving to advance, for men cannot ascend to godhood if power is allowed to stagnate—in, for example, the elvish devotion to our houses. Old men should not be allowed to rule young men simply because they fathered them, or their younger brothers fathered them. Power is not inherent, says Curnar, and all men may become gods. This is the doctrine of Universal Ascendance, and it is no wonder that Curnar was executed in the reign of Your Serenity’s grandfather. We find his writings full of deliberate mysticization and empty rhetoric, but the workers we have talked to seem to believe his teachings very fervently. Most of them do not follow Curnar to the logical conclusion, that they should take power from their supervisors or the owners of the airship company or the Prince of Thu-Athamar, but they like to feel that they would be justified in doing so. And—as we are sure Your Serenity has already observed—it makes a very convenient belief for a man who sets out to murder an emperor.

We were easily able to find the most fervent Curneisei, and we cultivated them cautiously. They are angry men, Serenity, and in truth our caution was but little needed, for their anger makes them blind and easy to deceive, and it makes them very eager to talk, first about their grievances—and although it is no business of ours, Serenity, we do think that some investigation should be made of the Amal-Athamareise Airship Company, for some of their grievances desperately need to be addressed—and then about their plans for glory and vengeance and godhood. Most of these plans are mere cloud-fancies, and all involved are well aware of and content with that state of affairs. Most of the workers we talked to were shocked and grieved at the death of Varenechibel IV, and although they did not seem to know that it had been deliberate, they were as passionate in defense of their airships as they were in defense of their Curneise ideals.

We might still be there, Serenity, in an airmen’s bar called the Cloud Horses, watching men drink cheap metheglin and listening to bad philosophy—and of all the ways we have envisaged spending the rest of our life, it is not the worst—were it not for the chance that put us one day on the same workcrew as Evrenis Bralchenar.

Bralchenar talked to us freely, almost unstoppably; the other workers were no longer willing to listen to him. He is an ardent Curneisis, and we noticed very quickly that he did not regard Universal Ascendance as something hypothetical or something that would doubtless take place, but in the far distant future. For Bralchenar, it was going to happen soon. We asked him why he thought Universal Ascendance was, as he put it “within the grasp of all men now alive,” and he looked mysterious and said he knew men in power, great men, who were already taking action. It was not what we had expected him to say, and we were puzzled; what “great men,” by his or any other standard, could Bralchenar know? Rushing ruins the bread. We asked no more questions of him that day.

We did not work with Bralchenar the next day, but we asked the men we did work with about “great men” visiting the hangars and found out two things. First, that tours of the hangars were to be expected when the Prince of Thu-Athamar had guests. Second, that in the protracted negotiations leading up to the prince’s recent marriage—attendance at which was, of course, the reason the emperor was on board the Wisdom of Choharo—everyone had become quite accustomed to seeing men of the bride’s family “hanging around.” We did not ask for many details, but we believe the prince’s interest in the Amal-Athamareise Airship Company may have been part of the settlement negotiations. In any event, Tethimadeise men were inspecting everything and asking questions of everyone, and we received hints, although no one said so outright, that they had been very free with their money as well. Someone said sourly that Bralchenar had been trying to get himself adopted, and that, we thought, completed the circle. We were still puzzled, Serenity, for by no means did Bralchenar have either the knowledge or the ability to make a device such as the one which destroyed the Wisdom of Choharo. We decided to continue to encourage him to talk to us when we worked with him again, for we felt sure that he was involved, and we felt sure that he would not be able to resist indefinitely the lure of a sympathetic listener. In this we were correct, for on only the third time that we worked together, Bralchenar told us that he could see we were a true ascender (as the Curneisei style themselves) and invited us to come with him that evening to a teahouse called the Stone Tree, where he promised to introduce us to men we would appreciate. His efforts to make us feel that we were one of a select group were very clumsy, but we began to understand the appeal of Curneise philosophy to men like him. For if all men are your brothers in the struggle for godhood, it doesn’t matter so much if you are unskilled at making friends, just as it does not matter if you are a younger son, or the son of a younger son—or if your house has no inheritance at all.

We accompanied him that evening to the Stone Tree, which is a teahouse in the Athamareise style: a warren of small, inconvenient, interconnected rooms, each the particular territory of one group or another. Many of the rooms seemed to be occupied by Curneisei; Bralchenar was hailed as “kinsman” on all sides—zhornu, the north-country word for “cousin.” The Curneisei all call each other that, to signify their rejection of bloodties in favor of the brotherhood of struggle. It makes them sound very warm toward each other—even affectionate—which we think may be another reason young men like Bralchenar are drawn to them. There were women in some of the Curneise rooms, and they called each other zhornu with the rest. In fact, the group Bralchenar eventually sat down with had two women along with four or five men. Bralchenar introduced us proudly as “our new zhornu,” and none of the others seemed at all inclined to question either him or us.

We listened without speaking much that first night and for several nights thereafter, and we learned that the motivating force behind Bralchenar’s cadre of Curneisei was an intense young man, part goblin, who had come to Amalo from Zhaö; he had, in fact, been apprenticed to the Clocksmiths’ Guild and been thrown out as a troublemaker. His name is Aina Shulivar, and we saw very quickly that here was one who would have no difficulty in either imagining or constructing a device such as the one which destroyed the Wisdom of Choharo and all aboard her. Shulivar and one of the women, Atho Narchanezhen, are the two most intelligent of the Curneisei we met, and we noticed in listening to them that, although they use the words Universal Ascendance, what they mean by it has nothing to do with godhood and everything to do with power here among the living. In other words, they choose to read Curnar metaphorically, and imagine Universal Ascendance as a world in which no man holds power over any other. Or, for Narchanezhen, over any woman (and we heard many long arguments between her and Shulivar about whether man’s power over woman is natural—and therefore unchangeable—or not). And they believe this world is achievable.

Personally, Serenity, we think this as much a cloud-fancy as the more typical Curneise dream of becoming gods, for it requires men not to desire power, and that, we think, is impossible—we notice that as much as the Curneisei speak of taking power away from the powerful, they speak just as much of holding power themselves. But that is not truly the point; the point is what people like Shulivar and Bralchenar and Narchanezhen, holding this belief, are prepared to do in its service.

They took silence for assent, as the zealous often do, and the longer we sat among them and said nothing, the more loquacious and fervent they became, the more inclined to hint at great deeds already accomplished as well as great deeds still to be done. We sat and we listened and we thought of the dead—not merely of the emperor and his sons, but of all those who died stathan, who died terribly, in agony and fear, merely because someone wanted Varenechibel out of the way. We can understand and even sympathize with the Curneisei’s desire to improve their lives, their desire to change the world, but we cannot abide the deaths they caused uncaringly, the grief and fear and desperation they left among the living in their wake—the people whom they condemned to the sort of struggle and hopelessness that they avow themselves to be eradicating. The widows we talked to in Cetho all said the same thing, even when their words varied. They did not know how they and their children would survive. And they may not survive, Serenity, the smaller children killed by diseases they could survive if they were properly fed, the older children killed in the factories. Before we were sent to Aveio, we served as a curate in the Ulimeire of Sevezho, where the factories run from dawn to dusk in summer, and in winter the workers rise in darkness and return home in darkness and never see the sun at all. We know how many children die in those factories because they aren’t strong enough or fast enough or tall enough for the jobs they have been hired—at cruelly low wages—to do.

But we have wandered from our point. Again, we must ask your pardon, Serenity. We have heard enough from the Curneisei, and from the workers at the Amal-Athamareise Airship Company, to be confident that Aina Shulivar made the device which destroyed the Wisdom of Choharo and Evrenis Bralchenar concealed it in the airship’s armature where it would not be detected. We believe that they were inspired to this task, as well as paid to complete it, by a man or men of the House Tethimada, but of that we cannot find proof without questioning them officially. We do not know what part Atho Narchanezhen played in the plot, although we are sure she knew of it. We believe, however, that all the other Curneisei of Amalo are innocent. Tomorrow, Serenity, we will speak to the Amalo Chapter of the Vigilant Brotherhood. We have the priest of the Amalo Ulimeire to vouch for us—he is an old colleague and we think perhaps a friend. We hope most fervently that in less than a week we will be able to return to the Untheileneise Court with all the answers you asked us to find.

In loyalty and gratitude,

Thara Celehar

Maia folded the pages carefully and returned them to Csevet. “And again where there is trouble, we find the House Tethimada. What can you tell us of the Prince of Thu-Athamar’s wedding?”

“Ah,” Csevet said. “We know nothing to the detriment of the young lady, and it was certainly a very favorable match. There was speculation that your father’s attendance at the wedding of the Prince of Thu-Athamar to a daughter of the Tethimada was a harbinger of peace between them.”

“If Mer Celehar is right, that irony must have amused someone very much,” Maia said. As succinctly as he could, he put Csevet in possession of Mer Celehar’s facts.

Csevet’s eyes widened as he listened. “We believe the Tethimadeise wealth to have been a strong motivation in Prince Orchenis’s marriage.”

“Indeed,” Maia said grimly.

Csevet eyed him uneasily. “We must hope Mer Celehar will be able to move as swiftly as he predicts. At the moment, Serenity, we have no proof of anything.”

“We know,” Maia said. Csevet did not sigh with relief, but it was clearly only willpower that stopped him; Maia remembered Lord Pashavar’s comment about mad dogs and knew what Csevet had feared. “Will you, please, put Mer Celehar’s letter somewhere that is both safe and unlikely?”

Csevet’s eyebrows went up, but after a moment, he said, “Yes. We understand, Serenity, and we will do so.” A momentary gleeful grin made him look no older than Idra. “We have already thought of several promising options.”

“We thank you. We must return to the reception, as we are certain we have already been missed.”

Csevet walked with him back to the ambassador’s dav, as if he would be leaving his emperor alone if he did not. Maia’s nohecharei padded invisibly behind them, and Maia thought unhappily that he understood why Cala had said they could not be friends.

Gormened was there as soon as Maia had cleared the door and the saluting guards. “Serenity, the Avar requests a moment of your time.”

That was almost certainly not how the matter had originally been phrased; Maia followed Gormened to one of the small tables, this one offering puff pastries filled with pate of duck and sour cherries. The Avar, expansive and possibly slightly drunk (Maia had confined himself to tea after one experimental sip of sorcho, the hot rice wine the goblins preferred), was telling a mixed audience of goblin merchants and elvish courtiers about the visit of the self-styled king of the Chadevaneise pirates to the Corat’ Dav Arhos. “Eight lion-girls he brought with him,” the Avar was saying as Maia approached. “Poor things, they were freezing, and even King Khel-Avezher didn’t have the heart to make them—” He broke off when he saw Maia. “Grandson! We are told you have been introduced to our daughter Nadeian.”

Inwardly, Maia quailed; he had promised Merrem Vizhenka that she would not get in trouble. “Yes,” he said. “We were most pleased to meet her.”

“Excellent,” said the Avar with such a twinklingly malicious look that Maia could not help smiling back. Apparently the Avar was as fretted by his ministers and their strictures as Maia was by the Corazhas and its squabbles. “Our daughter Thever sends you many good wishes, and we believe there is a gift. Selthevis! Where is our daughter Thever’s gift to the emperor?”

Selthevis emerged from the crowd as if conjured. He was middle-aged, soberly dressed, unremarkable except for the dark, almost purplish red of his eyes, which was emphasized by the rubies braided in his hair and hanging from his ears. “We have it, Maru’var,” he said and, bowing low to Maia, presented an ornately lacquered box.

For a moment, Maia quite literally could not think what to do. The last time he had had a present of any sort had been his eighth birthday, when his mother had given him the only set of her earrings that were at all suitable for a boy. Setheris, he remembered, had nearly fainted when he realized the delicate rings in Maia’s ears were genuine Ilinverieise work and the jewels were not glass and fish-scales, but real pearls.

He took the box and fumbled awkwardly until he found the catch. Inside, each in its own blue silk hollow, was a complete set of ivory combs, tashin sticks, and two strands of amber and rubies. The combs were carved in a pattern of scales, and the tashin sticks each ended in a dragon’s head with brilliant, faceted ruby eyes. He closed the box and saw what he had not managed to assimilate at first: it was emblazoned with a magnificent carved and lacquered dragon.

“A glorious dragon,” Maia murmured, feeling his face move in a smile as if it belonged to someone else.

“Exactly so,” said the Avar.

Perhaps he had learned something from Chenelo’s death. Maia wondered, but he knew there was no way to ask. He could only bow to his grandfather over the box—for it might be a gift from his mother’s sister, but he would never have received it if his grandfather had not approved—and say, “Thank you.”

From the Avar’s return nod, Maia thought he understood.