Free The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

is a message from the widow empress.”
    Maia had almost forgotten about the widow empress in the press of other concerns, but a glance at the clock showed him he would have to face her in an hour. “We have agreed to give her an audience at ten o’clock,” he said. “She wrote yesterday.”
    “Your Serenity is very kind,” Csevet murmured, and passed him the widow empress’s letter.
    Maia broke the seal and read:
    To the Archduke Maia Drazhar, heir to the imperial throne of Ethuveraz, greetings.
    We are greatly disappointed with your coldness and fear that much of what the late emperor your father said of your character, which we dismissed as an old man’s prejudices, must indeed be true.
    We will come to the Tortoise Room at ten o’clock.
    With great hope and compassion,
Csoru Drazharan, Ethuverazhid Zhasan
    Maia considered this missive carefully, and then said, “What sort of lady is the widow empress?”
    “Serenity,” Csevet said with another polite little cough. “She is a very young lady and somewhat … wild.”
    “Csevet, we beg of you, speak plainly.”
    Csevet bowed. “She is spoilt, Serenity. She is young and very beautiful, and the late emperor treated her as a doll. She got her way with tears and tantrums, and when those palled, as they would on a man who was tired and old and had buried three wives, she turned to illnesses—fainting spells, dizziness, nervous prostration. She wished for power, but he was too wise to give her any.”
    “Then it is probable that power is what she seeks now?”
    “Yes, Serenity, very probable.”
    A silence, cold and hard like a granule of ice. Maia took a deep breath and said, “What did our late father say of us?”
    He saw Csevet’s appalled glance cross Beshelar’s and knew he did not wish this knowledge. But … “We must know. We cannot face those who have heard his opinions an we do not know them ourself.”
    “Serenity,” Csevet said unhappily, and bowed his head. “He loved not your mother, as you know.”
    “Yes,” Maia said, all but under his breath. “We know.”
    “He did not discuss her—or yourself, Serenity—in public, but there was always gossip. Some of it from servants. Some of it, we fear, spread by the Empress Csoru herself.”
    “Why?”
    “Boredom. Petty malice. The joy of scandal. Most of the stories were not credible, and we most earnestly beg Your Serenity to dismiss them utterly from your mind.”
    “But the others?”
    He was backing Csevet into a corner, and he was sorry for it. This is what it is to be emperor, he thought. Do not forget it.
    And Csevet capitulated as gracefully as he did everything else. “The late emperor said—and this occasionally in public—that the Barizheisei were degenerate, given to inbreeding. In private, so the rumors go, he said that the Empress Chenelo was mad, and that you had inherited her bad blood. He frequently used the word ‘unnatural,’ although the stories differ on what he meant by it.”
    “How much credence has been give to these stories?”
    “Serenity, everyone knows how much the late emperor loved the Empress Pazhiro. And it is common knowledge that marriage with the Empress Chenelo was pressed upon him by the Corazhas and was not of his own choosing. But it is also true that your … isolation at Edonomee has caused comment, and more so in recent years.”
    “For all the Untheileneise Court knows, we are an inbred lunatic cretin.” He could not choke back a laugh bitter enough to make Csevet wince.
    “Serenity, they have only to look at you to see that you are not.”
    “The question being,” Cala murmured, “how many of them will look.”
    Beshelar glared at him, but the apologetic look Csevet gave Maia told him that Cala’s remark was honesty, not cynicism.
    Continuing this conversation as matters stood would only make him despondent to no purpose and possibly cause Csevet and his nohecharei to feel put-upon and ill used. He said with a note of briskness