Free Kalpa Imperial by Ursula K. Le Guin LAngelica Gorodischer Page A

studying and taking part in official duties, escaping late in the morning to meet Renka and Loo’Loö and play and laugh and explore the ruined garden with them and sometimes ask them about his father. They always answered his questions, especially big Renka.
    And all this time the anger never ceased; he felt it burning inside him, and his mother guessed it. The empress didn’t know exactly what was going on, but every day she felt more uncomfortable with her son, and when she didn’t see him, when he wasn’t there, still she seemed to hear and see him through the walls and rooms of the palace. Occasionally he looked directly into her eyes, and that was the worst of all. Or he turned his head away so as not to look at her, and that was worse than the worst of all. She increased what she called her expiation, spending the nights on the bare marble floor of her rooms instead of in bed. When that did no good, she ordered the richest food for her table, but lived on bread and water for forty days. That did no good either. She kept on coughing and shaking with fever, shivering in her white clothes. The forty days of fasting and penitence were just ending when one morning in the ceremony of contempt the ferret prince looked up at his mother and, instead of spitting on her medallion, spat in her face.
    Perhaps the lords and ladies and magistrates didn’t notice, perhaps they did. Nobody said anything, nobody looked surprised, nobody moved, including the Empress Hallovâh. She decided, however, to kill her son. And so, on the pretext of her illness, she had a doctor come to her room, and asked him for a drug that would cure insomnia and help her sleep soundly at night, and the silly fool gave it to her with a lot of advice about the dosage. The empress kept the drug in a sealed glass flask and waited for the moment to use it.
    She didn’t use it, obviously, since you’ve all heard of Emperor Ferret, his life, his works, his madness, and his magnificent death. Fooling herself, telling herself she had to know when it would be safe to give Livna’lams the poison, she had him watched by one of her servants. And so she was informed of the existence of Renka and Loo’Loö.
    If you’ve ever lived with somebody in trouble, or if you’ve ever been in bad trouble for a long time, you know the relief unhappy people feel when they find something or somebody to blame their trouble on. That’s exactly what the empress felt. They say she even smiled. I’m not certain I believe it, but I know they say she smiled. And I know she sent for the captain of her bodyguards and ordered him to wait for her in her chambers with ten armed men and the executioner. Then she went barefoot, dressed in white, splendid, her eyes bright and her hair loose and her cheeks burning red, to perform the ritual farce at the broken statue among the trees.
    Late that morning, the ferret prince and the two adventurers were playing a game of skill in which the one who was quickest and most skillful at making a fifteen-foot rope ladder would win the right to make three wishes, which the other two had to grant. Renka and Loo’Loö had brought the ropes all carefully measured and cut, and the big man handed them round, making sure that all three had the same number of pieces in the same condition. And it looked as if Loo’Loö was going to win.
    “Captain, these two trespassers are to be taken and executed at once,” said the empress appearing between the leafless bushes, her feet bruised by loose stones, her face very white, her hands very shaky, her cheeks very red.
    Renka looked up and smiled. Loo’Loö stood up. Anger filled the young prince, forever.
    The captain took a step forward. The weapons were raised and aimed. The empress cried out aloud.
    It was a desolate, furious cry that had struggled to get loose for years, a cry far deeper and stronger than she was, a noise too big to come from that weak throat, those lips cracked with fever.
    “Wait!” she