The Goblin Emperor Read Online Free PDF Page B

hear anything you can tell us of our late father.
    Until our coronation, we are using the Tortoise Room as a receiving room.
    With respectful good wishes,
    And here Maia paused. To sign with his given name would be to acknowledge that she had been correct in addressing him in that fashion. But he had not, until that moment, given any thought to the choosing of a dynastic name, and it was hard to get beyond his first, instinctive reaction: I will not be Varenechibel V.
    No one forces thee, he thought as the ink dried patiently on his pen. An thou did choose Varenechibel, the court would doubtless construe it an insult.
    He knew from Setheris’s impatient tutelage that his great-great-great-grandfather, Varenechibel I, had chosen to signal his rejection of the policies of his father, Edrevechelar XVI, by refusing the imperial prefix that every emperor since Edrevenivar the Conqueror had used, choosing to become Varenechibel the first of that name instead of the ninth Edrenechibel. His son and grandson had followed his lead, being Varenechibel II and III. His great-grandson (willful, though never particularly imaginative, Setheris had said dryly) had defied burgeoning tradition by becoming Varevesena. And then had come Varenechibel IV.
    And now Maia.
    The emperors of what was informally called the Varedeise dynasty—as if their chosen prefix were a surname—were noted for their isolationist policies, their favoring of the wealthy eastern landowners, and their apparent inability to see anything wrong with bribery, nepotism, and corruption. Setheris had gone into scathing detail about the Black Mud Scandal of Varenechibel III’s reign (so called because it stained everyone who came in contact with it), and Varevesena’s disgraceful habit of giving munificent but otherwise empty political appointments to his friends’ newborn children. “At least he is not personally corrupt,” Setheris had said grudgingly of Varenechibel IV, but Maia thought that very cold praise.
    He did not want to continue any of the Varedeise traditions; embracing their traditional hostility to Barizhan seemed self-destructive in a way that he found uncomfortably ambiguous between the symbolic and the literal. Even if he had wanted to, the encounter with Chavar demonstrated that he would have a grimly difficult battle winning the trust of his father’s ardent supporters.
    Better to build new bridges, he thought, than to pine after what’s been washed away. He dipped his pen again and wrote with pointed legibility across the bottom of the page, Edrehasivar VII Drazhar . Edrehasivar VI had had a long, peaceful, and prosperous reign some five hundred years ago.
    Let it be an omen, Maia thought, a quick prayer to Cstheio, the dreaming lady of the stars, and folded and sealed the letter. He had a lowering feeling that he was going to need all the omens of peace he could accumulate.
    The boy was lingering nervously on the landing. “Here,” said Maia. “Take this to the zhasanai with our compliments.”
    Wide-eyed, the boy took the letter. He had caught the nuance—“zhasanai,” not “zhasan”—and Maia did not doubt that the widow empress would be told. She could style herself a ruling empress all she liked, but she was not one. She was zhasanai, an emperor’s widow, and had best remember that she was dependent now upon her unknown stepson’s goodwill.
    “Serenity,” the boy said, bowed, and fled.
    Already I become a tyrant, Maia thought, and retreated again into the Tortoise Room to wait for Setheris and his wife.
    But Setheris did not reappear until after Atterezh had come back bearing a mass of black and plum-colored cloth embroidered in white: mourning colors without the strict formality of court mourning. He also brought the information that the funeral would be held at three o’clock—as sundown was the most correct hour for funerals, it was also the most expensive, so that the families had had to pool their money to get as close as