The Goblin Emperor (The Chronicles of Osreth, #1)

by Katherine Addison

Maia reminded himself that glee was unbefitting an emperor, and thought soberly as the crewwoman opened the narrow door at the front of the cabin, I must not acquire a taste for this pleasure. It was heady, but he knew it was also poison.

Better to build new bridges, he thought, than to pine after what’s been washed away.

“We have found truth before, Serenity, and it profits us not. We would give much to have some truths remain lost, and we do not think you will find this truth to be any different.”

Compassion was all that he could hope for. He could not pray for love or forgiveness; both were out of reach. He could not forgive his father, and he could not love his brothers whom he had never met. But he could feel compassion for them, as he did for the other victims, and it was that he sought more than anything else: to mourn their deaths rather than holding on to his anger at their lives.

Reflexively, Maia read Setheris’s gestures, like a man reading a coded message to which he has memorized the key.

Study the stars.—M.

It was the first time in his life Maia had been surrounded by people who were like him instead of only snow-white elves with their pale eyes, and he missed several names in the effort not to faint or hyperventilate or burst into tears.

“Veklevezhek,” Min Vechin said. “It is a goblin word, and it means to decide what to do about a prisoner by staking him below the tideline while you argue.”

He remembered the moment when his thoughts had inverted themselves—that shift from not being able to please everyone to not trying—and the way that change had enabled him to see past the maneuverings and histrionics of the representatives to the deeper structures of the problem;

Csevet made a face. “Lord Pashavar is very difficult. Almost, we would suggest waiting for him to die, but that could take years.”

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.”

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.

revethvoran

It was a remarkable performance, both in its effrontery and in its obvious belief that the emperor lacked enough common sense to open an umbrella against the rain.

Setheris, with a lawyer’s eye for logic-chopping, had made very sure that Maia understood the difference between an apology and a statement about an apology, and in this instance, he found he could not settle for the lesser.

The Emperor of the Ethuveraz cannot become vengeful, for once begun, there will never be an end of it. Ulis, he prayed, abandoning the set words, let my anger die with him. Let both of us be freed from the burden of his actions. Even if I cannot forgive him, help me not to hate him.

Ulis was a cold god, a god of night and shadows and dust. His love was found in emptiness, his kindness in silence. And that was what Maia needed. Silence, coldness, kindness.

“We consider it cruel,” Maia said. “And we do not think that cruelty is ever just.

“It will be better on Winternight,” said Beshelar, who passed judgment the same way he breathed.

“Yes, thank you. She would not be what she is if she had ever had something given her that was a burden equal to her strength. One hears people say it all the time—‘she should have been a son to her father’—but it is true. If she had been a son, she would have had a duty that went beyond children. And that duty is not congenial to everyone.”

Apologetically, Maia said, “I loved my mother very much.” “I try to have compassion for mine,” Idra said wryly.

“You are very decisive in your indecision,” Maia said, which surprised several members of the Corazhas into laughing.

And he knew that if the rest of his life was spent in building bridges, it would be no bad thing.