Chapter Text
Celehar had always despised airships. The awe and wonder of flying, as every child dreams, never lasted more than a few fleeting moments before being suppressed deep beneath nauseous, jolting, claustrophobic discomfort. Ethuverazhid air-shipping was overwhelmingly commercial; most ships were designed to bear only bulk, inanimate cargo and a skeleton crew. They were therefore the recourse of only the most desperate of travellers, those willing to pay through the nose to be crammed into freezing, unfurnished hulls beneath bulbous, unwieldy gasbags: couriers, criminals, mourners, and witnesses. Absently, as he perched uneasily on his travel chest with his head buried in his hands and silent prayers to Ulis on his lips, Celehar wondered which category his fellow passengers had assigned to him.
The airships sailed on by the wealthy and elite were entirely different beasts, of course. Celehar knew, indirectly, of noblemen who had boasted for years about gondolas as lavishly outfitted and ornamented as any prince’s mansion, replete with grand dining rooms and receiving couches, even beds, as though that might make them any less unpleasant to ride in, or any safer.
All the Wisdom of Choharo’s gold leaf and stained glass had done nothing to protect its passengers, nor to comfort them as they fell. Its plush furnishing and gilt wallpaper had burned just as well as the crates and straw that surrounded Celehar might burn.
At the thought of the Wisdom of Choharo, he felt his stomach turn, and leaned forward to lower his head and rest his elbows on his knees, ignoring the juddering vibration of the motor and the buffeting of the wind as best he could.
Witnessing for Varenechibal IV and his entourage had not been easy, though he did not resent the young emperor for asking it of him; it was both his calling and his duty. They had died in terror. The luckiest souls among them had remembered nothing but shock and blinding heat, but the unlucky, those who had been furthest from the blast, had lived long enough to feel horrible pain, to smell burning gas and flesh, to know that they were falling to their deaths. None had felt guilt, or expected the explosion to come. Most of their last thoughts had been little more than screams, prayers.
One of the crewmen had thought perhaps only he was dying, had wondered briefly if this was what a brainstorm felt like. The old emperor, bitter and proud to his bones after six decades of rule, had been uselessly outraged. They were not the ones who had lingered most disquietingly in Celehar’s mind, however: that was the crown prince. Nemolis Drazhar had thought of his children. He had been dismayed for his little daughters – but he had been terrified for his son. Oh, Idra, he thought, in the half-second of his death, mournful, clear as a bell in Celehar’s mind when he rested a hand on the prince’s cool, dead skin. Thou’rt too young to rule.
It mattered not that Idra was too young, of course. There was no one else who could rule, not without the kind of massacre that so often marked the Barizheise succession. The Prince of the Untheileineise Court and his brothers were gone. Both of the emperor’s two surviving children were women, disallowed from the throne. Hearsay of the Archduke Maia had been splashed across the most scandalous broadsheets, of course, but to no end. Neither hide nor hair of Varenechibal’s youngest son had been seen in seven years, when the boy had abruptly disappeared from the sad, remote little estate to which his father had relegated him. And anyway, whispered a treacherous, cynical part of Celehar’s brain, anybody who might have known the truth of that disappearance likely perished in the crash. Dead or banished, Maia Drazhar was not present. All else that were left were distant cousins and affines, none officially in line for the throne, doubtless all already squabbling amongst themselves as to who was now heir presumptive. So instead the Ethuveraz had the scowling, unpleasant figure of Varenechibal V’s eagle-eyed regent, who was not Drazhada, and a fourteen-year-old emperor whose thin neck could not support the full weight of the Dachen Mura.
The first and only time that Celehar had been summoned to his Serenity’s presence, poor Idra Drazhar – treason to still name him thus, but in the privacy of his own mind Celehar could not help himself – had been as white and fragile as a lily, as cold as a painted model of a boy. There were bruise-dark shadows beneath his eyes and a furrow between his brow, that said he had neither slept nor smiled since his accession.
He had not expected to meet the emperor. Late in the evening, when most of the court was at one of those absurd, interminable dinners, Celehar had received a letter bearing the new imperial seal, the cat and quill: a summons. It ordered him not to the public reception hall of the Michen’theileian, nor even to the Verven’theileian, the hall of witnesses, where his services might yet reasonably be called upon – he was still a witness vel ama, no matter the circumstances under which he had abdicated his prelacy, and would remain one until the gift of his god had burned away. Instead it called him all the way into the heart of the Alcethmeret, past the imposing grilles that divided officially-public from supposedly-private, and up into the Rose Room.
The young Varenechibal V had been, to Celehar’s surprise, as alone as a ruling emperor might ever be permitted to be. Neither the sneer of the Princess Shevëan nor the glare of the Lord Chancellor were anywhere to be seen; presumably, as crown mother and regent, they were standing in for the emperor at dinner. Beside Celehar himself, the only adults in the room were the ever-present, statue-still nohecharei.
Celehar could not help but think that they had been given a thankless task, these nohecharei. The role of bodily and spiritual guardian had been primarily ceremonial, during the reign of Varenechibal IV, when they had served a monarch sheltered from physical threat by his armies and political threat by iron control of his court. Not so for the nohecharis of a child-emperor. They had voluntarily bound themselves to this boy, sworn to die should harm come to him, and precedent said that harm might come to him from all and any side. Perhaps the historians would be able to conjure the name of a boy crowned before sixteen who had survived to adulthood; Celehar could not.
But for all that thoughts of doom were, properly, the demesne of a cleric of Ulis, they were not appropriate for Celehar to wear on his face as he approached his emperor. So he had wiped his expression blank as best he could, and prostrated himself immediately on the carpet as he entered Varenechibal V’s presence.
There was a beat, and then,
“You are Thara Celehar, witness for the dead?” Idra had asked – and Celehar, startled not to have been introduced, had been struck by the entirely inappropriate urge to commend his emperor on the steadiness of his voice. He risked a fleeting, bewildered glance backwards, just to confirm that the page boy had indeed, bafflingly, fled.
“Serenity,” he had murmured, inclining his head in the affirmative.
“Rise.”
There was silence for a tense few seconds, during which Celehar dared to raise his gaze to the young emperor’s face: grey eyes met blue, and whatever Idra saw there must have satisfied him, because he swallowed hard, and said,
“What we intend to ask of you must be held in the utmost secrecy, Mer Celehar.”
He spoke with impeccable, coached dignity, only the dip of his ears hinting at any anxiety. There were no sufficient reassurances that Celehar could give, not in mere words, and so Celehar went to his knees again, hoping that it imparted his understanding of the gravity of the situation, rather than seeming that he was cowering.
Slowly, carefully, and with the kind of firm, planted-feet determination that said he still expected to be told no, Idra had laid out what he needed of Celehar.
The canons who had witnessed for Varenechibal IV and his sons had not found anything that made sense of their deaths, and under Uleris Chavar’s direction the official investigation was worse than useless, an obstruction. But Chavar was Idra’s regent; until Idra was sixteen, there was little he could do to overrule his chancellor’s office, and by then it would be too late.
Someone needed to continue to search for answers, to discover who had planted the device that destroyed the Wisdom of Choharo. They would have to do so covertly, and without delay.
Idra had selected Celehar for this task.
“The Archprelate Teru Tethimar recommended you to us,” the young emperor had explained, seeing profound shock flash across Celehar’s worn features – he had never been any good at concealing his emotions, for all that he had had plenty of reason to learn. “Seeing as you are unbeneficed-” (This word he pronounced gingerly, unfamiliarly; both Celehar and Beshelar, the soldier-nohecharis, had instinctively given the quick, encouraging dip of the head one gives to a child practising a new word.) “- you are able to move more freely than most other sanctified clerical witnesses.”
Celehar had nodded slowly. This was true, but it was not the only reason, he was sure.
“And – he said that you were honest,” Idra had added. “To a fault.”
To a great and terrible fault, yes. The thought had made Celehar painfully aware of his shorn hair, ticklish against the base of his neck where once he had worn a long prelate’s braid, of his mended mourning clothes, of how misplaced he must have looked among the rich gold and florals of the chamber. Thou made thyself this wretch, he had reminded himself. An he can be of some use, wilt be better than thou deservest.
He could not afford to mire himself in self-loathing, as he had spent so long doing, however. Idra and his nohecharei were still talking, winding Celehar deeper into their conspiracy.
As far as anybody would be aware, Celehar had come to the Rose Room on this occasion only as a spiritual advisor to the grieving emperor. He was not the most proper choice for such a role, but he was the closest and most available Ulineise canon, and so it was plausible, just the once – but the excuse would not withstand the scrutiny it would come under if ever repeated. This type of meeting would not happen again.
“We thought to take you into our household as chaplain, so as to make it easier to speak with you, but –” Here Idra had broken off, frustrated, the faintest flush of pink colouring his alabaster cheeks. “We can’t. Until the age of our majority, our mother is responsible for household matters. And she must not know – she disapproves of,”
For a half-second the young emperor bit his tongue, seeking for an appropriate word; Celehar’s eyebrows had shot up almost to his hairline, expecting all sorts of bile. He was not so sheltered from court gossip in Csoru Zhasani’s apartments that he didn’t know what sort of person the Princess Shevëan was.
“Of… such reverence.”
Thy teacher of rhetoric deserves a statue, Serenity. Nemolis Drazhar had been called silver-tongued too, as Celehar recalled; certainly he had been a more diplomatic and eloquent man than Varenechibal IV, and by far a kinder one. It was clear to Celehar, who had seen every shade of bereavement, from despair to relief, that Idra mourned his father very deeply. He probably should be visited by a cleric of Ulis or Csaivo, someone who could be of comfort – but Celehar’s skills had never been in consoling the grief-stricken, and he thought it better that he fulfil his petition as a witness than try to offer rote, empty words of sympathy.
To skirt the crown mother’s disapproval and the regent’s suspicions, Celehar would have to communicate with Idra only by the most circumspect routes. He would send notes through the Alcethmeret’s pneumatics to the emperor’s tutor, one Leilis Athmaza, to be passed by him to the maza-nohecharis Cala Athmaza. Cala, who presented with an overwhelming air of gentle contemplation, was a scattered, scholarly type, almost impossible to suspect of plotting anything; his having any number of scrawled papers upon his person would be considered unremarkable. Failing that, they told him, he should speak to the emperor’s aunt, Archduchess Vedero Drazhin.
The archduchess’s inclusion and support had surprised Celehar at first, a surprise that had melted away instantly upon meeting her. His cousin Csoru had always scorned Vedero as a bookish little malcontent – which, were Celehar in the habit of paying attention to anything Csoru said, should have been enough to endear her to him anyway. Vedero was solemn as a marble tomb, deeper even in mourning than Idra, and her heart would have no rest until the plot was uncovered. She was also determined, cunning – and afraid. Enough of a furor had been raised by the Tethimada at the mere suggestion that her partially-negotiated betrothal to Eshevis Tethimar might be cast aside that the Drazhada had been obligated to complete and sign the marriage contract, unable to mollify Duke Tethimel even by the suggestion that Idra might be wed to Paru Tethimin. Vedero was well known not to favour marriage; privately, Celehar suspected he recognised something in her that she recognised in him as well, something far safer not to state aloud, and thought that she would never have been happily bound to any man, much less one they both knew – everyone knew – to be a monster. But her happiness had never been of any concern to the men arranging her marriage, and it was not happiness she feared for. Most murders thou wilt witness for wilt be very ordinary and very sad, Celehar’s teacher had told him bluntly once, when he was young and still childishly excited about the grotesque. Men quarrelling foolishly, or wives slain by their husbands. He had seen far too many of the latter, in the years since. Some of those women had been shocked, when he witnessed for them, had not thought that their husband would go so far – but some, like Vedero, had known they were in danger from the first, and merely not had anyone care to intervene. There was nothing she could do to change her situation, or the fate she feared. If helping one shabby canon discover the truth of her brothers’ deaths was all that was within her power, then she would gladly do so.
Probably Vedero had had a great deal more choice in her involvement than Celehar. Idra had outlined what was required of him, and then he had paused, and said smoothly,
“We understand that we are putting you in a difficult position, Mer Celehar.”
This was an understatement. Defying the regent was tantamount to treason – but defying the emperor was actually treason. As Celehar understood it, he had the choice of what he preferred to be executed for: reason or morality. Reason said that it was rank idiocy to contravene the wishes of Lord Chavar; morality, and the oaths to Ulis that sanctified him, said that he was bound to the wronged dead.
He had always been more principled than was any good for him.
So he had bowed low, dutifully accepted the petition, and promised his loyalty and discretion to a child-emperor who might well be dead by the time Celehar discovered anything.
Though he had done his level best, and searched as deep through dead minds as he dared, witnessing for Varenechibal IV had not brought him any answers. His tentative inquiries in Cetho had not been much use either – and it had not helped that he knew very little of the city; he had barely left his meagre room in Csoru’s apartments since she had offered her spiteful charity to him, had barely done anything at all, in fact, but kneel at his ulimeire and wish he was dead.
And then had come the dream.
Celehar had never had a dream of Ulis before. He had felt the presence of his god, in praying to the moon or in witnessing, or, on one memorable occasion, whilst in the process of destroying a ghoul. He had always felt called to Ulis, summoned to serve: it was why he had taken holy orders in the first place, and why he hadn’t resigned his miserable prelacy in Aveio (until, of course, he had). But he had never felt anything so powerful, so profound, so fearsome, so fully and all-encompassingly divine. Ulis had needed no words to command him. There had been flashes of emotion and of imagery – unfamiliar city streets, a darkened tavern, a smile that sickened him, a bone-deep thrill of betrayed shock – and then there had been an overwhelming sensation of too much, too near, as though he was staring into a dark sun, a great lifeless void of incomprehensible vastness pressing in against the edges of his mind.
He had gasped awake, soaked with sweat, trembling with awe and horror, and all but run from the Untheileineise Court, absolutely certain that he needed to go immediately to Amalo. Celehar was sure that he’d looked like a lunatic as he bought his airship ticket, pupils blown wide, ears pricked high. Csoru was going to be livid; he could only pray that she wouldn’t turn her wrath on the servants who had failed to prevent his flight, though he knew she almost certainly would. He had not bothered to leave any kind of note informing her where he had gone – she disdained his calling anyway, with both the fashionable atheism of the court and the narcissism of one who refuses to conceive of any power higher than themselves. The only letter he had composed had been a hastily-scribbled note to Leilis Athmaza, thrust into the hands of the Alcethmeret pneumatic girls as he rushed past; hopefully those girls were too lowly, or too loyal, for their gossip to reach the ears of Chavar or Shevëan or their cronies.
Celehar supposed that he had no way of discerning what was going on in Cetho. He would simply have to see what reception he received when he returned, however far distant that might be: either a covert meeting with the emperor’s personal staff, or a squadron of guards ready to drag him down to the Esthoramire. More likely the latter than the former.
He could not bring himself to regret his choices. Even if this undertaking ended in his execution, he would endeavour to see it through. His god had sent him here. Him, personally, of all creatures. He was duty-bound to the mourners who had petitioned him: to Idra, and to the families of the crew and servants of the Wisdom of Choharo, too.
The airship had been dipping low in the sky for a long while, an uneasily vertiginous descent that Celehar had been doing his very best to ignore. All of a sudden it juddered to a halt, almost jolting him from his makeshift seat – but when he glanced around at his fellow passengers, he saw only anticipation, not alarm.
They had arrived in Amalo, then.
Beyond the cavernous metal hull there were the muffled shouts and thuds of crew and Amal-Athamareise airmen bringing the dirigible in to moor, and beyond that, the faint roar of any bustling city at work. Celehar knew almost nothing of Amalo: it was further east than he had ever been before, famously industrious, famously colourful. Had his decision to travel here been a little more considered, he would have done his best to study the city before departing for it – servants of Ulis were trained to listen, but also to be scholars in their own right, to know how to make sense of what they heard. He would have at least a map, a chronicle of Amaleise history, a notebook full of potential leads. But he had not followed reason and suspicion here: he had followed a divine commandment, and one that had willed him to go at once . However strange and jarring Amalo might prove to be, he had to trust that his god had not led him astray.
The hatch door at the far end of the gondola swung open with a disquieting clank, allowing in the first hint of crisp fresh air. Celehar screwed his eyes shut against bright morning light and allowed himself one final, silent prayer, appending hastily to the end, I am thy tool, Ulis. Direct me as thou wilt.
He stood to file out with the rest, bracing himself with one hand on the rough wooden panelling of the interior walls – and realised as his knee buckled, unsteady as a newborn colt, that he was going to faint if he did not find somewhere to rest and eat at once.
That would be his first direction, then: a tearoom, and lodgings.