beatrice_otter | Fic: In the Nursery

Title: In The Nursery
Fandom: The Goblin Emperor
Author:

beatrice_otter
Rating: Gen
Word Count: 2927 words
Written For:

fandomgiftbox 2020
Betaed by: Gammarad

On AO3. On Pillowfort. On tumblr.

"Idra," Ino asked, as she had every morning for the past two weeks, "when wilt thou ask Cousin Maia if Mireän and I may play with Emelu again?" She was tearing her pastry into strips instead of eating it.

Idra shook his head and continued eating his toast. "It's still too soon." Ino had understood, when he had explained, that she could not play with the children of their mother's friends until a suitable amount of time had elapsed. At least, she had said she understood, after Suler and Leilis Athmaza had both confirmed his words. But that understanding had inevitably worn thin after a few weeks in the Alcethmeret. While there were several former playmates the girls were happy to forget, others had been genuine friends.

"Thou saidst that yesterday," Ino said rebelliously.

"It's still true today," Idra said, holding back a sigh. He'd been thrilled, at his thirteenth birthday, to finally be able to move out of the nursery and into his own space and not have to be always in company with his sisters. The Alcethmeret nursery was almost twice the size of the nursery in their former apartments, and he loved his sisters, but they could be so annoying.

"When will it stop being true?"

"Not today. Nor tomorrow. Nor any day this week." He could not quite keep his voice from turning sour as he contemplated the vast expanse of isolation stretching out before them all. When he'd had his own rooms outside the nursery, he only visited the girls sometimes. If Ino got something into her head and would not let it go, he could simply leave and it would no longer be his problem. This was much harder when the only place he could go was to sulk in his bedroom.

Well. Not the only place, he corrected himself, with scrupulous honesty. He was permitted free reign of any of the public rooms of the Alcethmeret, and he could leave if he took a guard with him. But the Alcethmeret's public rooms were usually busy with the business of state, either Cousin Maia's own work or that of his many secretaries and aides, and if he were to leave the Alcethmeret there were very few places he could go that would not cause comment, and it was awkward to be trailed by a guard when all he wished was to wander aimlessly through the corridors. There were the gardens, but it was too cold for them to be at all tempting.

"You could play with Shero today," Suler said, from where she sat in the corner, mending a dress. Shero was the niece of Dach'osmin Ceredin, and therefore politically acceptable.

Ino scowled. "I want Emelu!"

"I miss my friends too, Ino," Idra said, which was both true and usually placated her.

"Thou saidst we didn't have to play with anyone we didn't like now that Mama is gone!" Ino said. "I don't like Shero!"

"Thou dost too," Mireän put in, looking up from her cup of yoghurt and dried fruit. "Thou hadst fun when she was here yesterday." She licked the spoon with a lack of delicacy that would have made their mother apoplectic, if she could have been there to see it.

"I like Emelu more! Idra, thou saidst we didn't have to choose our friends based on who Mama's friends were, anymore! Thou saidst Papa wouldn't have liked it!"

"I said," Idra held on to his temper with both hands, "that politics shouldn't be the only reason to be friends with someone, and that Papa would have been the first to say so. But we are the Emperor's close kin, and there will always be political considerations in whom we choose to be our companions, and that is doubly so now so soon after Mama's attempted coup. After Cousin Maia gets married, things may have calmed down enough that we can spend more time with our friends whose families were close to Mama."

"But Cousin Maia's wedding isn't for months!" Mireän protested. "Idra, didst not say it was going to take that long."

"I don't like it any more than you," Idra said, speaking to both sisters. They were only children, and too young to truly understand anything, and he understood why they were upset, but did they have to complain so? "My best friend is Emelu's older brother, and I can't go spend time with him, either. I miss my friends, as you do, but spending time with people from certain families would be noticed and make trouble for Cousin Maia."

"Thy friends are boring! Emelu's nice! I want to play with Emelu!"

Ino was too young to realize how self-centered she was being, and there was nothing he could say that would shut her up without being cruel in return, sorely though he was tempted.

"Ino, we know you miss your friend, and we're sorry you haven't been able to see her," Suler said with some sympathy. "But that was not an indoor voice, and yelling will not get you what you want."

Ino did not—quite—throw a tantrum, but it was a near thing, and Mireän came perilously close to egging her on; by the time Leilis Athmaza arrived for Idra's lessons he was glad to escape and leave them both to Suler's attentions.

He had grabbed a few rolls and some meat as the breakfast dishes were taken away, so that he could skip lunch. Though it was a cold day and his only friends who rode were the children of women Mama had been especially close to, being lonely and cold on a horse outside the palace sounded better than being warm and in company with his sisters inside it. And then, if he asked, he might have dinner on a tray in his room, and perhaps by the next morning everyone's temper would have cooled.

"You seem distracted today, your Highness," Leilis observed as they set aside classical poetry to turn to modern economics. "Is aught amiss?" The nursery in the Alcethmeret was large enough to have a dedicated classroom of its own, but it was small and not well heated. There was room for the two of them, but Idra wondered what had been done when the Emperor had more than one child to be educated at a time.

"Nothing that will be helped by speaking of it," Idra said. They already did, in fact, spend a great deal of time discussing current events, the formation and dissolution of factions and alliances at court in the wake of not one but two attempted coups. It was not as if there was much else Idra could spend his time doing, other than lessons. Mama had always vetted his friends and companions carefully. Too carefully; everyone he regularly spent time with was connected to her faction in one way or another. There had never been many youths his age at court, and given recent upheavals some of those who were at court had been sent away to safer places. It was not a good time to make new friends. He sighed. "We wish our father were here."

Leilis nodded sympathetically and patted Idra on the shoulder.

Idra gave a mirthless laugh and looked down at his hands, folded neatly on the table. Leilis was the only person he could truly confide in; he had to be the perfect dutiful heir in front of the court, and a good example to the girls. "We keep wishing for his advice, to hear what he would have us do, but of course if he were here to give advice, the matters we most greatly desire his wisdom about would never have arisen."

"Is there anything we can do, your Highness?" Leilis asked.

"You have already done it," Idra said. "It is only that Ino wants her friends—her old friends—and we sympathize, because we miss Deris and Theshevet and Vanu, and we keep trying to convince ourself that surely enough time has passed that it would be unexceptionable to go hunting with them or invite them here for an afternoon, but we know it has not. And we know that Papa would have sympathized, but he would also have reminded us of our duty, and helped us to think of ways to hasten the time when we might renew the relationship. And he would have thought of something clever we have not, and told a story of his own experience with friendships that had to bow to the winds of politics, and somehow we would have felt better even if nothing really changed."

"Your father the Prince was a good man, a good father, and an astute politician," Leilis said. "We can only imagine how much you must miss him."

Idra blinked back unexpected tears, as Leilis's words struck him harder than he would have thought possible. He was fourteen, almost an adult, and too old and well-trained to allow his emotions to show in public. Leilis was not the public, of course; Idra trusted him more than any other person now living. But one of the most important things Idra needed to learn, as Prince of the Untheileneise Court, was the perfect appearance of whatever demeanor was most appropriate to the moment. Tears only befit a Prince in the immediate aftermath of his grief.

"I think perhaps we can forgo court manners for the morning," Leilis said quietly. He had always been kind, and Idra felt a lump in his throat. He studied the scars and carvings on the table. He'd been surprised, when they moved in, how shabby the furnishings in the Alcethmeret's nursery suite were. But then, he doubted his grandfather had ever troubled himself to visit his children in it.

"I don't know why it's harder today than usual," Idra said at last, scrubbing his face with his hands. "But it is and I would like to lay all my problems at Papa's feet, as I did when I was small, but I cannot, and there is no one but thee to speak with of such things." He caught what he had just said and flushed. "Oh! We apologize, Leilis, for you are an excellent tutor and we could not imagine a better one."

"We took no offence, your Highness," Leilis said. "It is only natural that you miss your father and grandfather and uncles, and of course you would prefer their counsel if it were available. As to why it seems harder today than other days, well, grief is more like an ocean that ebbs and flows and sometimes has storms, than an hourglass where the sands run out in a predictable and even schedule."

"We had thought we were through the worst of it," Idra said dismally.

"You are, your highness," Leilis said. "You will doubtless have many more bad days, where your grief colors everything and even simple tasks are difficult. But you will also have many good days, and that is no small thing."

Idra sighed.

"You could speak with your uncle the Emperor, if you wish for guidance," Leilis said. "We know it is not the same, but he is the Emperor."

"No, we cannot. He is older than us, but knows far less. He is quite possibly the kindest, most generous person at the Untheileneise Court, but by that very token he will be more generous than he should. He would say we should all be friends with whom we will, regardless of consequences." And consequences there certainly would be. If the children of a known usurper showed favor to those families who had been the usurper's partisans … it would be seen as a sign. It would show Edrahasivar as weak and unable to control children, and it would show Idra as … amenable to his mother's ideas even now, and perhaps encourage the next would-be usurper.

In a very small, uncharitable part of his heart, Idra wondered sometimes if Maia might have prevented their mother's coup by being less generous and more practical. If he had reined in the Chancellor more effectively, or watched him more carefully, or simply replaced him at the very beginning … if he had placed spies in their mother's household once her disaffection had become obvious … might things have turned out differently? If, somehow, his mother might have been dissuaded, or been unable to find an ally, he would still be living in his own rooms, able to see his own friends, and so would his sisters. And even if their mother had been relegated at that point, he still would be the son of a suspected traitor, not a proven usurper. It all would have been so much easier.

An even smaller, darker thought considered what might have happened if Idra himself had seen and told the Emperor. Which one of them, after all, had more experience of the Untheileneise Court? Which one of them lived with the Princess? It was true that Cousin Maia had been in the Princess's company more often, but only in the great court functions that Idra was too young to attend. Idra had only seen his mother, on average, a few times a week, but those times were considerably more intimate circumstances. If either of them should have seen, it was Idra. And he had not. Did that mean that no one could have, and that he should forgive himself and Cousin Maia the lapse? Or did it mean they were both fools, and culpable?

Idra shook his head; there was no point in such musings, only pain. "If we were to choose to do what pleased us rather than what is right and necessary … we could have chosen to obey our mother and thus preserve what little we could of the life we once had. Having chosen duty, we will not now cast it aside merely because we are lonely." He could not stop his voice from twisting at that last word.

It wasn't that he desired to be Emperor, for indeed having watched what had happened at Court since his father's murder had quickly cured him of any fantasies of the joys of being Emperor. If his grandfather had not been murdered, if his father had ruled long and well, if Idra had then succeeded him in the full flower of manhood, with years of experience navigating the Court and years of friends and allies throughout not only the Court but the whole of the Ethuveraz … then it would be no hard thing to be Emperor, and Idra would have had few fears at assuming the great responsibility and honor. But as a boy? Untested, at the mercy of his regents and vulnerable to any who wished to try their hand at usurpation? No. There was no temptation in it.

It was only that his entire life had been upended, and was continuing to be so. Losing his father, grandfather, uncles, and the future he had been destined for all in one fell swoop had been difficult, but he had still had his friends and his own rooms and his day-to-day life had continued much as it had since he left the nursery. If he had done as his mother wished, they would have moved to the Alcethmeret, but not into the nursery, and he his daily schedule would have changed but little. Neither his mother nor Chavar would have cared to involve him in the business of ruling. It would have been as close as he could come to the life that would have been his had his father not been murdered, and he would not be so lonely. It would have been entirely wrong, and devastating to the Ethuveraz and the government, but he would have had his friends and some connection, however small, to the life he had once had.

Knowing his father would have agreed with his reasoning, and would have approved of his choices, was very cold comfort. He tried to put a smile on his face, though he feared he was not very successful. "We can endure anything for a little while at least, and after the wedding—and after Cousin Maia has a son of his own—things will be better." After he could leave the Alcethmeret for good. After he did not need to fear quite so much that someone else would try to usurp the throne in his name. "After all, Cousin Maia endured much worse at Edonomee, and for much longer. We have our sisters, and you, and we know there will be an end to that which distresses us."

He swallowed, and tried to get himself under control.

Leilis watched him. "Highness, you have been very diligent in your studies lately. If you wished to take the day off—"

"And do what?" Idra asked. "Listen to Ino cry for her friends? Wander around the Alcethmeret and pretend it is home, while trying to stay out of the Emperor's way? Think about all the things Deris and Vanu and ourself would be doing if only we could spend time with the children of our mother's known partisans? Think about what our father would have to say about everything that has happened since his death? We have done all these things, and we are sick of them."

Leilis bowed. "Then let us return to the projections for the impact of the Wisdom Bridge on the Imperial coffers, both costs to build and maintain it and the projected increased tax revenue from trade across it."