3
Esste stayed for a year, working quiet miracles.
I never meant to involve myself directly in these things, she said to Kyaren, when it was time for her to leave.
I wish you wouldn't go.
This isn't my real work, Kya-Kya. My real work waits for me in the Songhouse. This is your work. You do it well.
In the year that she was there, Esste healed the palace while holding the empire at bay. Humanity had been disorganized for more than twenty thousand years, knit together in an empire for less than a century. It could have come apart easily. But Esste's deft voice was confident and forceful; when it was time to announce that Riktors was ill, she already had the trust or respect or fear of those she had to depend on. She made no decisions-that was for Kyaren and the Mayor, who knew what was going on. She only spoke and sang and soothed the million voices that cried to the capital for guidance, for help; that searched in the capital for weakness or sloth. There were no holes for the knives to go in. And by the end of the year, the regency was secure.
Esste, however, regarded as far more important the work she did with Ansset and with Riktors. It was her song that at last brought Riktors out of catalepsia. She was the antidote to Ansset's rage. And while Riktors did not speak for seven months, he did become attentive, watched as people walked around the room, ate decently, and took care of his own toilet, much to the relief of his doctors. And after seven months, he finally answered when spoken to. His answer was obscene and the servant he spoke to was mortified, but Esste only laughed and came to Riktors and embraced him. You old bitch, he said, his eyes narrow. You've taken my place.
Only held it for you, Riktors. Until you're ready to fill it again.
But it soon became clear that Riktors would never be ready to fill his place. He became cheerful enough, after a time, but he was often overcome by great melancholy. He was taken by whims, and then forgot them suddenly in the middle-once he left thirty hunters beating the forest and walked back to the palace, causing a terrible panic until he was found swimming naked in the river, trying to sneak up on the geese that landed in the eddies near the shore. He could not concentrate on matters of state. And when decisions were brought to him, he acted quickly and rashly, trying to get rid of problems immediately, uncaring whether they were solved right or not. He had lost no memory. He remembered clearly that he had once cared about these things very much.
But it weighs on me now. It chafes me, like a bad-fitting uniform. I'm a terrible emperor, aren't I?
You're good enough, answered Esste, so long as you don't interfere with those who are willing to bear the burdens.
Riktors looked out the window to where the clouds were coming in over the forest.
Already my shoes are full?
They aren't your shoes, Riktors, Esste said. They're Mikal's, You filled them, and walked awhile in them. But now they don't fit-as you said. You can still serve. By staying alive and putting in an appearance now and then, you can keep the empire unified. While the others make the decisions you don't care to make anymore. Isn't that fair enough?
Is it?
What use do you have for power now? You used it once, and nearly killed everything you loved.
He looked at her in horror. I thought we didn't discuss that.
We don't. Except when you need a reminder.
And so Riktors lived in his rooms in the palace, and amused himself as he pleased, and put in public appearances so the citizens would know he was alive. But all the business was carried on by underlings. And gradually, as the year went on, Esste withdrew herself from the business, failed to attend the meetings, and the Mayor and Kyaren ruled together, neither of them strong enough yet to rule alone, both of them glad that ruling alone wasn't necessary.
Healing Riktors as much as he could be healed was only part of Esste's work. There was Efrim, in a way the easiest; in a way the hardest.
He was only a year old when his father was taken from him and lulled, but that was young enough to feel the loss. He cried for his father, who had been tender and playful with him, and Kyaren could not comfort him. So it was Esste who took him, and sang to him until she found the songs that filled the boy's need. But I won't be here forever, said Esste, and he must have someone to replace his father.
The Mayor was not slow to catch on, and he turned to Kyaren. He's around the palace, and so am I. I'm convenient, don't you think? So that before Esste had been there six months, Efrim was calling the Mayor Daddy, and before Esste left the palace, Kyaren and the Mayor had signed a contract.
I always call you Mayor, Esste said one day. Don't you have a name?
The Mayor laughed. When I took on this duty, Riktors told me that I had no name. 'You've lost your name,' he said. 'Your name is Mayor, and you are mine.' Well, I'm not really his now, I suppose. But I've got used to having no other name.
So Efrim was healed, and Kyaren with him, almost by accident. Oh, there was none of the passion she had known with Josif. But she had had enough of passion. There was something just as strong and just as comforting in shared work. There was not a part of her life that she didn't share with the Mayor, and there was not a part of His life that he did not share with her. They periodically got quite irritated with each other, but they were never alone.
But all these healings, of Riktors, of Efrim, of Kyaren, of the empire-they were not Esste's most important work.
Ansset refused to sing.
As soon as the hysteria had ended, and he was rational again, she had tried to hear his voice. Songs can be lost, she said, but songs can be regained.
I have no doubt of it, he said. But I have sung my last song.
She did not try to persuade him. Just hoped that, before she left, she could see a change in his view.
There were changes, certainly. He had always been kinder than Riktors, and so the suffering that purged him of all his hatred did not strip him of his personality. He laughed quite soon, and played happily with Efrim as if he were a younger brother, imitating Efrim's baby speech perfectly. I feel like I have two children, Kyaren said one day, laughing.
The one will grow up sooner than the other, Esste predicted, and Ansset did. In only a few months he was interested in the matters of government. He was one of the few people in the palace who had been there under both Riktors and Mikal. He knew many people that the Mayor and Kyaren did not. More important, he was much better than Esste in understanding what people had to say, what they really meant, what they really wanted, and he was able to answer them the way they needed in order to leave satisfied. It was the remnant of his songs that had made him a good manager of Earth. Now, in the absence of the emperor and as Esste withdrew herself more and more from government, Ansset began to take the public role, meeting the people Riktors could not be trusted to meet, the dangerous ones that Kyaren and the Mayor were not sure they could handle.
And it worked well. While Kyaren and the Mayor remained virtually unknown to the rest of the empire, Ansset was already as famous as Riktors and Mikal themselves had been. And though no one ever again heard him sing in the palace as he had before, he was still called the Songbird, and the people loved him.
Yet he was not really happy, despite his cheerfulness and hard work. The day that Esste left, she took him aside, and they spoke.
Mother Esste, let me go with you, he said.
"No, she answered.
Mother Esste, he repeated, haven't I stayed on Earth long enough? I'm nineteen. I should have gone home four years ago.