The Emperor of Heaven opened the doors of the wardrobe and stared glumly at the contents. The wardrobe was huge: as large as many apartments back on Earth, and filled with thousands of floor-length robes. Crimson, jade, and gold. Dragons and phoenixes, twisting in perpetual embroidered flight. Pearls and garnets and emeralds, fire-flashing in the cascading light of Heaven's noon.
Mhara thought: T-shirt and jeans. It would not do, and he knew it. He walked into the wardrobe and rummaged through the stiff folds until he found something at the very back of the room. It was silk, and the color of a very pale twilight. It had no ornamentation. He pulled it on and turned to the mirror. His reflection, something in which he had little interest, came as a surprise. An ethereal monk, barely present against the mirrored walls, despite being reflected to baffling infinity.
She was not impressed. He had not expected her to be.
"Mha—Emperor! Where is the Robe of Ten Thousand Years?"
"I've no idea, Mother. Somewhere in the closet, I expect."
"But what is it doing there? Why aren't you wearing it? Your father, when he was crowned—"
"I," said Mhara, very quietly, "am not my father."
"This is a ridiculous piece of posturing! Such pretence of humility is all very well in front of humankind, but it is hardly appropriate in the Imperial Court."
Mhara turned to face her. The Dowager Empress, until so recently the Empress of Heaven, sat at a small table near a high, arched window. Clouds rolled golden beyond, illuminating the brocade folds of her gown. Her face was as he had always known it: serene, calm, lovely, the dark hair intricately braided down her back. Like a mask, he thought. The bitterness of her speech could almost be seen: coiling out into the air and curdling its sweetness. But none of this showed on her face and that, he thought, was no good thing.
"You have not understood me," Mhara said, and at his tone, the Dowager Empress at last fell silent. "I am not my father. You will not, madam, have need of instructing me. I am neither senile nor insane." Nor am I weak, although he did not think he needed to say that.
The Dowager Empress said, "I—"
"It is time for you to take your place, Mother," Mhara said. He glanced at a small silver bell and it rang, just once. Immediately the maids were there, fluttering around the Dowager Empress like butterflies. There was a flash in his mother's eyes that might have been fury, or even hate, and that was honest at least, but the next moment it was gone. And so was she, borne away amid a rustling crowd of maidens.
Mhara thought: Enough. There was a problem there, he knew. No one would believe that the Empress of Heaven could sour like a too-old wine, but then again, no one had believed that the Emperor of Heaven could be mad. Old gods, it seemed to him, do not wear well. Look at Senditreya, deranged bovine goddess of dowsing, whose rampage through the city of Singapore Three had caused so much destruction.
Who needs Hell, when you have a Heaven like this one? Yet, gazing out across the Imperial City, it all looked so tranquil: the turrets and pavilions outlined against the gold-and-blue. Changeless, eternal, and that was the root of the problem.
Things are going to have to change.
Below, the Imperial Palace was crammed with beings. On the long walk up the marble hall, echoes flickering like moths, Mhara looked calmly upon dragons and spirits, goddesses and lords. Their faces had become remote, statue-still, yet imbued with supernatural presence. All were there in their primary aspects: one was not permitted to send an avatar to a coronation. Only one smiled at him: Kuan Yin, Lady of Compassion and Mercy, who sat in a column of jade robes as though conjured from the green salt sea. And only one winked: a dragon, green-gold eye twitching. Mhara repressed a smile of his own and walked on.
At the throne, several anxious courtiers awaited him. It struck him that they might have believed that he wouldn't show up, that he would have been found later, perhaps, down on Earth, pottering about the little temple that was all the worship he would permit, putting plants in soil. He had, briefly, considered it. But there was an ancient magic inherent in the coronation itself, the weight of words spoken, answers given. When you become Emperor of Heaven, or Hell, you write upon the universe itself, a litany that can never be erased, that seeps into the fabric of reality, effecting change. He could not, yet, afford to turn down that kind of power. But he preferred to wear it lightly.
He repeated the conjurations after the whispered prompts of the courtier, until the old man realized that there was no need for coaching. The words came from nowhere, as if murmured by the stars, settling into his head, and he heard his own voice, calm and collected. He glanced once at the Empress and her face was marble-still, but he could see the seethe of thoughts behind it.
A problem. Well, now was not the moment to deal with it.
He uttered the final words of the litany and everything stopped, the world's beating heart pausing for a limitless second. And for that second, Mhara could see everything: the clouds of spawned stars, the specks of dust on the paw of a cat, the beat of blood in his mother's head, the depths of ocean and the grains of desert sand. Despair and beauty and silence and terror and the relentless drive of the world, the ruthlessness of life surging on, bearing everything in its wake.
And then, it began again, and Mhara was Emperor-crowned now.
They sang praises until the long day of Heaven faded into soft dusk and Mhara went alone to his chamber, telling the servants that assistance would not be necessary. Tomorrow, the tasks of true governance would start and he needed to speak to Robin—priestess, beloved, and ghost—about her appearance in Heaven, if she chose. He did not think his mother would like that. Tough.
But for now, he needed peace and silence. There was something he had to think about. It was not the desolate churn of suns in the furthest reaches of space, nor the cries of species becoming extinct in the world below. It was not the manifold woes of humans or the fears of the lords of Hell.
During that moment of coronation, of the universe's validation of its supposedly most august son, Mhara had in that all-seeing, omniscient instant, glimpsed something really disturbing. It had been the clawed paw of a badger, disappearing into a red sack.