This new novel from the prolific and multi-genre author Chaz Brenchley is delightful. Of the Emperor’s Kindness is a tightly plotted and intricately unspooling sapphic fantasy about court intrigue, international politics, and the functions of a diplomat. Its strong propulsive thrust comes from the glorious focalised narration of its principal character, Malance Hermentine, the twenty-three-year old Ambassador of Verantha to the powerful empire of Feremendas.
This setting has no connection to our world, though something about the intensity of the court politics wafts a hint, a mere suggestion really, that we might find the Ottoman Empire an instructive comparison. The events of the novel take place in the chief city of Feremendas, a port on a very large land mass beside a sea, possibly an inland sea, on which ships can sail for days. There are indications that Verantha is to the north, and Feremendas possibly lies to the east or west or even to its south, but with no printed map these impressions merely swirl about in the reader’s head.
Malance the Ambassador is in a painful position, since Verantha, a tiny buffer state, has very recently been invaded by Clath, its much larger and aggressive neighbour, and is deemed to no longer exist. But Malance will not go quietly. She had never expected to be an Ambassador, being only a junior attaché in the embassy when the Clath invasion began. But, now that she is the only native Veranthan left in Feremendas, the beneficent emperor insists that she stay in the city to represent her homeland, since by doing so she will keep it in existence. His motives are at present unclear, but Malance is deeply grateful for his kindness.
While the emperor funds Verantha’s embassy, Malance is determined to be as unbeholden as she can in order to uphold Verantha’s pride and independence, even if in name only. However, an impoverished ambassador does not give Verantha any political power, and Malance feels purposeless, and often hopeless.
While struggling with guilt and grief for her people, and looking for a way forward in her new identity, Malance has another preoccupation: She is in love with Vivi, a Princess of the Imperial Household. Vivi is short, efficient, and a fabulous force of nature. She is also a magnificent political schemer with the supreme self-confidence that comes from her early training in the emperor’s household. She is his distant relative, and this gives her enormous clout in the Palace and beyond.
One evening she sweeps Malance off to meet their friends—all artists, poets, and musicians—on the Royal Barge (she has borrowed it, she’s sure no one will mind). Their ensuing picnic on a coastal promontory is joyful and charming, until an act of violence shocks Malance into her proper work of ambassador. Vivi’s powerful network and court knowledge will help Malance not just maintain but expand Verantha’s presence within Feremendas.
The political machinations and domestic planning in Of the Emperor’s Kindness are terrific. This is a novel for those who relish this aspect of Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch novels, and, at a rather smaller scale, the domestic and personal politics of being an emperor in Katherine Addison’s Goblin Emperor series. Where Addison’s novels mark the passing of time by the jewels and dress that her emperor’s attendants garb him in, for example, Brenchley focuses on food. Some of the snacks, meals, bites, and late suppers that Malance eats, gets distracted from, or forgets to eat, do sound very delicious; but some also do not. On occasion we are expected to be alienated, but not by a rejection of gross expenditure or ostentatious greed—some animals really ought not to be eaten. It’s the organisation that impresses most: the sheer coordination and people management required to have all these arrangements executed perfectly, and to never run out of drink.
Brenchley is writing in what we might call the subgenre of the cosy fantasy political thriller. His particular contribution is the servant pages, of whom Vivi was once one. These are young attendants to the emperor, who are acquired, appointed, or offered to the role as children, brought up and trained to the same level no matter what their original high or low estate, and deployed as the most perfect major domos, secretaries, housekeepers, attachés, and superbly competent right-hand people, often serving in several of those roles at the same time. I read Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire (2019) some weeks after finishing Of the Emperor’s Kindness and had serious flashbacks. Both novels’ protagonists depend upon the expert guidance of charming, all-powerful, all-knowledgeable, and resourceful court officials to achieve their aims, but Brenchley’s start younger, much younger, and are bound rather than employed. Vivi and the pages belong to the emperor and are in his gift—he has the right to grant them to anyone to whom he wishes as a mark of his esteem. On achieving adulthood, they do also have the option of returning to where they came from, but most do not.
The emperor summons Malance for a private conversation, in which he warns her that, following the Clathian invasion of Verantha, things are going to get worse. He also tells her that he is giving her two pages because she will need the services they can offer. Malance doesn’t understand this. She already has adequate servants, but the emperor knows what he is doing with such a generous gift, and he knows that Vivi has enormous ideas.
On their arrival at the Veranthan Embassy—an enormous house that Malance has never explored in its entirety—the new pages, Ash and Alder, begin their work of refurbishing and buttressing Malance’s position in the world by setting new standards for how the Embassy will be run. All the servants are shown how to clean and polish properly and are set to it. The pages explore and inventory the whole house, a new cook arrives, carts of supplies fill the driveway, and a large selection of Vivi’s wardrobe and belongings arrive from the Palace. As comprehensively as Vivi takes over Malance’s political education, her wardrobe, and her self-care, Ash and Alder take over her domestic management—and, as we will find out later, her security.
This gesture of favour by the emperor pulls political threads. Malance begins to find new allies; she is offered gifts and invitations and her life blossoms, even if it seems to be running away with her. She feels that things are continually getting out of her control, and that Vivi is always in charge. Malance’s Embassy is full to the brim with Vivi’s friends planning and executing Vivi’s enthusiastic schemes. Vivi and the pages guide Malance through the need for proper attendants, of proper livery for her attendants; the importance of when to arrive, and through which gate, when attending the important Friday audiences at the Palace; how the emperor will hear appeals and give his verdict on cases, observed by all the courtiers, the nobles, and the other ambassadors. When Malance acts like a significant ambassador, Verantha claims its status, and the Ambassador from Clath is furious.
When a shipload of Veranthan refugees arrive at the Embassy’s gates, Malance finally has a mission she—not Vivi, not the charmingly tyrannical pages, not the emperor—can finally handle. When a second shipload arrives, she asks the emperor for more money, and then the Ambassador for Clath invites Vivi (but not Malance) to an ambassadorial soirée, and the politics of Clath’s pressure on Feremendas become much more apparent: Malance must protect her own.
This is the first Chaz Brenchley novel I’ve read, and I am delighted that it is being trailed as Book One of the Imperial Vices series. I will be looking out for the next volume, Of the City’s Charity, to be published later this year. The writing is measured and snappy and the story’s construction is beautifully balanced. The twists are seeded so successfully that I was blindsided in a very satisfactory way, and I will be rereading Of the Emperor’s Kindness to appreciate them properly.
The novel is not wholly cosy. There are hints of the potential for Malance’s complete dominance by Vivi; but Vivi can be discomfited, in the nicest way, by Malance’s own decision-making, at long last. Are the pages too good to be true? I think that might depend on the personality of the emperor or empress in whose gift they are: This one is beneficent, but he is also, as we find, utterly ruthless when a greater good is required. The pages are ruthless also: Malance is fortunate to be on the right side of such deadly skill and unquestioning obedience to the right inflection of power. Other people might not have the same fate.