★★★★☆ Min Zemerin's Plan, by Katherine Addison
** spoiler alert ** Celehar puts duty before kindness
Min Zemerin’s Plan
Katherine Addison
** spoiler alert **
Celehar puts duty before kindness
Min Zemerin’s Plan is a short story in Katherine Addison‘s Cemeteries of Amalo series, #1.5 in the Goodreads numbering. It appeared in The Sunday Morning Transport. It can be read there for free.
It takes place in Celehar’s early days in Amalo, but after Celehar has been there long enough to become notorious in the newspapers. Governess Min Zemerin’s employer has just died, and she knows that the late employer’s children will discard her without a thought. She decides to go boldly to Witness for the Dead Celehar to ask him to consult his corpse to find out whether he intended to make provision for her and her charge.
Celehar as always is kindness itself. And he is forced to deliver bad news to Min Zemerin. It’s an interesting light on Celehar. Many of the officials of Amalo that we’ve met in the novels of the series are corrupt in major and minor ways. One senses that for Celehar the temptation to deliver a kind lie is probably stronger than any material or pecuniary temptation could possibly be. But he shows himself to be incorruptible.