Land of the Beautiful Dead (50 page)

“Ah, Lan…”

“Were you tempted?” she asked in a cracking voice. “Even a little? Tell me you were, even if you weren’t. Just so I don’t feel like so much of a fool. I promise I’ll never bring it up again if you just tell me you were tempted.”

He was silent a long, long time. Then, in a voice like death itself, he said, “The first night you slept in my bed…in my arms…I looked down on you as you dreamed and felt your breath on my skin and thought how trusting you were. How foolish and fearless. How soft. And I was tempted then. I have never harmed one of those who came to my bed, never before considered it, but I touched your lips and thought how easily I might steal your breath away…and raise you up again before you ever knew you’d died.” He moved his hand over her stomach in a circle just once—she felt an odd, cold pulling sensation, as if he’d found some secret thread inside her and wound it once around his wrist—then came to rest on her hip. “And I would have you forever.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Again, silence, stretching out until she had to fight not to break it herself.

“You wept,” he said at last. He said it mildly enough, but she could feel the tension in his body, even if he didn’t show it. “And when I brushed your tears away, you put your arm around my neck.”

She waited, but that appeared to be it.

“A small thing,” he admitted. “Lasting only a few seconds, no more. And I realized then that I have had a hundred women in that bed, but never so honest a touch. After all the years of my life, that was my best moment.” His eyes dimmed to almost perfect blackness. “Your hand on my neck.”

She raised her hand and brought it to rest at the hollow of his throat. She smiled. He didn’t.

“It was the first time I ever felt like a man. Not a monster. Not a conquering god. Only a man, lying with his woman, watching her sleep. I think back to that moment often. Often. But it always comes braided with that first impulse. Just as all my memories of that night, the night we will not speak of, must come braided with you asking me to murder you…and I, tempted.”

She couldn’t look at him, so she reached out for the bottle.

He moved it further away. “No more of that, my Lan. I am not angry. The night is not soured that ends in your company. Bittersweet, at worst.” He brushed his fingertips across her lips and brought them to his own, smiling just a little as he tasted. “My favorite flavor.”

She had to smile back, had to, even though her eyes burned on the edge of tears. “I know you’re trying to be dovey and all, but that’s been in my mouth, that has. Do you know the sorts of things I do with my mouth?”

“Ah, so well do I know.” He leaned in a little and for one dizzying moment, she thought he might actually kiss her. On his own, so to speak, instead of waiting for her to do it and trying to push her off a few times first. But no, he was only shifting her weight on his thigh, it seemed, because he leaned back again, putting even more distance between them than had been there before, even if he was smiling. “Why did you come tonight, Lan? I admit I’m glad you did…however reluctantly…but I will know why. Plans, you said. Plans that took—” He tapped a claw off the neck of the bottle. “—courage to present. Tell me.”

“You would ask me now. I’m pissed, man.” But she didn’t say no. Instead, with a sigh, she got up and moved back to her chair, raising her voice to say, “Can I get some coffee?”

One of the servants ducked out and came back almost immediately with a tray already made up, just like they’d been waiting all night for her to ask. She was of half a mind to be insulted, but the other half was jiggered, so she took it without comment, because this was the important thing, this was the bit that mattered, and she needed to have her head on.

“It’s a dumb idea,” she began. “You’ll think it’s naive and it would never work and you’ll probably also think I’m a bit of a fool for suggesting it, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t say so out loud.”

“You have my word I’ll refuse gently.”

“You have to promise to hear it all the way through.”

“Agreed.”

“And you have to promise not to say no tonight. You have to think about it at least until tomorrow.”

He acknowledged that with a lordly wave of one hand, and when she opened her mouth, he said, “You built Haven. Why not leave and build another?”

Her mouth stayed open, stupidly gaping in dismay.

“It is naive,” Azrael told her, but he said it gently, just like he’d promised. “And it will not work. But you are not a fool to suggest it. I’m only surprised it’s taken you this long to ask.”

“I didn’t know you had anyone around who could do the job until recently. You can’t just knock up a row of houses and call it done. Well, you can,” she corrected. “Plenty do. Norwood was that way. Daub-and-wattle walls, thatch roof, dirt cellars, and solar charging stations to keep the ferries running and the pumps working in the well. Just like plenty try to live in the old ruins, even though the sewers flood out and the roads fall in and every year, babies are born without eyes or hands, because who-knows-what has been soaking into the ground. It’s one thing to take a place like Haven and keep it running. It’s something else to build it.”

“You give me too much credit. My ascension was not without violence. I merely repaired what I could of the damage.”

“See, I’d believe that if I hadn’t slept in the Red Room.”

He cocked his head at her and when that failed to produce an explanation, said, “I think I must be missing your meaning.”

“The Red Room is at the top of a tower,” she told him. “And that tower has no business being there. I’ve seen pictures of the old palace. There never was a tower.”

“The North Wing was destroyed and had to be restored.”

“And you restored it with a tower?”

He rolled one shoulder. “Call me a romantic. If I’d known how difficult they were to construct or how largely useless they are in function, I would not have bothered. As it is, the palace stands as a rare success among many failures. So many, I did not see fit to finish Haven’s restoration. I did only what I had to do to make the city safe to inhabit.”

“Now you’re just straight-up lying to me,” she said, ignoring the sudden flaring of his eyes. “What about all the other buildings, the ones with all the shiny glass, and all the chip shops and garages and offices and such? Those are just gone, whether they were broken in the war or not. You didn’t need them and you didn’t like the looks of them, so you brought them down and let me tell you, that’s even trickier than putting them up, especially with them all stacked together, nuts to butts. If building was doctoring, that would be surgery! That would be twice the surgery, in fact, because you put new things up and made them look like they’d always been there.”

“I did nothing. And the surgeons, as you would call them, are long gone. I would not know now where to find them.”

“They’re in the library,” she informed him. “And it took Master Wickham all of an hour to hunt them up.” She swallowed some coffee without pleasure. Too sweet. Starting to cool off. She drank it anyway, wiped her mouth and eyed the wine bottle. “We talked a bit, them and me, about the building of Haven. I admit I didn’t understand everything they said, but I got the broad strokes and the broadest stroke of all is this: They did it once and they can do it again. So I say we go.”

“Abandon Haven. Abandon the home I fought for, the home I provide for my people.”

“What was that you said? You said something once…give me a second…” Lan squeezed her eyes shut, thinking back through wine-colored thoughts, and haltingly said, “What is it to me…but a heap of bricks…and a roof over my head?”

He grunted sourly and had a drink, muttering, “Near enough.”

“You don’t like it here. Maybe it’s true you wanted it once, but you never liked it. When was the last time you even left the palace? This is not your home, Azrael,” she insisted as he looked away, “but it’s not too late to have one.”

“Where?” he asked. “Because no matter how long abandoned, when word finds a living ear that Azrael and his undead have claimed another ruin, they will come to take it from me.”

“You’re probably right, but who says we have to live in ruins? We can build a place, brand new, just for us. Only this time, don’t make it look quite so grand. No electric lights. No colored glass windows. No creepy little winged babies hanging off of every corner. Tell your building-blokes to make it look a little rundown, a little dirty. It doesn’t have to be a palace, does it? It can be a town. Just a town. Towns can be good places.”

“It will be found,” he said with just a hint of frustration. “No matter how remote, how small, how well-hidden, the living
will
come. And when they do—”

“We’ll sell ‘em a mug of ale and a bowl of stew and move ‘em on in the morning,” she interrupted. “Don’t you get it? It will look like every other town, with not enough food and not enough livestock to feed all the people who already live there. Just another town full of starving, mistrustful people…who might be a bit prettier than you find elsewhere, but otherwise, just people. The ferryman who brought me here was a dead man and I never knew it until I—eh, that’s not important,” she said, and as Azrael smiled faintly, she went hurriedly on. “You’re the only one we’ll have to hide, but as long as you don’t post your Revenants in full uniform outside your door, that should be easy enough to do. I passed through a dozen towns where I never saw the mayor. Important folk as that never meet with any old johnny off the road.”

“You aren’t thinking clearly.” He tapped his eyes at the cup they shared. “I can’t imagine why.” Back to her. “If you were, you would perhaps realize there are nearly ten thousand people in Haven. How am I to move them unseen?”

“You don’t have to. Crops blight. Walls break. Revenants come.” Lan shrugged. “Folk are used to seeing long lines of strangers trudging down the road every now and then. As long as we go at it in small lots, a hundred or so, we’re not going to raise any hackles. The only thing they’re likely to do is shut their village gate until we’ve all passed by. Once that first group finds a likely place to start building, we send the next batch. We’ll have to be careful, sure, but I can’t see it taking more than a year.”

“Your innocence is showing, Lan.”

Startled, she checked the front of her bodice, but everything appeared to be in order.

“No,” he said patiently. “I mean it is clear you have lived all your life behind walls with no understanding of what it takes to erect them. It is the work of several years to lay the foundation of such a town, years just to quarry the stone. Such an endeavor would attract attention long before it was completed.”

“Now you’re just making excuses. All we need to start is a place for your dollies to bed down and a greenhouse to start growing food. What’s it matter to you how long the rest takes? You’ve got time.”

“Yes, I do. I have time and I have
had
time, ages of time, more than Men can easily measure or even name. And if my time has taught me nothing else, it has taught me there can be no peace with the living.”

“Well, then just say that,” said Lan crossly. “Don’t pretty it up with fake reasons about moving and foundations, just say, ‘I am a giant jackhat and I hate the living and if I came across one burning in the bloody street, I wouldn’t piss on him to put him out.’”

“Lan.”

“No, that’s what this is really about, isn’t it? You won the war and winners don’t do the leaving, so fuck ‘em all, you’re staying. You hate it here,” she added, ignoring the flash of his eyes, “but they hate that you’re here even more and that’s what counts.”

“You’re drunk, Lan.”

“Yeah, well, you’re bloody-minded and spiteful and I’ll be sober in the morning.”

Behind her, more sensed than seen, one of the servants set down his tray and slipped away. The others rapidly followed, actually bottlenecking at the door in their silent haste to get out ahead of the impending explosion. Azrael watched them go, then turned a brooding eye on Lan. “You’re a terrible diplomat.”

“Oh yeah? Well, you’re a terrible…git! And you’ve got funny eyes!”

“One would think you would do all in your power to sweeten your proposal. Instead, you harangue me with another of your demands, without, I note, releasing me from the first.” He gave her a moment with that, his eyes flaring brighter in her mutinous silence. “And you’ve no intention, have you? If I told you I would build your town tomorrow on the promise that you would never again speak of ending my hungering dead, you’d say—”

“No, damn it!” Lan slapped the table, narrowly missing her coffee cup. “I’m showing you a chance at a real home, here! You don’t build it to shut me up, you build it because you
want
to build it! Because you
believe
in it!”

Gone in an instant was his last pretense of calm. He tore the mask from his head with violence enough that the strap cut across his scalp and slammed it down on the table, one hand cutting upward to point at the ruin of his face. “
This
is what I believe in,” he snarled. “This is the home Men have made for me! I’ll not reward them with Haven while I slink away! I will burn this city and salt the ashes before I leave one brick of it standing for the living to take back!”

“Why stop there?” she demanded. “Why not finish the job? But wait, who are you going to punish when there’s no one left to lip off to your Revenants or burn your Eaters or…build a house or plant a tree…or hold hands or have babies or just live their damn lives! Will you finally be happy once you’ve avenged yourself on the hundreds of people who ever hurt you by killing
all
of us?”