Land of the Beautiful Dead (64 page)

“Thanks. Leave my handmaiden alone.”

Azrael threw an unforgiving glance at Serafina, who bowed herself swiftly from the room.

“She’s not so bad,” Lan said after an uncomfortable minute. “She’s just a little tetchy because I’m so late. She takes her responsibilities seriously.”

“Stop defending her.” His sharp tone softened. “She does not require defense.”

She nodded, fussing with her gloves. They didn’t feel right—too tight on the fingers, too loose on the wrists, not long enough. Tailored for someone else, she thought. It made her feel…something. “Did you actually come all the way down here just to walk me to dinner?” she asked lightly, loudly. “That’s kind of dovey.”

“No.”

She tugged at her glove some more. “Oh.”

“I saw you running through the halls and thought something had upset you.” His head tipped. “Shall I?”

“Shall you what, upset me? No, let’s give that a miss for tonight. For the novelty of it.”

“Shall I walk you to dinner?” he asked patiently. “If it charms you so.”

She could feel herself blush and to hide it, she headed for the door. “I don’t know about that, it’s just that no one ever has before.”

“In Norwood, you mean.”

“Yeah.” She tossed out a shrug. “To be honest, I think it’s silly. The dovey stuff people do.”

“Do you?” He fell into step beside her, idly acknowledging the salutes and bows of the guards they passed. “I find that when people feel it necessary to preface their words with an avowal of honesty, they are usually lying.”

“I’m not,” she said, annoyed.

“I said usually, not always.”

“Why would you even mention it if you didn’t think I was lying?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“You just did!”

He gave her a minute to work that out.

“You’re an ass,” she told him, nettled. “Notice I didn’t say, ‘To be honest,’ first.”

“You must not mean it.”

“I can never tell whether you’re picking a fight or just in a good mood when you get like this,” she remarked. “How long were you standing there before we saw you?”

His smile went out like the sun behind a cloud, taking light and warmth with it. “Long enough.”

She walked beside him, stealing glances from the corner of her eye, trying to see through the damn mask to gauge the mood beneath. “We were talking about the sky. The old sky, I mean. Do you remember it?”

“I remember everything.” Still cold. Still dark.

“What color was it? For real?”

“All of them. A different color every hour of every day.”

“You’re funning me.” A thought struck. “Did you have a favorite sky color?”

His lip twitched. “White.”

“Still white.”

“The habits of a lifetime make all men predictable and mine has been longer than most.”

“Why a white sky?”

“Because I saw it so rarely, I suppose. And because it made the world seem empty. It was best in winter, with snow on the ground…and the mist close on every side, blotting out all but this tree, this jut of rock…all scarcely there, as if sketched in by the hand of an idle painter and then abandoned. I could stand for hours under a white sky, imagining I were all that was left.”

Lan tried not to say it, she really did. “That sounds awful.”

He shrugged. “Wait and see. The sky will clear. You will see its limitless design for yourself and develop your own preference.”

“That’s going to be so weird,” she mused, looking out a window as they passed it, imagining a blue sky in place of the bilious yellow that had always been there. Although now that she thought about it, it did change a little. On foggy mornings, it was more greyish than yellow. At dusk and dawn, it had a rosier tint. The stars had been out all Lan’s life, but she remembered her mother telling her they hadn’t been visible for first few years after the ascension. So maybe she would see a blue sky someday. And orange. And purple. And white. A different color every hour of every day.

“Do you suppose we’ll get it all back eventually?” she asked. “Cinemas and zoos and sports and all that?”

“Some,” he said after a moment’s thought. “Not all. The world turns back on itself more often than people realize, but never all the way.”

“Just as well, I guess. I don’t think I could ever live in a city like they show in the books. Norwood was about as big as I could handle.”

“And Haven?” he inquired, beginning to smile again.

“Dead people don’t live the same way. You know what I mean,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You’ve got enough people to be a real city, but you don’t have the city stuff.”

“Cinemas,” he guessed.

“Because they don’t want them. Do you want them?”

“I have learned to live without them.”

“That isn’t what I asked. Haven’t you ever wanted to see a zoo?”

“No.”

“Bad example. I forgot you don’t like animals.”

“They don’t like me,” he corrected. “I’m fond enough of them that I don’t enjoy seeing them made captive for my own viewing pleasure.”

“I think I’d like to see one anyway. The only animals I ever saw were the kind you eat. And rats.”

“Shall I have a zoo built for you here on the palace grounds?”

She looked at him, but he seemed to be serious. “No,” she said, frowning. “Not just for me. That’s…not right. Here.” She stuck out her arm defiantly. “Want to hold my hand?”

He looked at it like it was a snake and moved ahead of her without speaking.

Lan lowered her arm and picked at her dress. “Sometimes in Norwood, people hold hands.”

No response.

“I guess once you actually start fucking, you don’t need to do any of that dovey stuff.” She walked behind him, watching her toes wink in and out under the hem of her long skirts rather than his unyielding back. “Mom told me once the only kiss she could remember was the one her mother gave her when she put her on the boat. She never kissed a boy or let a boy kiss her because she wanted to remember it. She told me that, but you know? She never kissed me either. It made me so angry—well, not angry, exactly, but close—I went out behind the drying shed with Eithon Fairchild.” She made a face and shook her head. “I told him he could kiss me if he wanted. I don’t know what I was expecting. Something nice. I’d see Eithon walking with Bess or Elvie and sometimes holding her hand and I wanted that so bad. Mine were always dirty.”

She raised her hands to look at them now. Gloved. Because they were stained. She sighed and let them drop again.

“So I told him he could kiss me and he grabbed my tits and stuck his wormy tongue right down my gob until I gagged on it. I tried to push him away and he pushed me back, so I fell down and when I was on my knees, he climbed on me and pretended like he was dog-humping me. He was laughing. Then he pushed me all the way over and left me there and later I saw him walking Elvie to the cookhouse when the dinner bell rang. He was holding her hand and she was smiling.” Lan shrugged. “I don’t care. Elvie Peters is a git.”

He reached the corner that took them out of this hall and waited there, so that they turned into the next hall together. He resumed walking at her side. He still didn’t speak.

“I like to think I’m not a git,” Lan said. “I know you think I am—”

“I do not.”

“Well, you think it’s stupid of me to keep asking for audiences when your answer never changes.”

“Hm.”

“But I like to think I’m not utterly useless, you know? Maybe I’m not smart, but I’m not an idiot either. Like being alive or dead…there’s degrees, you know?”

He gave her a frowning glance.

“Sometimes I wonder if maybe the reason you give me all these nice clothes and offer to build me zoos and such is because you really just want to be with me. And if that’s true,” she went on as he put a bit more distance between them, “then I figured you’d ought to know by now that I hate wearing dresses and I don’t guess I’d want to see animals in cages either, but if you want to be with me, that’s all right.”

“How comforting. And how unnecessary. You came to me as clay. I shape you according to my desire and I need take none of it by proxy. I dress you for the pleasure of looking at you. You take lessons so that I might have the pleasure of educated conversation in the future. And whatever whim moves me, whether it be to see you dance or game with you or converse in any of the hundreds of tongues known to me, so shall you be cast.” He uttered a sound a little too sour to be a laugh. “Truly, you should be grateful my desires are not wholly physical. I know my touch—”

“—is loathsome,” she finished for him. “No, it isn’t. Hey.” She caught his arm.

He stopped walking, but did not immediately turn to face her and when he finally did, the only thing he let her see was his impatience, even when she took his hand and placed it on her bare skin, just below the hollow of her throat.

“Am I lying?” she challenged, staring straight into his eyes. “Do I loathe this?”

“Let us examine.” He moved his hand lower, hooking the neckline of her gown on his thumb and pulling it down until his palm pressed against her breastbone. “Your heart is quickening,” he observed. “Your muscles, tightening. You have always been delightfully responsive, but even you shudder in my embrace.” 

“And writhe,” she agreed. “And moan. But there are more reasons to moan than with horror.”

“A point.” He slid his hand beneath her gown and her corset’s stiff constraint to cup her breast and feel for himself her stiffening nipple. “A fair point. You have the intriguing habit of using honesty against me in the most unexpected ways. A formidable weapon in the right hands.” His own gently kneaded once and then released her. “But even the sharpest weapon is useless if it cannot strike a mortal blow. So come, child. There will be time enough to talk…and touch…later. Dinner is waiting.”

Lan adjusted her gown. “You’re lucky I’m hungry or we’d have this out. Are you going to hold my hand or not?”

“No. Do you miss Norwood?”

“Why do you have to say it like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like it tastes bad.”

He scowled. “I don’t. Do you miss it? I would not have thought your life there to be a happy one, yet it is all you seem to talk about.”

“Sorry. Am I being tiresome?” she asked, annoyed.

“Answer my question.”

“No. Sometimes. Sort of. Not really.”

He threw her a bewildered glance and a crooked smile in spite of his obvious irritation. “Am I meant to pick the answer I like best?”

“I miss…I don’t know…the
memory
of Norwood. I hated it when I was actually there. Maybe if I had mates, it would be different, but I was never really one of them.”

“Hm.”

“My mother…she wasn’t one of them either, but she could have been. She was foreign, but she made them respect her. She was…” There were so many ways to end that, so many memories, but they all ended in the bonfire. Lan looked away, studying her reflection in the many shiny surfaces they passed—the soft face, the fine gown. “She wasn’t like me. She had her own place there. I just had part of hers. And when she died…sometimes I think I left to spare them all the embarrassment of throwing me out.”

He chuckled, looked at her and laughed aloud. “Until you said that, I never really believed you were British.”

As they came into the next corridor, Lan could see two pikemen and another guard in a uniform whose variations were unfamiliar to her, which was in itself strange enough to draw her eye. The three of them were clustered together at the far end of the hall along with Azrael’s steward, and although Lan could not hear them, their tension was obvious as they conferred.

“What do you suppose that’s about?” she asked.

Azrael didn’t even look to see what she was referring to. “If it is important, someone will tell me.”

“My lord, a word?”

Azrael halted, fixing her with an undeservedly blameful stare before turning around. He folded his arms and assumed his most forbidding stance as his steward approached them at what could only be called a trot. He asked no questions, merely waited.

“Forgive the intrusion upon your…er…” The dead man’s gaze darted toward Lan and away again. “Perhaps your companion would be more comfortable in the dining hall while my lord attends to this, ah, minor matter.”

Lan took a neutralizing pause before smiling at Azrael. “Something you don’t want me to hear?”

“This is none of my doing,” Azrael replied with a convincing frown. “What news? Speak.”

The dead man looked at Lan again, then grit his teeth and said, “My lord, I’ve just had a message from the gate.”

Azrael’s fingers drummed on his bicep.

“They’ve had, ah, an arrival. Which is to say a human. Living. Two of them, actually.”

Azrael spat out what could only be a curse, even if Lan did not recognize the language. “Take them back to their village and when they are there, shove their guns down their throats, impale them to their ferry and set them on fire. Not a word!” he snapped at Lan, who had only just opened her mouth. “Let their fellows see the fate of those who dare to strike against me! If there is any resistance, if there is so much as one stone thrown or one insult spoken—”