Land of the Beautiful Dead

by Smith, R. Lee

  The girl rolled one round shoulder in an angry shrug. “Boiled.”

  “Coffee, then. Two. And dinners. How much are you?” Like questioning the water, he was expected to ask.

  “Five for a suck. Fucks are twenty in a bed, ten against the wall,” she said, turning to flash her fingers at the man working the kitchen. Her father, he would be. Or her brother. Or both. Waystations were always a family business and those families got tight. “Ass only.”

  “You a virgin?”

  “What I am is a girl who don’t want another brat underfoot. Ass only. You don’t like it, use your hand.”

  The ferryman pretended to consider while Lan massaged at his soft groin. “Maybe next time,” he said at last.

  “Heart-breaker,” the girl sneered and went to see if the next table needed anything.

  A different girl brought their food. Same face, younger model, with light curious eyes. For now, the ferrymen and their travels were exciting, but Lan thought that might change once her breasts budded.

  The coffee was hot, but watery and bitter. Made with roasted roots, she guessed, and made damned sparingly at that. The dinner was hard bread and stew, also bitter and watery. The ferryman pushed it around some, watching the room. When Lan finished off her bowl, he slid his over. She ate it too, nasty stuff that it was, knowing it could be days before she ate again, knowing also that this might be her last meal.

  The ferryman at the next table haggled the waitress into a crib, and as soon as they had disappeared upstairs, his two fares got up and came over to Lan’s table. “We’re going to Eastport,” the older one said.

  “Headed the wrong way.”

  “We’ll ride along until you turn around.”

  “Then you’ll pay. No free riders.”

  The younger girl reached into her jacket pocket and came out with a little brown bottle half-filled with powdery white pills. “Penicillin,” she said. “Thirty doses. Thirty more if we leave right now.”

  Lan’s ferryman glanced at the stairs, where the muted sounds of the other man’s enthusiasm could be heard, and then at the window, where the charging light over his van had turned green. He fished out a few slips of hammered gold—the coin of Azrael’s realm—and tossed them on the table. “Come on then.”

  The kids were back at the rat races when they stepped outside, pretending they had never left. The ferryman pretended to believe them as he passed by. Then he darted out with unexpected speed and caught one. Between the blinking of Lan’s eyes, he had a knife in his hand and then put the knife in the kid’s shoulder. The other kids scattered back with the first silvery scream, but didn’t run. They watched with cagey eyes as their captive friend squirmed and bled. “Put it back,” the ferryman said calmly, twisting the knife. “Put it all back.”

  Little hands dug into pockets. Little feet shuffled out to the van and back. The ferryman dragged his hostage over to witness the returns and, apparently satisfied, pulled the knife out and gave the kid a shove toward the building just as the door banged open. The other ferryman came running out, belt and shirt hanging open, bellowing curses.

  “Get in,” the ferryman said, watching the other man charge toward him.

  The two women scrambled into the back of the van, but Lan lingered, one foot up on the runner, to watch.

  The other ferryman had a knife of his own. Lan’s ferryman put his away. At the last instant, the other man leaped and slammed into his unmoving opponent. Lan saw six inches of steel punch down into the ferryman’s chest. Then she saw him reach, as quick and easy as he’d caught the kid, and twist the other man’s head around. The sound of his neck breaking was a loud pop over a low crunch. The ferryman removed the knife and folded it away. He rummaged through the body’s pockets, took whatever there was to find, and left the rest to the owner of the charging station. The kids were already at the ferryman’s truck, squabbling over pillage.

  “Get in,” the ferryman said again, walking around to the driver’s door. There was a small hole in his shirt. There was no blood.

  Lan got in the van.

  * * *

  The women rode in back and, stretched out on the mattress in the curtained dark, were soon both asleep. Lan and the ferryman rode in silence through the night and as the sun pushed up into a grey morning, the walls of Azrael’s kingdom were visible.

  “Get in back,” the ferryman said. “Lie down. Whatever happens, stay asleep.” He raised his voice slightly. “Do you hear me?”

  “Yes,” the older woman said. She kept her eyes shut although her arms tightened around the younger woman, who reached up, shivering, to clutch her sister/mother’s hands. “We’re not really going in, are we? We’re just going past, right?”

  The ferryman chose not to answer. Instead, he said simply, “They’ll stop me and they’ll want a look at you. Remember what I said: Stay asleep, no matter what they do. I won’t protect you if you panic.”

  Lan lay down crosswise on the mattress, her face close to the women’s feet, smelling old shoes and the dungy mud of the last waystation. She closed her eyes and listened to the road hum beneath the van’s tires, willing her body to relax. The younger woman sniffled for a few minutes, but only a few. Then they were quiet, all three, and still.

  The van began to slow. She felt it turn and slow again. Someone outside called out to them. The van stopped moving. The engine died. The ferryman rolled down the window.

  “Unlock your doors. By order of our lord, all vehicles are to be searched before entry.”

  “I’m familiar with our lord’s laws,” the ferryman replied. The van’s locks disengaged. “Very familiar.”

  The van’s rear doors opened. Lan felt the chill air of the outside world, rank with rot and rain. She did not move, not even when the hand gripped her face and turned her into the wind. His touch was cool and dry, unfeeling, like being touched by a glove.

  “Your hands had better be clean,” the ferryman remarked.

  “Exit the vehicle. Do not resist.”

  “It would be unwise to delay me,” the ferryman said, not moving.

  “You will not be delayed,” came the reply, with a strong note of contempt underscoring the words. “You will be arrested and, if you are very fortunate, executed. Traffic of the living is forbidden.”

  “Is that what you think I’m doing?” the ferryman asked. It sounded as if he might be smiling. Lan felt the van rock slightly as he leaned over, opened a compartment, held something up. “Do you recognize this seal?”

  A thin tinkling sound.

  “The seal of Lord Solveig,” someone said stiffly. “But it is the law of Azrael I enforce.”

  “Do as you must,” replied the ferryman with convincing indifference, “but do not expect to be rewarded. Do you honestly think Lord Solveig entertains himself without his father’s knowledge?”

  The wind slipped over Lan’s face, down her neck, under the open collar of her loose shirt. Her nipples felt as hard as rocks. They ached.

  The hand released her. The doors shut.

  “A wise decision,” the ferryman said. “So wise, I’m sure I don’t even have to tell you not to speak of me or my cargo. Traffic of the living is forbidden, after all. We wouldn’t want to embarrass anyone.”

  There was no reply. The van’s engine started. The ferryman rolled the window up, muting the heavy clank and groan as unseen gates were opened. They started moving again.

  “Where did you get a fake seal for one of the Children?” Lan asked quietly, still lying down, still with her eyes shut tight.

  “It isn’t fake.”

  “And you bring him girls?”

  “Girls and boys.” The van made a turn. “He’s not particular.”

  He took her all the way to the palace, through another gate and past another set of guards, into the enclosing dark of a garage. The ferry slowed and turned again, angling downward, creeping deeper and deeper under the earth, until finally, away from the ever-watchful eyes of the dead, he stopped and let her
out.

  She’d never been underground before. She didn’t like it—that feeling of removal and enclosure. She couldn’t see the city, but its weight pressed down on her from the very low ceiling. There were lamps strung up along the walls, but they weren’t lit. If not for the headlamps on the ferry, the darkness would have been absolute, as heavy as the unseen city. Every sound echoed large. It smelled of wet brick and rats.

  The ferryman waited for her to orient herself, as little as she could in this featureless grave, then pointed into the darkness. Shading her eyes from the glare of the headlamps, she could just make out the slightly lighter color of an otherwise invisible door. “It isn’t locked,” he told her. And told her and told her, as his low voice rolled away and rolled back. “The guards have orders not to watch that hall too closely, but the Children might, particularly Solveig once he hears a delivery came through the wall for him. They’re supposed to take meals with their father, but they can be…defiant.”

  “Are there Revenants?” she asked, stretching the road out of her stiff limbs.

  “Revenants. Pikemen. Watchers. Even the servants are his guardians at need.”

  “How many are there?”

  “How many are the dead?” he countered.

  He took her rucksack and watched as she adjusted the fit of her knife’s holster under her shirt. He asked her no questions. He showed no interest of any kind. His eyes were as dead as only their eyes could be.

  “What’s your name?” she asked. She didn’t know why, really. She just felt like she ought to say something.

  The ferryman said, “He never gave me one,” and got back in the van. The engine was a roar, deafening in the close air. Above the red glow of tail-lights, Lan thought she saw the pale face of one of the women looking out, but it could have just as easily been her imagination. She’d had a vivid imagination as a child, although she’d mostly grown out of it. She could remember lying on the camp bed with her mother in the Women’s Lodge in Norwood, staring up into the night and making herself see pictures on that black canvas—ladies in tall towers, men disguised as monsters, monsters as men.

  She was not a child anymore.

  Lan groped her way to the wall and felt along until she found the door. It was not locked, as promised. The space on the other side was not lit, but it smelled better than the garage and she guessed that was as good a reason as any to go inside. So she did.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It had been impossible to make a plan for this part, in as much as it had been possible to make a plan for any of it, and so she simply walked until she found another unlocked door. It opened into a wide corridor, well lit and more sumptuous than any she had ever seen. The floor was made of wood planks, but polished to a dark amber glow and set so smoothly into one another that it was more like glass than any wood Lan knew. The walls might have been plaster, but there were no cracks or patches, no stains, no degradation of any kind. The smell was fresh and clean, two words Lan knew mostly by reputation. Even the lamps were all working, electric bulbs behind clean glass covers, some of them dripping crystals or set in elaborate holders. The rugs that softened the floor at regular intervals all had perfect edges, deep colors and soft fibers. Everything was decorated, even the hinges on the doors and the plates around the light switches.

  Lan wandered, turning where she felt like turning, lingering at every open door to gaze at the riches of each dark, luxurious room. She was in no hurry. There were a thousand winding halls, a hundred echoing stairs, but in the king’s realm, all ways surely led to the throne. It was a pleasant walk, which was the one thing Lan had not anticipated—that she could ever feel wonder as she walked here, that she could ever feel envy. There was so much to see here, so many fine things. After a while, they all seemed to blend together, but Lan had to stop when she saw a familiar face.

  A painted face. A portrait. It hung on the wall in a wide place, more a foyer than a hall. Its frame was heavily carved and brushed with gold. Its subject was a woman, her head and upper body anyway. An older woman, her hair like iron and her eyes like steel. Her mouth was smiling, even if nothing else about her was.

  It was not quite the same picture that hung on the wall in the sheriff’s office in Norwood, but it was definitely the same woman. Lan had never heard her name, only that she used to be the queen, before Azrael’s ascension. “God save the queen,” Sheriff Neville would say each time he brought out a bottle of the twins’ finest for a quick nip, to which one of his deputies would invariably reply that God hadn’t, God had brought Azrael. So, “God save Azrael,” the sheriff would say and all of them would laugh. When Lan was ten or twelve, an old newssheet picture of Azrael had found its way into a frame and been hung beside the queen’s, but of course, he’d been masked. And now Lan wondered…were there any portraits of him in these halls? And why had he left this one, come to think of it? Why would he, or any conqueror, want reminders of the previous rule?

  Distantly, she heard heavy footsteps and although there were numerous doors and cross-halls she might have darted down, she was not here to hide. Lan waited, her heart pounding in spite of her slow, even breaths, and soon enough, two guards marched out of one hall and into hers.

  They halted, not quite in unison, and stared at her. They weren’t Revenants, or at least, they weren’t wearing the same uniform as the Revenants in pictures Lan had seen. Similar, maybe, but not the same. Not quite the bog-standard, but much plainer. Both were men and very attractive, although their features were pretty rather than soldierly. Regardless, the pikes they carried and the swords on their belts were shiny and sharp and by no means ornamental.

  “I’ve come to see Azrael,” said Lan.

  The two guards eyed one another with obvious uncertainty, a hesitation she was sure they would not have had if they’d caught her running through these fine halls or attempting to hide in these beautiful rooms. Lan decided to press the advantage as if it really was one.

  She stepped forward, lifting her chin in what she hoped was a confident manner. “Take me to him immediately.”

  The guards exchanged a second lingering glance.

  “If you can’t take me to Azrael, find someone who can,” Lan ordered, adding in a kind of reckless inspiration, “I’m late.”

  That was what seemed to finally decide them. Being late to see Azrael implied he was expecting her and really, how else could she have entered the city and penetrated so far into the royal palace without his permission? The guards conferred another minute or so, but Lan already knew, miraculously, she’d won. Soon she was walking again, with a guard at either side, leading her in grimly pretty-faced silence deeper into the palace.

  They passed through rooms as large as some houses Lan had lived in, under glittering lights like diamond explosions frozen in the air, past paintings and sculptures and even furniture that could have just as easily been art to Lan’s eyes. She wondered if the whole world used to look like this, before Azrael. She wondered if it could ever go back.

  They took her to a tall set of doors, but there stopped, muttering at each other in an air of uncertainty while Lan waited a short ways behind them. Before they came to any decision, however, the doors swung open.

  Standing on the other side with a few of her courtiers was Lady Batuuli. Lan knew her at once, without effort. The royal family were the only celebrities left in the world. Her picture did not hang on the wall in the sheriff’s office, but there were plenty of them in the old newssheets and magazines the sheriff kept, and when Lan’s mother was in the other room, paying their month’s rent, little Lan would sit and look at all those old papers. Yes, she knew Batuuli.

  Where the guards and courtiers were all pretty in death, Lady Batuuli was beautiful. She dressed in white, which stood out magnificently against her dark skin, draping a flawless figure in some kind of goddessy gauze designed to make a man wonder what lay beneath. Her face, dark porcelain, might have been truly breath-taking if not for her eyes, which shone out of her perfection like
chips of crystallized hate. They did not look at Lan as much as impale her. When she finished seeing whatever ugly thing she saw in Lan, Lady Batuuli turned that same stare on her guards. “Explain this.”

  “Lord Azrael summoned her,” one guard said, which he no doubt thought a safe presumption, one Lan did not correct.

  Lady Batuuli sneered (even that, she could not help but do with grace) and turned away, beckoning contemptuously and in silence for them to follow. Her courtiers echoed both the sneer and the retreat. Lan trailed after them with her guards toward the golden light and distant music of the royal dining hall.

  Here, the corridors were lined with heavy curtains, works of art, and a hundred armed guards. When they came to a set of heavy, carved doors trimmed in gold and guarded by dozens of paired pikemen, a wave of Lady Batuuli’s elegant hand was all it took to admit them.

  The music she’d heard from the hall now swelled the air, played by the dead on an elevated stage in the center of this huge room. Mostly dead, she amended privately; the woman with the flute might be alive, although she was pretty enough to be dead. She tried to get a better look, but her eyes couldn’t seem to focus. There was just so much to see and it was all so clean and sparkly and fancied up that none of it looked real. The light was too bright. The colors, too garish. Two rows of tables ran down the length of the hall, leaving a wide aisle between them, wide enough that the whole of Norwood’s common lodge could have fit in it. Likewise, the dead men and women seated there were pressed together, elbow-to-elbow, but only along the outer side, like dolls laid out for an appraising eye.

  Like dolls. An idle thought, but a fitting one. They were dressed like dolls, immaculately made up and trimmed out. Most wore uniforms of some sort, men and women both, many of them still proudly displaying the medals awarded them by armies and governments that did not, for all intents and purposes, exist. With few exceptions, they were neither young nor attractive, facts emphasized rather than disguised by the elaborate care that had gone into preserving them.