Land of the Beautiful Dead

by Smith, R. Lee

“It was intended to,” Azrael said in a hard voice.

  “I was fine.”

  Batuuli smirked at her. “Yes, we all saw how ‘fine’ you were. Anyone would think it really had been your mother. And you, you unfeeling brute, you sent her to her room alone.”

  Azrael put his silverware down too hard and pushed his plate away. “What is the point of this game?”

  “Conversation! Really, now! Other daughters have breakfast with their father’s whores without all this hostility!”

  “Call her so again at your peril, daughter. I will not have her insulted for your pleasure.”

  “Are you insulted?” Batuuli asked, turning to Lan.

  “I don’t care what you call me.”

  “You see? She doesn’t care.”

  “I do.”

  “Well then, let’s be clear. I’m insulting you for my pleasure. It is the only pleasure I take in your company, dear, dear Father.” Batuuli paused, her smile fading. “When did that happen?”

  He did not answer.

  Batuuli took a slice of poppy cake and offered the tray to Azrael. “I wish things were different between us. I do. Truthfully, I cannot say I would ever try to make them different…but I wish they were.”

  He stared at her without forgiveness a long time, but when she only continued to hold the cakes, he ultimately took one.

  “Do eat something,” Batuuli urged, affecting a little pout as she offered the cakes to Lan. “I’ve gone to such trouble.”

  “Why?” Azrael asked.

  “Why not? It’s something to do. And she does have a certain rough charm.” Batuuli set the cakes down in front of Lan and poured herself some more tea. “We talked the other day, you know. When you sent her to me. I thought that might have been why you did it, because while I can’t say I enjoyed our conversation, I did think for some time afterward how long it had been since I last had one. A real one, I mean. And I thought of you, Father.”

  “Me.”

  “Oh, my courtiers talk. That’s why you gave them to me, isn’t it? To be my companions.” Batuuli affected a sigh. “But they say only what they have heard me say, reflecting my moods like so many mirrors. I am tired of seeing my own face.”

  Some of the hard light in Azrael’s eyes dimmed.

  “But your little plaything has no fear. She speaks her mind and genuinely does not care what happens to her. Look!” Batuuli turned to Lan. “What do you think of me?”

  “I think you’re very unhappy.”

  “And I am!” said Batuuli, turning wide eyes back on Azrael.

  “But you don’t want to say so, so you say you’re bored instead.”

  Batuuli waved at her. “That’s enough.”

  “And you try to alleviate your boredom by being sadistic and hateful.”

  “I said, enough!”

  “And you’ve gotten so good at it that you can’t help but realize you are sadistic and hateful, which only makes you more unhappy,” she concluded, refusing to drop her eyes.

  Batuuli glared at her for some time, but then suddenly seemed to throw it off. Plucking up her cup, she gestured toward Lan with it. “You see what I mean? Maddening, but one sees the appeal. And I can’t help but wonder…if I can feel this way after, what? Twenty years? Thirty? What must you feel, Father? How long has it been since anyone has dared to contradict you? Not out of hate, as I do, but simply because—” She spread her arms, smiling. “—you’re wrong?”

  Azrael ate his cake, faceless behind his mask.

  “And did it excite you to hear it? Infuriate, yes, of course, how dare she and so forth, but was it not thrilling all the same to hear her speak to you as if you were just another man?” Batuuli looked at him, then reached across the table and laid her hand over his. “Did she look at you, your naked face, and see…just another man?”

  Azrael did not answer.

  Batuuli’s gaze dropped to her hand on his. Her fingers slipped up his arm and down again in an unmistakable caress. “Did she touch you the same way?”

  “Stop it,” said Lan.

  Batuuli glanced at her, then gave her a longer, more thoughtful stare. “Tell me,” she said, pulling her hand back from Azrael to rest her chin on it. “Have you ever whored yourself before you came here?”

  “Of course I have. Everyone has.”

  Azrael glanced at her, frowning.

  Batuuli raised one delicate eyebrow. “Every woman a whore in Norwood?”

  “Every woman, every man. Sex is a commodity. Everyone sells it.”

  Batuuli returned her sweet smile to Azrael. “Is that why you sent her away, Father? Did she make you remember she was a whore? Or did she make you forget?”

  “Your morning conversation leaves much to be desired, but you rouse me to some curiosity, daughter.” His head tipped, as if to prove it. “Which of those possibilities did you imagine would hurt me?”

  “Oh, I have far better ways to hurt you. When it happens, you won’t have to ask.” Batuuli snapped her fingers. One of her handmaidens rushed up to pour her a glass of water with ice, mint leaves and a wedge of some yellow fruit. Batuuli picked the fruit out, started to set it aside, then glanced at Lan…and instead squeezed it so its juice squirted out in a narrow stream. Lan ducked, but she wasn’t the target. The pikeman hanging over her let out a raspy scream, pale juice trickling down his flayed chest and soaking into his many open wounds. “You taught me so well how to hurt others,” Batuuli went on, studying the pikeman’s restrained contortions. “I can only presume it must make you happy to see me follow in your wake.”

  “And does it make you happy?” Azrael asked, holding out his own cup to be filled. He paid the pikeman in his agony no more attention than he paid the handmaiden who poured his wine. “I have only ever desired my Children to be happy.”

  “The only happiness I feel comes from knowing you will always remember how much I hated you.”

  “How unfortunate for you.”

  “Unfortunate only that I didn’t always, as your new toy was good enough to remind me, but if I must suffer the knowledge that you will always remember that once I looked on you with innocent love, at least I have the satisfaction of knowing you also saw it die.” Batuuli tried to smile. “When was that, Father? Tell me. I want to know the day, the hour, that I knew you for what you were.”

  “What am I?”

  “You are a jackal. You are the lord of carrion and a thief of bones.”

  “And you are my daughter.”

  “Your daughter?” She laughed—a sound as sharp and venomous as a snake-bite. “I would not be your child if I were given any choice.”

  “What child chooses to be born?”

  “I was not born. I died. And you, you jackal, you dug me up and dragged me to your den and expected me to love you for it. ”

  “And you did,” he said. “If only briefly.”

  “I hope that memory warms you, Father.” Batuuli paused, then laughed and relaxed into the high back of her chair. “It fact, it should be all but burning in you by now. Do you feel it yet?”

  Confused, Lan looked at Azrael, but he did not look back at her. He continued to gaze, silent, impassive, at his daughter as seconds stretched out, measured only by the pikeman’s groans and weakening struggles. When he moved at last, it was merely to set down his cup and stand.

  “Yes, you should be going,” Batuuli said, manufacturing a frown even as her eyes danced with pleasure. “You’ll want privacy for what’s about to happen. It wouldn’t do to have your fawning subjects see their glorious lord purge himself in public.”

  “Lan,” said Azrael. “Get out.”

  She got up so fast, she bumped the impaled pikeman; he groaned, fresh blood and clear drops of juice drooling from a dozen wounds. Stammering apologies, Lan fled for the door.

  “It is a pity you didn’t eat anything,” Batuuli called after her. “It’s all poisoned.”

  Lan swung around.

  Batuuli shrugged one round shoulder, indifferent to her
gape or Azrael’s burning stare. “I thought it would be amusing to watch you die. And then, of course, to see you come back. I’m quite sure he’d raise you up, even though you are rather plain…but then you’d only hate him for it with such an honest hate that he might actually let you die.” Batuuli drank, smiling around her glass. “And that would be amusing, too.”

  Azrael turned his back on her and headed for the door, taking Lan’s arm as she stood, frozen, in his path.

  “It’s been a lovely visit, Father.” Batuuli waved them off and tossed her half-empty glass to shatter on the floor. “I’ll see you at dinner, then?”

  He did not answer, but pulled Lan with him, taking such long, swift strides that she was forced to run to keep pace, hiking her long skirts up around her knees. As soon as he was through Batuuli’s doors, he swung her around and demanded, “Did you eat anything?”

  “No, but…but she didn’t really poison it, did she?”

  “You!”

  A lone servant polishing the long tiled corridor paused and looked up. “My lord?”

  Azrael pushed Lan forward. “Take her to the library and summon Deimos to my chamber.”

  The servant left her cleaning and got up at once, taking Lan’s right arm as Azrael released the left.

  “She didn’t, did she?” Lan insisted, alarmed. “I mean, it was all for you! She wouldn’t poison you! You’re her only family!”

  He looked at her, his eyes blazing through the sockets of his mask. Then he pushed past her and continued up the hall alone. He staggered, turned a corner and was gone.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A ‘library’ turned out to be a room where books were read. The fact that people used to have so many books that they needed a whole separate room just to store them, much less a word for the room, said everything Lan guessed she needed to know about the way the world used to be. In Norwood, loose pictures and salvaged magazines were locked up like other valuables. The mayor had a few books, including the town ledger where Lan’s own name had been written on the day of her birth and presumably crossed out along with her mother’s the day she’d left, but all of them together could have fit on one shelf. Here was a room the size of the dining hall, two stories tall and lined in bookshelves, with ladders on runners along every wall so that no shelf was out of reach. These were books that could not be measured in hundreds or even thousands, but in some greater number that had no name.

  If only she knew how to read.

  Lan wandered through the stacks for a while, pulling out books at random and turning pages. She found some with pictures, but even the ones with just words were worth looking at, if only because someone somewhere wrote them once.

  Hours passed, each one a little slower than the last. Overwhelmed by books, Lan looked at the windows instead, which were made from shards of colored glass put together to make pictures of things like trees and peacocks and even people. She investigated desk drawers. She rode the ladders. At length, she went over and opened the door.

  The Revenant standing on the other side looked at her. Not a pikeman, a Revenant.

  She closed the door. Stood there. Slowly, she opened it again.

  He looked at her with no more curiosity, but just a hint of annoyance.

  “Can I go to my room?” Lan asked.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  He didn’t answer, just stared at her with that faintly impatient expression.

  “What if I need the toilet?”

  “Do you?”

  “I will eventually.”

  His lips thinned. He closed the door and locked it.

  Some time later, as Lan was looking at pictures in a book that didn’t have nearly enough of them, the door opened again. The Revenant directed a short line of servants inside—one carrying a covered tray, the other holding a pitcher, the last with a chamberpot and a pail of ashes.

  Lan lifted the cover on the tray, releasing a fragrant puff of steam. A bowl of soup and a split loaf of buttered bread with honey. “Where did this come from?” she asked.

  “It’s been tasted,” the Revenant replied.

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “You didn’t really want to know what you asked. You wanted to know what I told you.” He stood aside as the servants withdrew, then shut the door and locked it.

  Lan picked up the bowl and sniffed. Onions, herbs and some kind of fish. Her mouth watered, but she put it back untasted. There was water in the pitcher, flavored with chunks of fruit and mint leaves, chilled with ice. Actual ice. She didn’t taste that either. She was hungry and a lifetime of never knowing when or what the next meal might be made even this simple fare look like a feast, but the word poison still muttered itself in the back of her mind. She didn’t doubt the Revenant’s word, but not every poison acted fast. Better to go hungry and stay safe.

  Lan covered up the food so she didn’t have to see it and be tempted more than she already was. Then she found a sofa clear across the room with a window low enough that she could see through. The view was that of rain and Azrael’s greenhouses, tinted improbable shades of purple and blue, but she watched anyway. Behind the glass, she could just make out figures moving inside, working hard to keep food on the imperial table.

  If she were home, she’d be breathing in that green stink of sweat, soil and manure. If she were home, she would be out there already—sowing, weeding, picking and clearing, until her body was a thousand different points of pain coming together as one exhausted ache. If she were home…but she was here.

  She watched until she had mostly forgotten the food, then found herself another book with pictures and sat down to pass the time.

  The rain got heavier as the day wore on, so that it started feeling like an hour before dusk long before the pale shape of the sun reached its zenith. Lan’s hunger reached its own peak about the same time (it, too, was a weirdly nostalgic feeling. Sometimes it seemed that she had done nothing but eat since coming to Haven), but her stomach’s complaints eventually quieted and she forgot about them. She drowsed, taking more and more time to look at pictures she then could not remember and which eventually, she couldn’t even see unless she sat right in the window and tilted it up to the palest panel.

  Daylight failed. The electric lamps of Haven lit, whole blocks at a time. It was beautiful, the way they said cities used to be, and Lan watched them for a long time, just glittering. But the view could only hold her interest for so long and it was too dark even to pretend to read, so she curled up on the sofa and tried to sleep.

  She must have been at least partially successful, because although she got no real sense of rest, the next time she opened her eyes, the room was black and the rain had nearly stopped. She sat up, wondering fuzzily if she was awake or not. She did not remember her dreams, as a rule, but knew that she had them and if she was in one right now, how would she know? It felt like a dream. The library’s stillness was unnaturally complete. Not even the air was moving. In the dark, all the books in their shelves and even the scattering of tables and chairs had a flat, painted-on quality, making her feel as if she were trapped in a paper room, a dollhouse. And when she looked at the window, Lord Solveig was standing just outside, looking in at her through the colored glass.

  It was not alarming. She had decided she was dreaming and was therefore removed from fear. And after all, it wasn’t as though he were floating. The library was on the ground floor and the windows, particularly the colored ones, were oversized. He wasn’t doing anything creepier than standing outside and watching her, which would be creepy enough in real life, but she expected better from a dream.

  As if prompted by this thought, Solveig began to walk along the wall. She could hear the crunch of gravel beneath his boots and the wet squeaking sound as he trailed one hand along the wet glass until he ran out of window and passed out of sight.

  Lan waited for a while, but that appeared to be it. Her dreams were boring. Small wonder she didn’t remember them. She lay back down
on the sofa and closed her eyes.

  When she opened them again, the sun was just coming up, slowly filling the room with that sickly grey light folks called dawn. Stiff and a bit headachy, Lan sat groggily staring at yesterday’s pitcher of water, weighing her thirst against the probability of poison until she convinced herself that it really didn’t matter because those little chunks of fruit and leaves that had been so cheery when they were fresh were now floating there, all waterlogged and warm, and while that didn’t make the water any more or less poisoned than it already might be, it did make it disgusting.

  She got up, scratching the tangles out of her hair, and went over to the library door. There was still a Revenant on the other side of it. “Can I go back to my room yet?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “My orders are to hold you until my lord alone grants release.”

  “Fuck it, I’m going,” Lan muttered and took one step. Just one. Then she was looking down the curved gleaming blade of a sword.

  “My orders are to hold you,” he told her, “until my lord alone grants release.”

  “So, what?” Lan asked incredulously. “If I don’t let you keep me safe, you’ll kill me?”

  He didn’t answer, but he plainly didn’t see a conflict either.

  She stepped back and slammed the door.

  Another day, stuck in this stupid room. It shouldn’t matter. Rationally, she knew she’d be just as stuck in the Red Room if she were there. The library was bigger, warmer, drier, with more comfortable seating and certainly had more to look at, but damn it, she hated having nothing to do. If Azrael thought she was in so much danger, why didn’t he shut her up in a cell somewhere? There had to be a dungeon here. And if she wasn’t in danger, why couldn’t he at least put her to work somewhere? She’d almost rather be cleaning the library than just lying around in it.

  Almost.

  Lan tried to pace her restlessness and resentment away, but soon found herself circling yesterday’s food and water. To keep her mind off it, she went to the furthest side of the library and rode the ladder back and forth. That worked for a little while, but as it got lighter, the idea that she ought to be working got harder and harder to ignore.