Land of the Beautiful Dead

by Smith, R. Lee

  She felt invisible and before long had stopped even trying to chat them up. So when the library door opened after dark, she didn’t even bother coming out of her fort to see who it was, trusting them to leave their drink or basin or blanket or whatever the hell it was they were leaving and get out. They weren’t here to make friends with her, clearly, and she wasn’t here to make friends with them.

  The sound of boots clumping over the wooden floors was no immediate distraction. The Revenant who guarded the door frequently came inside to oversee the servants. It wasn’t until they came all the way over to Lan’s book-fort that she looked up from the pictures and saw Deimos.

  “You asked for me,” he said.

  She had and she still wanted to talk to him, but for a moment, she could only sit there. Here was the man who had gone to Norwood on Azrael’s orders. That was the sword that had perhaps been drawn in her village, used on the necks of men and women and children she had grown up alongside. Those were the boots he had cleaned of Norwood’s mud. Those were the gloves he had washed of Norwood’s blood.

  He waited, showing no impatience or concern on his handsome, dead face.

  Lan closed her book and crawled out of the fort to stand up. “Is Azrael all right?” she asked.

  “Our lord is eternal.”

  “I was with him when he was poisoned.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he all right?” she pressed.

  “Our lord is eternal.”

  “For fuck’s sake, you people! Is he awake? Is he talking? Can he walk? How bloody bad off is he?”

  “It is not for me to say.”

  “I was with him! Do you not get that? You’re not giving away any secrets. I was right there!”

  “Yes.”

  “I already know he was poisoned! I know he’ll survive, just tell me…” Lan lifted a hand and held it stupidly up for a second, but the right words failed to pour into her palm. She let it drop. “Is he all right?”

  “Our lord is eternal.”

  “Can I see him?”

  “No.”

  “May I?” Lan asked desperately. “May I see him? Please?”

  “No. Is there anything else?”

  “What really happened in Norwood?”

  “I obeyed my lord’s command.”

  “Did you kill anyone?”

  Leather creaked as he flexed his fingers on the hilt of his sword. If it was a sign of annoyance, it was the only one. His face betrayed no emotion and his voice was perfectly calm as he said again, “I obeyed my lord’s command.”

  Lan’s shoulders slumped, defeated. “Go on, then.”

  He turned and marched himself away.

  Lan watched him go until the door shut behind him, then stared at her fort until her eyes began to burn. There was no sound in the library, no sound but the rain. She picked up the book she’d been looking at and put it back on the shelf. She put them all back, shoving them in wherever they would fit. She hung the curtain back in the window. She left the desk stacked atop the tables, but switched off the lamp that had been a chimney, if only for one afternoon. She sat down on her sofa and folded herself over against its cushions. She closed her eyes and listened to the rain until, unhappily, she slept.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Funny, how quickly new became normal. Lan had first had this thought sitting in a ferry between one forgettable town and the next—she, who had never been more than a deer-hunt’s distance beyond Norwood’s walls in all her life, became an expert in haggling rides and hostel beds in just a few days. Before that first month was out, she had imagined herself grown hard, a living reflection of her mother’s youth. Now, in her new normal, she could barely remember what that life had been like and the more she became aware of that distance, the more time she spent at the window, staring out at the greenhouses and wishing she were a part of them, of that life, rather than this indoors one where she did nothing.

  She’d never had nothing to do before. Even on the long journey from Norwood, waiting still felt like something, because she knew what she was waiting for. This open-ended silence in which she expected every day to see Azrael come through the library door and never did was every bit as poisonous as the pastries on Batuuli’s table.

  She got used to living in the library. She did not count the days, although there weren’t many and they came easily broken by lessons and food that came as regular as the clock on the wall chimed. There was no company, as such, but Master Wickham wasn’t so bad, for a dead man, and even her etiquette lessons were better than boredom, which was, for Lan, the worst part of her confinement. The sofa where she slept each night was padded, but firm and not quite long enough to accommodate her, which made a perfect smudging point between the opulent bed in the Red Room (or Azrael’s room, but no, she wasn’t going to think about that) and her old camp bed in Norwood. She wasn’t happy. It wasn’t home. But it was as good a place to wait as any for the next new normal.

  It came in the night, or at least, that was how it seemed. She’d been fighting a headache all morning and it finally got the better of her during her etiquette lessons. Unable to concentrate on the dead woman’s orders (after all these days, she still hadn’t given a name), scarcely able to hear them through the sick throb of her skull, Lan took one too many hits with the switch. In the resulting scuffle, somehow the teapot got broken on the dead woman’s face, so Lan got an early day. She went back to bed, trying to sleep away the headache before it put down roots and took over her entire body.

  She slept too deeply. She neither heard approaching footsteps nor felt the threat of another presence, but needed a hand physically touching her to wake up.

  She forgot she was on the sofa and came up thrashing so violently, she fell off onto the floor, whacking her head first and then her butt and finally lying dazed with one foot still up on the cushions. Her headache was gone and there above her, as if taking its place, was Azrael.

  “You look awful,” she heard herself say.

  He acknowledged this with a humorless cough of a laugh and came around the sofa to sit. “I should.”

  He did, although it was hard to say what exactly gave her that impression. He was wearing his horned mask, which fit over the top of his head, completely covered his face and neck, and fanned out over his shoulders. Only his eyes were exposed, sockets of fire that showed little emotion and certainly no weakness. Nevertheless, there was something about him that betrayed him, some invisible, indelible mark of exhaustion and strain, and when he took his mask off, she saw it even more clearly.

  “You asked after me, I’m told,” he said.

  “I was…”

  “Yes?”

  She didn’t know how to end that. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to know. “It really was poisoned,” she said instead.

  “It really was,” he agreed. “I told you attempts were made.”

  “By your own daughter?”

  “Who else could get close enough?”

  Lan rolled onto her knees, her graceless fall forgotten, searching his face while he looked bemusedly back at her. “What did she use?”

  “I don’t know. I tasted nothing, but I admit such was my mood at that meal that I only wanted to end it and be gone.” He watched without moving as she touched his chest, his throat, his cheek. “I suspect oleander.”

  “What is that?”

  “A tree. It’s pretty and therefore common enough. I’ve not seen any about the palace grounds, but she’s fond of walking in gardens, my Batuuli. There are many in Haven and she takes an active interest in the cultivation of all. She’s poisoned me with rhubarb leaves, jasmine berries, tea made of yew, moonseed, mistletoe, star of Bethleham, adenia, autumn crocus…no matter,” he said and smiled slightly. “It’s not the worst death.”

  “It is. It’s awful.”

  “Oh? And how many deaths have you endured?” He punctuated this with a derisive glance that became a pensive one. “What is it you’ve seen poisoned? Rats, I suppose.”


  She nodded, reluctantly moving back from him and seating herself on a chair close by. “They’re always a problem in a small community like ours.”

  “A problem, one assumes, because food is so scarce.” Azrael shook his head with a disdainful smile. “And so you poison the animals rather than trap and eat them.”

  “Some people do eat them,” Lan replied. “And some of them are even okay. Most others get their parasites and their diseases. So we trap as many as we can, but once they get into the storehouses, it’s either poison them or lose a week’s worth of food every day. Have you ever seen anyone starve to death?”

  “You forget I have starved for centuries.”

  “Not to death. You’ve just been hungry. I’ve seen people starve, really starve. I’ve seen them wasted down to skin over bones, their bellies swollen up like they’re pregnant. Their skin dries up. They get open sores all over their bodies, but they don’t bleed. Their skin just splits open. One time, I saw a man pick his mother up and her skin just sloughed off her arms like they were sleeves. Did that ever happen to you?”

  He never blinked, never flinched, but just when she thought he wouldn’t answer, he said, quietly, “No.”

  “They get a smell, do you know that? They smell like bread. Because of the yeast in their gut, I guess. And they mold. They can’t move, you know, so they just lie there and in the wet weather, they actually mold. That’s how someone starves, Azrael. It’s not all sitting in the dark with your stomach hurting for a thousand years. It’s children lined up like matchsticks in a box, trying to drink soup thinner than fucking sweat and they can’t because the mold growing in their throats makes it too hard to swallow.”

  Her voice cracked. She looked away, taking deep breaths until that hot knot in her chest went away and she could look at him again.

  “So we set poison out,” she said. “At least a couple times a year, especially before we put up next year’s seed. And for any kid too little to work, it was their job to go up in the lofts and under the crawlspaces to pick up their bodies. I don’t know what they use, but it’s supposed to be quick.”

  “Is it?”

  Lan shook her head. “Not if they could get back up into the loft and clear across the village under the houses. And it wasn’t painless either.”

  Azrael studied her face while she stared fixedly over his shoulder. “Nor, I think, was it only rats.”

  “Sometimes stupid kids drink out of strange bottles.”

  And to make sure it never happened to Lan, her mother had taken her to the home of just such a stupid child and made her watch the agonies of a boy whose name she no longer knew but whose final hour she would never forget. It had only been two days since he’d found the jar of what he’d thought was his father’s homebrew, but in that time, he’d pissed, puked, shit and sweated out half his weight. The wizened thing he had become had no more moisture to lose, but his wasted body kept trying to purge all the same. He’d retched up air and bloody flecks of foam, crying in raspy, tearless gasps as his mother washed him over and over and his father muttered in the next room about the waste of water. When the doctor had finally broken his neck, little Lan had cried—not because he was dead, but because she was glad he was dead.

  Lost in these thoughts, she wasn’t sure just when she started staring at him again, but once she realized she was doing it, she didn’t look away. Pain and weariness had given his features a more human quality than they usually had…or maybe she just wanted to believe he had human qualities badly enough to imagine them.

  “Does it still hurt?” she asked, since he seemed content to sit forever and watch her stare at him.

  “The worst is past.”

  “I didn’t know…”

  “Yes?”

  She didn’t know how to finish that either, but she couldn’t leave it be this time. “I didn’t know you could be hurt.”

  “Does that comfort you?”

  She could only shake her head, still staring at him, into him.

  “Your concern is, as always, deeply touching.” His eyes shifted to his mask, there on the sofa beside him. With a sigh, he picked it up and put it on, then rose and offered his hand.

  “Are…Are we going to bed?”

  “To dinner.”

  Her hand froze in the air, not quite touching his. “Dinner?”

  “Calm yourself. She won’t try again so soon.” He took her wrist in a firm grip, pulling her from her seat and heading for the door. “I might develop a resistance and that would be an end to her fun.”

  “Yeah, I don’t exactly share your confidence. Besides, it was me she was trying to kill.”

  “Only as a means to hurt me.”

  She stopped walking. “Would it?”

  He gave her a none-too-gentle tug to get her moving again. “Would it what?”

  “Hurt you. If I died.”

  “The same, I suppose, as if I never tasted a peach again. There would be a lack.” He glanced at her and away. “Yet there are many fruits as sweet. Indeed, there are many even sweeter.”

  The long walk through the palace was quiet after that. He kept a hold on her arm, releasing her only when they came to the open doors of the dining hall. Within, soft chatter and clinking glasses swelled, proof that the nightly feast had started without him, but there was quiet when Azrael entered. They all rose to bow, all save his Children, who ignored him.

  Azrael touched Lan’s arm and headed for the dais at the far end of the hall. The captain of his Revenants, Deimos, waited there in front of the steps. Several other Revenants were posted around the room. In fact, there was one almost directly behind each of the Children…and two behind Batuuli, who had finally deigned to notice them. “How well you look,” she sighed.

  “You might disguise your disappointment, daughter. For politeness’ sake.”

  “Oh, well, manners are so very important.” Batuuli picked up one of her knives and played along the edge. “But you are the one who wears masks. I feel no need to hide my true face. Hello, dolly. Come and sit with me.” She swept her arm out as if in invitation, but her invitation ended with the knife slashing a courtier’s throat. He scrambled back, blood welling thickly between his fingers, and Batuuli pushed him carelessly to the floor. “I have an empty chair,” she finished.

  Before Lan could respond, Azrael answered for her when his heavy hand closed over her shoulder. “Clean yourself up,” he told the courtier and walked on, keeping Lan firmly at his side.

  “Now where are your manners?” Batuuli pouted, stabbing her knife into the tabletop as she watched her courtier crawl away. “I was playing with that.”

  Azrael signaled his steward and pointed at the space beside his throne. “Bring a chair for my guest. Another chair,” he added as a servant moved toward the empty one beside Batuuli. “And send for my musicians.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “‘Yes, my lord,’” mimicked Batuuli. “One must have one’s musicians. How predictable you are.”

  “I wouldn’t say that, sister,” Lord Solveig remarked. He had his arm around one of his courtiers, his forefinger tapping at her bare shoulder as he watched them come up the aisle. “I don’t recall him ever setting one of his whores at the imperial table before.”

  “He doesn’t like it when you call her that,” Batuuli said as Azrael turned a burning eye on his son. “Which is amusing, since I don’t think she minds at all. She knows what she is.”

  Azrael, one foot upon the dais stair, suddenly swung around and closed the distance between his daughter and himself in three swift strides. His fist struck the table, scattering her courtiers like partridges, but Batuuli never flinched as he leaned down, leaned close. “And what is she?” he demanded, not loudly.

  The dead court watched and waited.

  “She’s your dolly,” Batuuli said and smiled. “But then, aren’t we all?”

  “I find myself uncharacteristically out of patience with you tonight, daughter, so I will say this only once.” Azrae
l straightened up, then slapped Batuuli across the face with force enough to knock her from her chair onto the tiles.

  Solveig jerked back, tearing the sleeve of the courtier whose arm he’d been idly caressing. Even Tehya raised her head and blinked owlishly around.

  Batuuli lay on the floor and laughed. “I’ll have to remember that particular recipe,” she called as Azrael turned his back on her and grimly beckoned Lan to him. “It’s put you in such a playful mood.”

  Azrael ascended the dais and took his throne. Lan stood beside him, trying not to watch Batuuli’s courtiers help her back into her seat. She didn’t know where to aim her eyes or what to do with her hands. No one was staring at her, or at least, no one seemed to be, but she had never felt so conspicuous or so unwelcome.

  ‘This is not my fault,’ she told herself fiercely. ‘She hated him since before I was even born!’

  So what was this feeling, this ominous pressure that built and built, not inside her but all around her? She was not imagining the unease she saw flickering like shadows on dead faces as Azrael’s court resumed their feasting, no more than she was imagining the Revenants in the room, their hands on weapons and cold eyes fixed on their lord’s own Children. No, it wasn’t her fault, how could it be? But she was part of it all the same.

  The servants returned with a chair. The back was high, the seat padded, the feet had claws and the whole thing was brushed with gold. Not a chair, then. Another throne. And although it was difficult to tell through his mask, she thought Azrael saw it that way too. Still, he pointed when she hesitated, so she sat.

  The musicians filed in and started up their unobtrusive song, every instrument in perfect harmony with every other, every note a knife on Lan’s ear. Otherwise, the hall was very quiet. Azrael’s court still feasted, or pretended to, but without the usual affectation of revelry. They were not watching their lord, but they were waiting, like she was, for some awful thing to happen and the collective force of all that waiting made it impossible to eat.