Land of the Beautiful Dead

by Smith, R. Lee

  Lan wasn’t sure just when she started crying, but Master Wickham was kind enough to let her do it without an embarrassing show of concern. He studied the buildings as they passed them, admiring cornices and casements and waiting until she’d wrung herself dry. Then he said, “What will you do now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Unacceptable.”

  “I don’t! You think I planned all this? You think I’m doing it on purpose? Everything I say is the wrong thing! Everything I do just makes it worse!”

  “Do you remember what life is, Lan?”

  She didn’t, not right away. He had to pick up one foot and hold it off the ground—an incomplete step—before she remembered. “Motion?”

  “Motion,” he agreed. “Never forget that. There are no side-steps. There is no waiting. You are moving even as we speak, so you need to decide what it is you really want and how much you’re really willing to give up to achieve it, because everything you do and say, every decision that you make, can only bring you closer to your goal or further from it. We’re going to go right past Westminster Cathedral,” he concluded without a pause, but with a stark tone of regret. “Religious iconography was never a fancy of mine, but Westminster has the most beautiful mosaics in Haven.”

  Lan sighed and rubbed at her eyes. “Want to stop in and look at it?”

  “We haven’t time, I’m sure.”

  “I’m supposed to be in lessons until six, aren’t I? It can’t even be half-noon yet.”

  “Well…” He checked the sun’s position and sent her a probing glance. “A few minutes couldn’t hurt. An hour, at most. Would you mind dreadfully?”

  The thought of standing about in the street while Master Wickham gawped at a bunch of mouldy old tiles for an hour was a deeply depressing one, but still better than facing Azrael. “Sounds fun,” she said dully. “I love old pubs.”

  “It’s a cathedral, actually.”

  “What’s the difference? Let’s just go.”

  * * *

  Once again, the dead man’s enthusiasm for poking around an admittedly pretty damned amazing building eclipsed his sense of time and the one hour he’d promised not to exceed passed and was buried under at least six more. The gathering clouds she’d seen from the wall had held off all this time, but now opened up with a vengeance, shrouding the city in thick mist and eye-stinging rain. The electric lamps that lined the streets were no match for English weather and in the gloom, even Master Wickham got turned around once.

  By the time they arrived back at the palace, it was full dark and Lan’s clothes had soaked up easily ten thousand liters of stormwater. All she wanted at that point was to climb the million steps to her room and fall asleep in the rain-damp bed waiting for her, but the pikemen standing watch at the palace doors held her in the cold foyer, dripping whole oceans over that fine floor to the visible consternation of every servant who scuttled in and out about his or her nightly chores.

  Master Wickham stayed with her throughout the long minutes that followed, although she told him twice there was no need. No one told her what she was waiting for. No one had to.

  At last, she heard the sound she had been listening for and dreading—the long stride of a bootless foot, accompanied on every step by the rattle of metal plates and rings and all the other jeweled things he wore. Azrael.

  She was watching the corridor that led to the dining hall, but sounds echoed oddly in the foyer and he appeared unexpectedly on the second floor. And he was not alone.

  The red-haired dolly who was with him was so pretty, she might have been dead, except for the movement of breath that caused those perfect breasts to rise and fall, barely contained within that low-cut corset. Her hair was done up, glittering with gold chains and dotted with pearls, with just a few careful curls artfully allowed to slip the net and lie against her flawless cheek. Her right hand rested on Azrael’s bent arm and his right hand rested on hers, at least until he reached out to grip the bannister. His claws scraped at the gilded wood, so much louder than his voice when he said, “Where have you been?”

  There was never any doubt who he was asking, so Lan answered. “At lessons.”

  Azrael’s eyes brightened as they narrowed. “Do. Not. Lie to me.”

  “We had them outside today,” said Lan. “That’s all.”

  “My lord, if I may—” Master Wickham began.

  “I do not address you.”

  “It’s not his fault,” said Lan.

  “I do not ask fault.” His voice raised on the last word, creating a blameful echo to bounce around the room. He waited until it was entirely gone before he spoke again. “You do not have my will to wander freely in Haven. I thought I had made that clear to you, but it seems you found some ambivalence in my words when I forbade you to leave the palace.”

  “Unless I was with a guard.”

  Azrael’s gaze cut sidelong to Master Wickham.

  “I was with Deimos,” Lan said quickly.

  “Were you.” Azrael moved a few long strides forward, letting his claws scrape over the carved rail. There was a pattern, imperceptible to the eye at this distance, but with its own unique sound: sss-tak-tak-sss-tok-sss-tak-tak. “And yet, Deimos returned some four hours ago, much displeased to learn you had not returned some eight hours ago. So. You were not under guard and I am forced to ask again.” His voice, so soft, became a sudden thunder: “Where were you?”

  Lan had closed her eyes against the blast of his rage. Now she opened them, but it was still some time before she could bring herself to answer. “We went to the wall.”

  He halted, mid-stride. Under his hand, the bannister splintered. “You left Haven.”

  “No. Just as far as the wall.”

  “For lessons.” Azrael showed his teeth. It was not a smile. “I would not have thought there was much reading material at the wall.”

  Lan glanced at Master Wickham, who did all he could to shake his head without moving, then went ahead and said it anyway. “There’s a woman out there. In the wastes. They wanted me to see her.”

  Master Wickham closed his eyes.

  “They said she might come here and when she does, you’re going to think I said all this just so I could stay. Because she might be…I don’t know…sweeter than me. Maybe she’ll sing or dance or do something girly and grand that I don’t know how to do and don’t know how to want to do.” Rainwater dripped from her hair and down her face, warm as tears. She wiped it away. “Even when I know I should.”

  “But there were Eaters at the wall also,” he said. The bannister groaned as his claws dug deeper. “And so you returned.”

  “Maybe,” she said doubtfully. She tried to think back, but all she remembered of the Eaters, curiously, was Deimos’s boots. “It should have been for them, huh? If it wasn’t for her, it should have at least been for them. But I don’t think it was.”

  His expression, what she could see of it behind the mask, did not change. “Why, then?”

  “Because he told me to,” she admitted, pointing unnecessarily at Master Wickham, who looked back at her with very polite alarm. “I actually needed him to tell me to. I stood on that stupid wall and I looked right at those stupid Eaters and I…still…” She wiped her face again, over and over, trying to laugh. “…had to be told.”

  Azrael took that in with a judicial sound, somewhere between a hum and a growl. Again, he studied Master Wickham, standing with his neck deferentially bent in the presence of his lord. “Go,” he said at length. “We will speak later. For now, go…in my good favor.”

  The dead man spared Lan one sidelong, troubled frown as he bowed, then touched her sleeve once in an apologetic gesture that might have meant anything from ‘Sorry I took so long in the crypt’ to ‘Sorry you’re about to be impaled’ and left her alone in Azrael’s burning stare.

  Azrael pulled his claws from the bannister, leaving dark gouges in the golden paint, and moved toward the stair. His dolly tried to come with him; he halted her with an u
praised hand, never taking his eyes from Lan. He descended the curved arm of the stair at an unhurried, undistracted pace and circled her once, inspecting the whole of her, from the muddy hem of her skirt all the way up to her windblown, bedraggled hair. When he came around again to face her, he hooked one clawed finger beneath her jaw and tipped her head back, examining first one and then the other side of her bare, pale throat. He made that sound again, but said nothing.

  “About that night,” she began.

  “You will not speak of that here.”

  “I just—”

  “You will be silent.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Then you will be gagged,” he told her, and every pikeman in the room shifted in unison, all of them poised to receive the order. “And if that is not enough, I will find other ways to silence you. You will not speak of that night! That is my only word on it and my every word is command here! If you disobey me, human, you will learn the price of disobedience!”

  “Please!” Her throat tightened and would not loosen. She looked at her reflection on the wet floor and pushed the words out, one by one. “I have to say something. Please,” she finished, scarcely above a whisper. “It’s important.”

  The sound of water dripping off Lan’s hair onto the floor was very loud.

  Azrael folded his arms. “Say it, then.”

  It was the best of all the possible responses that had tormented Lan on the long walk back to the palace, but her heart still sank to hear it. She ignored it—this wasn’t about feelings, it was barter—and made herself take inventory of the pieces left in her purse. There were a few dull gleams, a few promising sparks…she offered none of it. She stared at the floor (a small puddle of dirty water had spread out ahead of her dragging skirts, something for the servants to clean up later), and at Azrael’s feet, clawed, like his hands. His toes flexed, impatient; the gold ring he wore on one of them flashed in the lamplight.

  “Please take me back.”

  She’d rehearsed it so much better in her head. There’d been explanations, clarifications, even apologies (that always seemed to stop short of actually admitting she’d said anything wrong, but nevertheless won his forgiveness). She’d been all afternoon cleaning the potch off her speech and polishing the stone and she’d done it precisely so she wouldn’t blurt out something stupid like this.

  Azrael let the words fall between them and shatter. His gaze did not soften. His fingers drummed once on his bicep. He waited.

  Dull heat itched at her cheeks. She had to say it. She knew it, accepted it, and still every word came out like a broken bone. “I…didn’t mean everything I said that night.”

  He sneered through his mask. “Is that all?”

  “What do you want?” she whispered. It was the worst way to start, short of kneeling before him and kissing that ring. “Just tell me what you want, okay? You don’t have to buy it. I’m not in any position to sell and we both know it. I…” She looked around, hunting for help on the walls, the lights, the pikemen, but the room was empty, the lights were electric and the pikemen were dead. She was alone here, alone with him, but he wasn’t alone with her. His dolly was waiting for him at the top of the stairs. His city was filled with his people, alive and dead, and she was only one of them…and not irreplaceable. “I need you,” she said.

  His eyes flickered. When their light steadied, they were brighter. “And?”

  She raised her hand and held it out, empty, then let it drop again with a slap to her wet skirt. “I need you. Tell me what you want.”

  “What do I want?” He unfolded his arms and advanced one step, only one, his eyes burning bright enough to burn colors across her sight. “You know what I want. You told me plainly enough, and whether you knew it or not, you were right. I want you.”

  She could only shake her head, not in defiance, but in helplessness. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “I don’t want you to be here.” He cut his arm through the air, summing up and dismissing all of Haven at once, then seized her arm and yanked her stumbling to him. He caught her chin in a rough grip, forcing her head back, making her look at him and see the way he looked at her. “I want you to be mine.”

  “Azrael—”

  “Lord! Lord Azrael! Whose is this city? Whose, this conquered land?” He pulled her even closer, his face mere inches from hers. “I own you. Before ever I set eyes on you, I owned you. You were born into my possession. You have waited all your life upon my whim to claim you.” He took a breath—her breath, drawn from her body—and snarled, “And I am done bartering for what I own. Say that you are mine.”

  “Please—”

  “Say it!” he shouted, full into her face. “I will not share you with your fool’s dream, not one more day! Surrender all to me! Every piece! There is nothing for you beyond Haven! There is no Norwood and no hungering dead! You are mine!”

  “Don’t. Please, don’t.” She could barely hear the words she spoke, but she could taste them—a high, bitter taste like fear, or climax when it hit too hard to feel good. “Don’t make me choose between you and the world…or…”

  “Or you’ll what?” he challenged, his eyes blazing until their fire overfilled the sockets of his mask.

  “Or I will.”

  He drew back, then released her with a shove and turned away, rubbing beneath his mask at his scars as he paced to the stairs and away from them, from one wall to the other, around her and behind her, but never quite in arm’s reach of her again. Lan watched him when he was in front of her. When he wasn’t, she watched his red-haired dolly, the way her eyes moved to track him, wary even from her safe distance. If there was a safe distance.

  “I need you,” Lan said again, as if this were a fairy tale and saying it for the third time would break the curse and everything would be sunshine and singing mice. Instead, he spat laughter at her back and kept pacing. She watched the muddy spot beneath her slowly dry on the marble floor. She had nothing else to offer him. There was nothing else to say.

  “Where were you?” he asked finally. “Lie to me…if you have to. Just tell me. Tell me you never left.”

  “I didn’t. I’ll never run from you, Azrael.”

  “So you say.”

  “I mean it.”

  “Then where were you? Where, for eight hours?” His claws scraped on the wall as he pushed himself away from it; on the landing, his dolly backed up a step, but Lan stood and let him come. “If you weren’t running, where were you?”

  “Some church.”

  His eyes flared, throwing her shadow black on the tiles in front of her. “And do you stand before me now armored in your absent God’s love? Shall you combat me in His name? I warn you, child, I have survived hundreds of exorcisms and never suffered more than scented smoke in my eyes.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that, so she said nothing, just stood and dripped on the floor.

  “What did you pray for?” he asked at last. “What can He give you that I cannot?”

  “I didn’t pray for anything. I don’t even know how. There’s only a few older folk who do that Jesusy talk in Norwood and even they don’t do it very loud.”

  “Why, do you suppose?”

  “Because the dead got up,” Lan replied, not stabbing him with it, but only saying it. “Even the good ones, the Jesusmen. And they ate people. And God didn’t stop it. So if God doesn’t care about us, why should anyone care about Him?”

  He grunted, more a stir of hot breath at the nape of her neck than a sound. She heard him walk away behind her, then the familiar drumming of his claws on some hard surface or another. “Why go to church then, if not to pray?”

  “I don’t know. Because it was there.” Lan picked at her sleeve, pulling fabric away from her arm and squeezing to watch the water run out, then said in her best Master-Wickham, “Because it’s the last surviving example of Byzantine revival architecture. Because over a hundred different kinds of marble were used in its construction and someone ought to see it.�
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  He paused behind her. “Westminster.”

  “Yeah, that’s the one.” She looked around, surprised, just in time to see him turn his back to her and pace away. She faced front again and found his dolly glaring her down. “Master Wickham wanted to go. We shouldn’t have stayed so long, but—”

  “It’s easy to lose time in that place.”

  “You’ve been there?”

  “Oh yes. On my last march to take the palace, I passed the night there. In the Chapel of St. Paul.” He hesitated, then said, “They set stars in the ceiling above the altar. Did you see them?”

  She had to think about it. Her eventual nod was unsure. “I didn’t know those were supposed to be stars. I thought they were just dots.”

  “They were stars,” he said with quiet insistence. “The first I had seen since the war’s beginning. One hundred nineteen stars, made of stone and paint. When I saw them through the smoke, they struck me…oddly. I watched them for hours.” Another pause. “Aren’t you going to ask me if I prayed?”

  “Was it raining?”

  Silence. On the landing, still watching, his dolly hugged herself and frowned.

  “Yes,” Azrael said softly. “It rained.”

  “It should rain on bad days.” Lan looked down at her dress and wrung out the other sleeve. “The day my mother died, it was sunny. Warm. Like, just the nicest day, you know? It didn’t feel real, any of it. But it’s rained every night since you and I…since I started sleeping alone.” Lan scuffed a toe through the wettest part of the puddle she’d made, smearing it into streaks. “Would you call that an omen?”