Land of the Beautiful Dead

by Smith, R. Lee

  “I’m not scorning it, at least I don’t think I am, but…oh hell, I’m never going to see this place like you do,” she said helplessly. “I’m never going to love it. Or want it. Nothing I have to say about it is ever going to make you happy.” She tipped her head, trying to catch his eye; he wouldn’t look at her. “Like that church I went to, the one…west of here?”

  “Westminster.”

  “That’s the one. The one where you saw stars and I saw dots. And that? That’s all you need to know about what I see in Haven. It’s beautiful,” she said, taking his cup back for courage. “The streets are clean and every window’s washed and it’s so fucking beautiful, it kind of hurts the eye after a while, but it’s not my city. And it’s not yours. It’s…” She had a sip, thinking. “It’s a museum. You know what that is?”

  His eyes flickered. “Yes.”

  “Master Wickham took me a few days back.” She shook her head, shutting out those memories. “I couldn’t stay more than a minute. All that dead time, all in one place. And you built a city out of it. Not even a real city, just a city-shaped—” She caught herself about to say ‘dollhouse’ and said instead, lamely, “—thing.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He roused himself at last enough to look at her. “For?”

  “I’m sorry I can’t love it,” she said. “I’ve tried. I know you don’t believe me, but I have tried.”

  His expression, what there was of it through the mask, did not change. “Why?”

  “Because you want me to. And I want to make you happy, you know. I’m not pathologically ungrateful for the fun of it.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Who said that?”

  Lan blinked. “I did.”

  “Who, before you?”

  She thought, shrugged, and had another drink. “I don’t remember. Probably Serafina. Sounds like something she’d say. You know she spent five hours putting me together like this and you still haven’t told me how nice I look.”

  He did not acknowledge his cue.

  “And you’re not going to, are you?” Lan plucked at the front of her bodice and glowered into her wine-colored reflection in the bottom of their shared cup. “I never was any good at making plans. I just do whatever stupid thing comes into my head and I’m always surprised when it doesn’t come off.”

  His gaze, already narrow, sharpened. “Plans?”

  “Yeah. I had a plan for tonight. I had things I wanted to say to you. I found that dragon you don’t believe in and I was going to fix everything, but now I can’t, because I’m drunk and it’s all your fault.”

  He took the wine away from her, but accepted his blame with a mild, “All right.”

  “It is true, you know. If you weren’t so late getting here, I wouldn’t have been so drunk and it would have gone better. Also, you’re being a mopey ass. You’d think you’d be more cheerful after what you’ve been doing all afternoon.”

  His practiced indifference cracked, letting slip a sliver of confusion before he patched it up again. “What is it you imagine I’ve been doing?”

  “Her.”

  “Her?”

  “Oh, don’t even—Her! Your new bird, the one you’ve thrown me over for. Cassius.”

  She’d caught him mid-swallow; he actually choked a little. “Cassius?” he echoed, frowning. “Cassius of the lean and hungry look?”

  Virtually the same words, scrambled slightly out of order, that Master Wickham had used. Lan’s sense of triumph deflated. “Yeah?”

  Azrael looked away at nothing. “Wickham,” he said, so softly it was nearly a growl.

  “It’s not her name?”

  “No. She calls herself Chloe. Neither is that her name,” he added. “She told me as much when she first stood before me. She said it would be the only lie she ever told me. That, too, was a lie…but she doesn’t know I know that. Cassius…” He touched a claw to the arm of his throne and scraped it slowly up and down, carving thin curls of wood from a groove that was, she saw, already well-established. “For my part, I have walked about the streets, submitting me unto the perilous night, and, thus unbraced, I did present myself.” His claw tapped twice. “Therein, ye gods, you tyrants do defeat. Hungry Cassius. Hm.”

  Lan had no idea what to say to any of that, so she said, “Tell me about her.”

  Azrael grunted, still sunk in his thoughts. “She gives in too easily.”

  “She’s supposed to,” she reminded him, unsure whether it was a joke, but unable to suppress a smile, because what sort of johnny complained about that? “She’s your dollygirl.”

  “So are you,” he countered in that same grim, distracted way. “Yet you have never given in, never once. You give everything but that.”

  It was a compliment, she decided, and like all his compliments, it left her with a hateful feeling of vulnerability. “What’s she like?” she demanded, determined to stab Cassius back into the conversation and keep her there.

  Azrael glanced at her and back into his wine. “What are you like?”

  “I’m…” Lan looked down at herself and around at the room, but found no clues. What was there to say about herself? Some women were blondes or brunettes, had raven tresses or fiery ones; Lan had hair. Her eyes were nothing special. She didn’t know how to describe her face. Hell, Azrael knew what she looked like. He was looking at her right now. In some frustration, she said the first three things that came to mind: “I’m from Norwood. I used to farm peaches. I don’t like dogs.”

  “She’s from Balehurst. Her family produced flax and honey. The subject of dogs never arose. I’ll have to ask.”

  ‘While you’re at it, ask when the hell they started growing flax in Balehurst,’ thought Lan, but she didn’t say it. The Devil’s advocate in her kept trying to say there might be two Balehursts. Beyond the small radius of Norwood’s trade routes was a great unknown. She had purchased monthly deliveries of food for dozens of villages and towns whose names were entirely alien to her. The world might be filled with Balehursts and no one would ever know.

  “It couldn’t have been a bad bite,” said Azrael, bringing her out of thoughts that had begun to stretch dangerously out into an empty landscape where only the dead walked.

  “Huh?”

  “The dog,” he said, like that was an explanation. “I have seen every inch of your body. There are no scars left by a dog’s bite.”

  “Am I drunk or are you?” Lan asked, genuinely confused. “I never said I was bit. I never was.”

  “Were there many dogs in Norwood?”

  “A few, I guess. Mostly mongrels kept out by the wall. They were supposed to bark if there were Eaters around. And they did, but mostly they were there for the boys on watch to play with so they wouldn’t get bored and sneak off. And Timmus had an old terrier to keep the weasels out of his henyard, but it died when I was still little.” The next bit caught in her throat and the pause was as good as a beacon. She knew it and still tried to say it like it didn’t matter: “The sheriff had a couple deerhounds.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Did they hunt?”

  “Of course. They were deerhounds.”

  “Did you see them hunt? Did you ever see them take down a deer? Did they bark at you with blood on their jaws? Jump at you?”

  “No. They were very well-behaved.”

  “Ah.” He smiled. “That must be why you hated them.”

  She couldn’t see it, but she knew there was an insult in there somewhere and it hurt when it hit.

  His smile faded as she sat silent beside him. He said, “I don’t like them either,” and had another drink.

  “Were you bit?” Lan asked listlessly.

  “No. My flesh would seem to be repellant to all beasts. I have never been bitten, nor stung, nor scratched. Even the rats they set against my belly in an iron cage chose to burn under the coals they heaped on it rather than burrow into me. In all my life, I have feared no wild creature, but only dogs. They alone have hunted me.” H
is claws dug at the sides of his cup as he gazed pensively into the dark mirror of his wine. “I know deerhounds. I know the sound of their baying when they have you. I know that high, mindless, cringing cry, for even when they do not wish to catch what they pursue, it gives them so much joy to hunt for their masters. The very worst of dogs are those who are the very best behaved.”

  In the quiet that followed, he glanced at her, sighed, and suddenly it was like there were two Azraels and one of them just…dropped away. He reached out, not quite touching her cheek, but close enough that she could feel the chill of it on her skin. “It’s good to see you, Lan,” he told her. “If it doesn’t seem so, it is only because I so mistrust…how good it is to see you.”

  She tried to put her hand over his, to close that last small distance and make him touch her, but he lowered his arm before she could get there, leaving her with her hand up and foolishly empty.

  “Enough,” he said, more to himself than to her. “We will say no more of that. And no more, I say, of Cassius. She is nothing, a shadow. You are with me now. You, who are my light.”

  She rolled her eyes, but some stupid, secret part of her did indeed glow.

  “But to answer your accusation, no,” he went on, settling back into his throne, at last looking as though he belonged there and wasn’t just looking for a reason to leave. “I wasn’t with her. I have not spoken with her since the morning meal. You saw me with Felicity.” He paused to reflect, muttering afterward into his cup, “Her mother was no prophet.”

  “Is she sweet?” Lan asked, too casually.

  “Felicity?” He chuckled, the sound amplified and deepened by the wine. “No.”

  “She didn’t look sweet.”

  “Neither do you.”

  “And I’m not, am I?”

  “You have your odd moments.”

  That silly glow again.

  “Felicity is not in the habit of overtaking me with lustful advances,” he was saying, “and she’s hardly one to provoke them. She requested an audience and you merely happened upon us at its conclusion.”

  “What’s she want?”

  “She has a garden with a small pond and she would like swans.”

  “Swans,” Lan echoed, but he seemed to be serious. “What the hell for?”

  “To swim in the pond in her garden. Naturally.”

  Lan didn’t know from swans, but she knew geese and as far as she could tell, the only difference was posture. And geese were, bar none, the smelliest, noisiest, shittingest birds in Britain. She could not begin to fathom why anyone would want to keep them around if they didn’t need the eggs and her confusion must have showed, because he smiled again.

  “Felicity can never be happy,” he told her. “There is a very real possibility she was cursed at her christening. But if a pair of swans can at least quiet the deep unhappiness she endures in Haven, so be it. It costs me nothing.”

  “How many have you got?”

  He looked at her in some surprise. “Swans?”

  “Dollygirls, I meant.”

  “Presently?’

  Lan braced herself. “Yeah.”

  “Twelve, apart from you.”

  She supposed she should feel relieved it wasn’t more. She didn’t. But he was watching and even if she didn’t know what she was feeling, she was somehow sure he did. To hide it, whatever ‘it’ was, she tossed off a shrug and said, “Unlucky number, thirteen.”

  “Mm. There’s also Chloe, although we’ve not entered a true contract yet.”

  Yet. Dicky word, that. Yet.

  “Why not?”

  His smile twisted inward and became bitter. “Were I you, I would say you’d ruined me.”

  “Me?”

  “You. The mark by which I have come to measure the living.” He glanced at her. His eyes lingered, dimming, before they turned away. “And find them wanting.”

  “Is that a compliment?” she asked uncertainly.

  “No.”

  “Oh. Well…how many have you had?” Lan asked. “In all, I mean.”

  He didn’t ask why she wanted to know or even if she was sure she did, he only looked up at the ceiling as he counted them up. “Four hundred…fifty-three.”

  “That many,” she said, not meaning to say anything. She’d known it would be a lot, but even her most masochistic estimates had not run so high. She tried to picture them—a crowd equivalent to six Norwoods—all young and beautiful with ribbons in their hair and jewels on their corsets. “How many did you keep?”

  “Keep?” The side of his mouth twitched up. “You imply…what, exactly? I cast them out when they bore me?”

  “When you’re done with them, yeah.” It wasn’t a deliberate jab, but she saw it hit all the same and it made her sort of a little sorry. “Who would ever leave all this, if they had a choice?” she asked, waving at the high windows and glittering lights of the dining hall in an attempt to soften the edge of her words.

  “They don’t.” He pushed his throne back and drew his hand downward, displaying the ravaged landscape of his chest. “They leave this.”

  She sat a moment, then reached out and touched him.

  The sound of half a dozen servants all taking an unneeded breath was not loud at all, but it made the candles on the table gutter. Azrael turned an amused eye their way, then leaned back to watch Lan’s hand following the path he’d indicated. She took her time with it, tracing old scars and young ones, reading ages of pain by Braille until her fingertips brushed the silver rings that closed the gruesome gash over his side. The skin growing up around the rings was thin and smooth, warmer than the rest of him. It should have felt like real skin—human skin—but it didn’t. Even so…

  “You’re not that bad,” she said.

  He gave her a narrow stare and a crooked smile.

  “I didn’t mean it like ‘You’re not that bad.’ I meant ‘You’re not that bad.’” But she took her hand back, so awful was the feel of that newgrown skin among his scars. “Anyway, I know some of them are still here, so…where are they all?”

  “Are you afraid you might open some forbidden door and find them hanging from hooks?”

  “Not until now.”

  He studied her for some time, still smiling, but never quite lost that searching stare. At length, he said, “Two of them cook. One plays the flute in my orchestra. Three work in my greenhouses and another tends the palace gardens. Additionally, there are five who, like Felicity, make themselves available upon my request, but otherwise have nothing more to do with me.”

  “Do you miss them?”

  “I remember them.”

  “But do you miss them?” she pressed. “When you see the lady who plays the flute, do you ever think—”

  He laughed convincingly. “No.”

  “Seems like you watch her pretty close when she comes to play.”

  “She’s talented.”

  “I’ll bet. Is that why you don’t let her go?” Lan asked and winked. “Because she’s so talented?”

  “She doesn’t wish to go.”

  “Is that what she tells you? Or what you tell her?”

  “Shall I summon her?” he offered, plucking at her corset ties, but not cutting them. “She could answer these questions better than I.”

  “Yeah, right, answer questions. And hey, as long as she’s here—”

  He laughed, both with humor and with bitterness. “No.”

  “Balls. I’ve seen the way you look at her.”

  “No, Lan. You’ve seen the way I listen. My musicians, practiced as they are, yet can do no more than play notes on a page. She, alone of all my orchestra, makes music.”

  It was not a rebuke. Nevertheless, Lan ducked her head as she thought of her one and only music lesson. “I reckon I could give it another go,” she said sourly, “if that’s what you want.”

  “You needn’t.” He started to drink, then shrugged. “You shouldn’t. True music can only come from those who feel it. You may eventually learn to play it,
but not, I think, to love it. Ah, but no matter. You have your own talents.”

  Encouraged, Lan got up (the floor wobbled a bit, but stabilized quickly) and went to him. It seemed a very long way to go for one step and only once there did she discover there wasn’t enough room between him and the table for her to slither in.

  He watched her tug ineffectively at the arm of his throne for several seconds before he finally said, “What are you doing?”

  “Sitting on your lap.”

  “Hm.” He pushed his throne back at an angle, allowing her to settle without giving her any help, and to be honest, she could have used it. “Now what are you doing?” he inquired, steadying her with one hand on her back. Just the one. Just her back.

  She put her mouth close to his ear and in her sultriest voice, the one that didn’t at all sound like a pig with a sore throat no matter what stupid Eithon Fairchild said, whispered, “You, johnny. I’m doing you.”

  He caught her wrist as she groped at his belt. “You’re drunk, Lan.”

  “No, I’m not. Just nicely lubricated.” Again, she reached.

  Again, he stopped her. “Not tonight.”

  “Oh, come on!” she groaned, slapping in frustration at his shoulder. “It’s been forever!”

  “Then it can wait another day, surely.”

  “I don’t want to wait! I want you!” For the third time, she went for his belt and for the third time, was firmly rebuffed. “Don’t be so bloody noble!”

  He gave her one of those half-laughing grunts and had himself another drink of wine, muttering, “There’s more flattery I’ve not heard before,” into his cup.