Land of the Beautiful Dead

by Smith, R. Lee

  Tears overspilled her eyes and cut hot lines down her cheeks, stinging when they soaked into the ribbon around her neck. “That wasn’t the moment I wanted you to remember.”

  He clapped a hand to his face, rubbing through the sockets of his mask at his cheek.

  “Can you forgive me? Can you ever? I can wait for it if I just know it’s coming. Can you forgive me?”

  The music played.

  “You don’t think I’m sorry enough for what I did. But I don’t think you really know what I did. Or maybe…maybe you think I don’t know. Well, I do. I did this.” She clutched at the side of her throat, pulling down the ribbon to let the puckered scar beneath show. “You know what this is, Azrael? This was a choice. This was your choice.”

  His gaze moved over the tables, the windows, the pikemen…and her. He stared at the scar and his eyes dimmed, their light receding into the sockets of his mask until they were only white points in shadow. “Never did I force your hand.”

  “No,” said Lan, pushing the ribbon back over the scar. “I forced yours. Because I knew you would have to let me be an Eater or you’d have to bring me back when you knew it would never really be me or you’d have to let me die. All I had to do was cut. You were the one who had to choose…how you were going to lose me.”

  Azrael looked away.

  “But I got to end there. I wanted to make you choose and make you live with the choice when I got to end. So, yeah, I’m a coward. I’m everything you said I was. It was hateful and…and monstrous and…and pointless on top of everything because you didn’t have to choose at all. You made me live. I didn’t know…I never would have done it if I’d known you could make me live!” The last word rose to high, shattered cry and there she broke, sobbing hard. “I’m sorry! I’m sorrier than you will ever know! I’m sorry I did it and I’m sorry it didn’t work and I’m sorry for everything I ruined, but you’re just going to have to forgive me, because being sorry doesn’t help!”

  He gazed out the window while she wept, his thumbclaw tapping now and then at the side of his cup, keeping time with the music. As her tears subsided, he took up his knife and studied its edge. “You have, as I’ve had occasion to remark in the past, a certain unrefined talent for words, but I am not in the mood. Come to the point.”

  She stared at him in dismay, then flung out her arms. “What do you want from me? I’ve got nothing left! Nothing!”

  “Honesty!” he snarled. “No more pleas, no more tears, no more pretense! Just say it!”

  “Say what?”

  He tossed the knife away, sending it clattering over the side of the table for a servant to chase after. “Coward, you say. Hateful and monstrous. And if you heard me say those words, you heard the promise I made after in my…” His furious stare faltered and, for a moment, he was again the Azrael who had been with her, holding her as she lay floating in the very shadow of Death. “…my most desperate hour.”

  She reached out to him.

  He shoved his throne back. “My moment of weakness,” he spat. “However it happened, my word was given, so come to it. Ask. You needn’t dress it up with sentiment.”

  Lan shook her head, her mouth a trembling o, speechless.

  “What are you waiting for?” Azrael demanded. “Is the hall not grand enough for your victory? Do you require a more public forum? Shall I summon all of Haven to the streets and find a scepter to pass into your hands? I’m afraid I can’t give you my head on a spike, but I’m sure I could locate a crown for you to take back to Norwood as proof of your triumph.”

  “Stop it!” Lan cried.

  “Stop what? You won. You always knew you would.” He took up his cup and raised it in a mocking salute. “You want the world, isn’t that what you told me? You were bound to win in the end because you want the world and I just want sex. You played me masterfully and I can’t deny I’ve gotten my end, so ask, Lan, one more time, and then go.”

  “Go?” The word cracked in her throat.

  “Go home. Go back to your Norwood and tell them all how you bested the devil in his own den. Take a ship, if you like. Cross the sea. Look at the world you’ve saved from Eaters, see all the forests and mountains you’ve missed. Go find your mother’s lost Lanachee and leave a pair of boots in her honor. I don’t care where you go, but I won’t have you here.”

  She couldn’t seem to catch her breath. Her heart was breaking. She could feel it breaking, feel it tearing open, bleeding down into her belly. This was love, was it? This was what all those dovey songs and stories were about? This wound?

  He smiled at her and the smile cut even deeper than the knife. “You look surprised. What, did you think you would have it all, the prize and the playing field both? Oh no, Lan. When the game is over, the winner takes the trophy and leaves the field.”

  “No.” The word caught in her throat and choked her. She clutched at the strangling ribbon, as if that were to blame, and just held onto it. “No, I won’t.”

  He cocked his head. “You won’t? Is that what you say? You won’t?”

  “Please.”

  “Ah, yes. Please. Once you’ve spent your curses and your fiery rhetoric, you always come back to please. And I’ve always indulged you, but no more. It is long past time you learned you cannot avoid all consequences with tears.” His eyes flashed. “And kisses.”

  “Azrael!”

  “It is easier to cut than to live with the choices we make, is that not the gist of what you have just said in your…was that an apology? I can never tell with you. No matter. Here is my cut and here is your choice. You put mine on your neck, but as I lack your flair for drama, I’ll have to give you yours in mere words. What’s it to be, child? My hungering dead or Haven?”

  “Haven?” Her tears bubbled up as mad laughter. “You think I want Haven?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t you dare—”

  “I hate Haven!” she exploded. “I hate every bloody brick of Haven! I hate these gowns—” She fumbled at her corset, tearing loose some of the stays so she could finally take a deep breath and really start the shouting. “—and all this junk!” She ripped the diamond combs from her hair and threw them. They tumbled through the air like dragonflies, all flash and shine, and landed just as hard. She threw her cup next; it would have hit a courtier if he hadn’t dove to the floor, peeking foolishly up at her under a curtain made of tablecloth. She threw a vase of flowers and a handful of spoons and a bowl of bread while servants exchanged inquiring glances, uncertain whether they should be cleaning it all up now or wait until she was through.

  “I hate your stupid books and your lessons and…and I hate your musicians!” she shouted at them while they played calmly on. She threw a plate, but it went whizzing well off to one side and hit a pikeman instead. “I hate this…this stupid tea party with all your stupid…dead…toys!” She seized the edge of the imperial table and heaved it over as Deimos stepped calmly back to avoid getting gravy on his boots. “I hate it here! I hated it from the first fucking day!”

  No one answered. A few courtiers had stood, poised to flee at her next sudden movement, but most stayed in their seats, watching her like her outburst was just another spectacle performed for their amusement. Lan stood panting with her hair falling in her face and her corset hanging half-open, glaring at all of them while they waited to see what she’d do next. She eyed her chair, but her strength was spent and she turned away from it empty-handed to meet Azrael’s blazing, unsteady gaze. “You’re all I want in Haven,” she told him.

  His jaw clenched. He dragged in several breaths and threw a laugh at her like a fist. “I’ve been your fool more than I care to admit in company, but I’m not so much a fool as that.”

  Lan started to speak, then gave up and went to him. He leaned back into his throne as she approached, but did not move when she reached for him. He remained still, silent, as she tugged at his mask and fought the fastens open. When she pulled it away at last, she gave its empty-eyed, snarling f
ace only an incurious glance before letting it drop. She touched him, watching her fingers travel along the broken landscape of his flesh. Then she bent, as he sat unmoving as a statue, and kissed him.

  The music came to a discordant stop and now it really was silent. Perfectly, dangerously silent.

  Lan closed her eyes, not to shut him out, but to better see him. Her hands moved over familiar scars, following the chasm of his cheek down to his chest and up again, easing him further back into his throne to make room for her on his lap. Her lips pressed harder and softer against his mouth as she straddled him, then with firm intent when she was settled. He gave her no encouragement, but his body belied his seeming disinterest and when she began to rock her hips gently against the rising evidence of his arousal, he gave in and kissed her back. Their tongues met; she teased at him and withdrew, letting him chase and conquer.

  As she leaned back, he pressed forward and now her arms were entwined around his neck, her hands stroking the living bone protruding along his spine. He countered by sweeping his arms around her, closing her fast in his unnatural cold and kissing hard all the way down her arched throat until that damned ribbon cut him off. His feelings mirrored hers; with an impatient slash of his claws, he pulled it away, then buried his face against her bare skin. She felt the rough point of his tongue trace the outline of her scar, then move hungrily to the throbbing vein at the opposite side of her neck, as if to taste the proof of her life.

  The sound of her soft moan filled the whole of the hall, punctuated by the metallic clatter of a flute falling to the floor and running feet as its player fled. The rest of the musicians conferred in whispers and began again to play, something slow and full of strings. Azrael glanced at them and sighed.

  “Haven’s nothing but a dollhouse,” Lan said softly. “It’s pretty and, yeah, you got the best dolls, but I don’t need it. I don’t even want it.” She cupped his face and pressed her brow to his, feeling the warmth of his eyelight on her skin and tasting spiced wine on his breath. “I want you.”

  “Sweet words.” His voice hardened. “A poison mouth.”

  “Oh Azrael,” she sighed. “You always know when I’m lying, but you don’t always know when I’m not. I want you. Just you. I know you hate me now—”

  “Not at the moment,” he murmured and sighed. “Stay then. Stay and speak no more of my hungering dead. Surrender that world forever and abide with me in this one.”

  “Azrael, please! I can’t…I can’t let the world die to be with you! And I can’t lose you! I…” She looked out over the dining hall, suddenly remembering their audience, and yes, they were all still there and all still watching. “Please don’t ask me to choose.”

  He combed his claws once through her disheveled hair and kissed her shoulder where her loosened gown had slipped to expose it, oblivious to the guards, servants and dinner guests staring up at their lord’s loveplay. “No more games, Lan. No more negotiations. The time has come to decide what you want most.”

  She stared at him, anguished, pleading with every part of her but her voice.

  “Ask me to end the Eaters, Lan. I will end them, but it will not end the war, and without the dead to keep the living at bay, they will come here. I will be forced to meet them and whether I defeat them or they defeat me, there will be blood—” Holding her eyes, he took gentle hold of her wrists and brought her empty, open hands up between them. “—and it will be on your hands. You propose to destroy the dream of peace that is Haven, and for nothing. You can save no one. You can only sound the horn of Armageddon.”

  She shut her eyes, knocking tears free to burn twin trails down her cheeks, but they were the last two.

  He wiped them away with the rough pad of his thumb. “But if ever I made a home for you once, let me do it again. Here, I can spare you all the evils of the world—hunger, cold, pain, fear…death. I shall remake Haven itself to your will. No more gowns. No more court. No more meditations in my garden. I can be…merciful…with you to remind me why I should. Lan…”

  She opened her eyes, already looking down into his.

  “Stay with me,” he said haltingly. “Please.”

  “Azrael, I…I love you. I want to be with you. I want that more than anything—”

  He stiffened, all over, all at once. Slowly, he began to smile and in that moment, she saw for the first time through the scars and not just around them, to the face of the man he might have been, that he might someday be again if only he were allowed to heal.

  “—but not more than everything,” she finished softly. “End the Eaters.”

  His smile fell away, leaving behind an awful emptiness.

  Elsewhere in the room, someone decided to leave, beginning a subdued yet rapid movement that emptied the great hall in minutes, and throughout it all, Azrael just looked at her. When they were alone, but for the pikemen lining the walls and Deimos watching from the foot of the dais, Azrael quietly said, “Done.”

  She felt it going out of him, punching through her in a cold pulse, making no sound and having no substance, but hammering to the very foundation of her heart just the same. Then he lifted her from his lap and set her on her feet. He rose, staring straight ahead, and moved away from her. “Captain.”

  “My lord.”

  “When my guest has collected her composure, escort her to my chambers. She’ll want to change for her journey.”

  Lan sank to her knees and covered her face in her shaking hands. She did not cry. After all the tears she’d shed, there were none for this.

  “See to it she has food and water and whatever other supplies she may request and see her safely to the settlement of her choosing.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Get her out of here.”

  Deimos held out his hand. Lan pushed herself up and took it, moving past Azrael without touching him. He did not look at her. She did not try to tell him goodbye. She left and he let her go and that was the end.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Lan had left Norwood the day after her mother’s death, under the new Crow Moon, so it seemed only fitting that she return under another Crow Moon, this one waning and faded behind the clouds. She had Deimos drop her well back, walking the last length so no one would see her getting out of a Revenant’s van. It made no difference. Her year in Haven had marked her, on her flesh and on her soul, and although they let her in, it was never the same. She wasn’t sure she wanted it to be.

  There were questions, some. Not so many about the Eaters, lying in rotting heaps around the walls where they had been howling for meat only the day before, but about Haven itself. Were there lights, like the ferrymen said? Was it really like the old cities in the pictures, all clean and full of glass? Was it true there were fields full of every kind of crop, with the dead to tend them, and empty houses, row on row, just being kept by dead maids? How many dead were there, exactly, and how many were Revenants and how many servants? Did the servants serve any master or Azrael alone? To these increasingly disturbing inquiries, Lan said less and less and finally nothing at all except that Haven was for the dead and the living were not welcome there.

  “You look like you were made fairly welcome,” Sheriff Neville remarked when he heard this. His eyes crawled slow over her body. “Fairly welcome and then some.”

  Mother Muggs gave her a space in the Women’s Lodge, grunting as she did so that it was her charitable nature, for she didn’t have to, not for a penniless beggar and a foreigner such as Lan. It wasn’t her old bed; that, she saw, was occupied now by the woman from Mallowton. Lan tried once to talk with her awhile, but the woman pretended not to know her. She said her name was Ella. She said she came from New Hull. And when Lan tried once, in whispers, to tell her how well Heather was kept in Haven, how she’d been seen by doctors and was getting fed and last Lan knew, was learning to play piano, the woman walked away, calling back in a too-loud voice that talk was Lan had slept up with Azrael in Haven and she didn’t truck with deadhead whores. Lan understood in
tellectually why she did it, but it still struck hard.

  She had nothing. She sold her fine clothes, made just for her by Haven’s tailors, for a half-yield of a row of barley. She took up her old scut work for the Fairchilds, tending the mayor’s animals in the morning and washing up their kitchen at night. For a time, she had offers nearly every night to slip away behind the smoking shed for a private welcome home and maybe a good word spoke the next time her name came up. Most took her refusal with a nod and a shrug, or at worst, a low mutter about deadhead dollies. A few got mean, among them Eithon Fairchild, who’d gone and married that git Elvie, but who would not keep his hands out of her back pockets until she gave him a kick to the jewels. He threatened to have the sheriff on her for that and Lan lost her temper and threatened to have the Revenants on him. After that, she kept to herself.

  One day followed another. Crow Moon winked out and Pink Moon grew. Pippa and Posey traded out the last of their winter rows for spring seedlings. Lambs were born. Pigs were bred. And peaches were always in fruit. The age-old rhythm of village life continued its steady beat, but she was not a part of it anymore. She did her work and fell into her bed with all the aches and exhaustion she remembered, but it was not the same. The harder she tried to fit herself back into her old life, the wider the gulf grew until it was insurmountable, but still she needed help to see it.

  At Full Pink Moon, the Revenants came. Lan didn’t know. She was scrubbing pots in the knuckle-biting cold water behind the Fairchild’s house when the sheriff came to fetch her. “Come deal with this,” was all he said, so Lan walked out through the gate was to see what she had to deal with. What she saw was Deimos unloading the first of eight crates of food.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked stupidly, because she could see the bread and fruits and cheeses.

  “My lord’s will,” Deimos replied.

  “I didn’t realize…” She reached out to touch a cold joint of mutton and found it not even wholly cold yet. Fresh from Haven’s kitchen, perhaps even from the imperial table. “I thought our arrangement broke when…when we did.”