Land of the Beautiful Dead

by Smith, R. Lee

  Feeling recovered enough to get bored, Lan wandered Batuuli’s chambers during her alone hours, investigating empty drawers and cupboards, and when Serafina returned in the evening with her tray of tea, broth and two triangles of toast, optimistically buttered, Lan declared she was fit.

  “You do look better,” Serafina allowed with a grudging nod. “Relatively. I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you, but you are very fortunate, you know, that our lord found you when he did or you might have actually become seriously ill.”

  “He didn’t have to find me,” said Lan. “He was already here.”

  Serafina paused, then rather too casually brought the tray over and set it on the table beside the bed. “What do you mean, already here?”

  “I mean he spent the night with me. Part of it, anyway.”

  “Here? You mean you…and he…in this bed?” Serafina looked at the bed in much the same way the knee-benders of Anglais-en-Port looked at their little chapel every time the town boys got a little too free with the wine and snuck in to draw boobs on all the Jesus-men—not just as something vandalized, but something desecrated.

  “Sorry,” said Lan, not even a little sorry. “If it helps, it was fairly straightforward sex. Nothing oddjob. Unless you count a little Aussie kiss.”

  “No, it doesn’t ‘help!’” Serafina snapped. “Eat your dinner! Or, if you feel up to it, our lord’s other companions are dining in the great hall?”

  “Really? All together-like? I thought that was discouraged.”

  “Things changed during the…the…” Serafina blinked several times, frowning, then occupied herself with setting up Lan’s cup and saucer. “The time that things changed.”

  “The purge.” Lan took the pot before her handmaiden could pour something she wouldn’t even drink. “You can say it. If you could do it, you can say it.” And because that wasn’t fair and she knew it, even if she still at least sort of believed it, she forced a lighter tone to say, “So now we all eat together?”

  “Mornings and evenings. Your days are still very much separate. Will you be joining them or…?”

  “Is Azrael there?”

  “He has been meeting with his advisors all day. He may attend, but I rather doubt it. He didn’t bother with breakfast.”

  Lan sighed, but in truth, her hopes had not been high. The man had been gone a long time. If she saw him at all over the next few days, she ought to be grateful, but she reminded herself it wouldn’t last. He’d get his business sorted out and the dead would mire themselves comfortably in their new routines and all would be well in Haven. Until then—

  “I’ll go to the dolly-party,” said Lan without enthusiasm. “Help me get dressed?”

  Serafina went to the wardrobe and returned with one of her old gowns, a scratchy nightmare in a summery shade of yellow that Lan had always absolutely despised. It had that musty, unused odor of clothing that had been shut up and forgotten, but it wasn’t as if the mice had been at it or anything. She put it on, feeling very vaguely superior to the dead, who seemed to throw out any old togs that got the least bit torn or worn, only to discover that the smell got stronger as the fabric warmed against her skin and it really was intolerable after all. Maybe one of Azrael’s other dollies would be willing to lend her a dress until hers could all be aired.

  Batuuli’s old dressing table was dusty, so Serafina had to stop and wash everything. Lan tried to help, got her hands slapped, which she accepted with good cheer, and thereafter stayed out of the way, drinking nasty tea and chatting while her handmaiden cleaned up. Then came the paints, which Lan promptly smudged by rubbing at her eye, ruining not only her made-up face, but her gloves as well. Her necklace was heavy and all over edges, but she couldn’t scratch at it. The lace of her sleeves tickled her arms, but she couldn’t scratch at that either. She had forgotten how much of being pretty meant sitting still and not touching anything.

  It all took so much longer than she remembered. By the time Serafina declared her fit to be seen, she fully expected the meal to be over, but the doors of the dining room were open and Lan could hear the musicians playing. Even better, Azrael’s steward bustled importantly away as soon as he saw her, so there was a good chance she’d be seeing Azrael himself before too long.

  So encouraged, Lan went on in, noting first how empty it was. Apart from the two pikeman guarding the door itself, there were none lining the walls the way Lan remembered, and only a few servants. Most of the tables had been removed, leaving just two on either side of the dais at the north end of the hall. Of course, it didn’t take more than two tables to seat Azrael’s dollies. There were only eight of them now, and the girl, who had sprouted up considerably after a year of sheltered rest and good feeding. But no, Lan saw with a start, there were nine after all. The flute-player was with the orchestra and not eating with the others.

  The empty hall, with its tiled floors and paneled walls, had made itself a room of echoes; the other women could not have been unaware of her arrival, but they knew they were all themselves accounted for and the comings and goings of servants held no interest for them. The child spared her a glance, but her game of catapulting a cherry down the bodice of none other than Miss Mannerly-Buggery-Do proved more exciting than some new face in the hall. Lan had to walk past the orchestra before her presence registered as a sudden shrill note on a silvery flute.

  All the musicians fell silent at once, allowing the flute-player’s voice to ring out uncontested: “You!”

  Now they all looked up. Eyes went wide. Mouths dropped open.

  Lan plucked at her skirt, which she supposed she would be stuck wearing until her new togs came after all. “So,” she said lamely, nodding at the dinner platters. “What’s good?”

  The simple question sparked a small flurry of movement—not from the living, but from the dead. Attending servants scattered, two of them comically colliding in their hurry to fetch a chair and set Lan’s usual place at the imperial table, beside Azrael’s empty throne.

  The other dollies watched with varying blends of amusement, envy and contempt, all their conversations gone to whispers and smirks. The red-head uttered a huffy sniff when Lan put her foot on the dais step, but Lan was willing to overlook it. Less easy to ignore was the cherry that sailed by her head, but even that was rendered forgivable by the whistle-and-yelp of a switch swapping the manners into an offending hand. Tempo, master of Azrael’s orchestra, tapped his little stick and started up the music again; the flute-player managed a few notes, then got up without a word and took herself and her flute away. Azrael’s dollygirls watched her go, then all looked back together and stared Lan down en masse.

  If she hadn’t been so hungry, she would have left, but she was, so she stayed. The food was good, although very heavy—onion soup with bubbly cheese melted on it, roasted oysters, and soufflé cups followed by a course of fish in brown butter with veg or steamed mussels in wine, and now her choice of capon with cherries, braised beef with mushroom, sweetbreads sautéed with garlic, and everywhere crusty bread and cheeses and wine. Azrael’s doing, it had to be. Trying to make her feel at ‘home’. Like France was home. She’d ever eaten this fancy in Anglais-en-Port. High cuisine at Mal Henri’s meant onion and kidney pies, where it didn’t pay to think too hard about where the kidneys came from.

  The hell with them. She didn’t come to dinner for the company, not theirs, anyway. Lan filled her cup and piled her plate high, ignoring her tender tummy’s apprehensive tightening. This was her first real meal in forever and she was determined not to let it be dampened by a bunch of jealous chavvies. She only wished Azrael were here.

  And, as if her thought had flown out like a magic bird and summoned him, he walked in.

  Stalked in, rather, banging the door open and slamming it in his steward’s face with a curse that could have soured milk, if there’d been a cow in the room. Then he turned, saw all his dollies in one room, and froze. The flames of his eyes leapt as his gaze darted from face to painted face, but if
he was surprised, they were appalled. It seemed they were only happy to be jealous as long as they didn’t have to deal with the man whose affection they were all vying for.

  “You’re late,” called Lan.

  He looked at her, at the others, and at her again. After a moment, he thought to smile. “Unforgiveable. And so soon after your return. Regrettably, civil matters demanded my immediate attention.” Your return, he said. Not our. As far as his loyal subjects were concerned, he’d been here the whole time. He started toward her at a brisk pace, making short work of a long walk. “Yet well I know there is nothing so pressing that I should have kept you waiting. Or indeed, any of you. Good evening, Felicity. Autumn. Christina.”

  His dollies fluttered as he named them. The red-head made as if to stand, but settled again, pretending her skirts had needed shifting. Necks bent. Hands found forks and cups to play with, but no one ate or drank. The child armed herself with a plum, then ate it, pulling the spray of flowers that fancied up the table between her and Azrael’s shadow when he passed by and peeping at him between the blooms. When he nodded at her, she waggled her fingers in a reluctant wave, then slithered out of her chair and under the table, where she stayed in spite of her etiquette tutor’s hissing.

  “I see you’ve elected not to starve in my absence,” he remarked, as he ascended the dais. “I thought you did not attend dinners for the food.”

  “I made an exception this once,” Lan told him. “Look, lemon cake!”

  He accepted the slice she offered, but set it aside on his plate, studying her face. His voice lowered as conversations picked up again at the other tables, so that it was just for her that he said, “Should you be out of bed?”

  “Oo.” She snuck a hand onto his thigh behind the shield of the tablecloth and tickled. “Is there a reason why I shouldn’t be?”

  He put his hand over hers, keeping it from further explorations. “You seem pale still.”

  “Beats pink, don’t it?”

  “Hm.”

  “I’m better now.” She dropped him a wink. “Much better.”

  At last, she got the smile she’d been fishing for, but it remained distracted, unconvinced.

  “Something wrong?” she asked, tucking into her lemon cake. The taste was not what she remembered, less like angels fucking and more like angels groping. Maybe tongues were involved, but she was reasonably certain their hands were on top rather than underneath their angel-robes.

  He didn’t answer, which was a bad sign until she looked at him and saw he genuinely seemed to be thinking that over. “No,” he said at last. And before she could question him further—about that lengthy pause, for example—he suddenly said, “Do you trust me, Lan?”

  “Oh balls, what am I supposed to say to that?” She shook her head, not in answer, but in helpless wonder at her own lack of tact. But now it was out and there was nothing for it but to run with it. “Trust is one of those things, you know. If you have to ask someone to prove it, it only proves that you don’t trust the other bloke yourself, so it almost…It…What’s the word I want? Is there a word?”

  “Undermines, perhaps. Diminishes. Hm.” He tapped at the edge of his plate with his thumbclaw, a familiar and much-missed sound. “You may be right. I withdraw the question.”

  “Yeah, but now I have a couple.”

  “The lights are going out.”

  The statement seemed to have come from an entirely different conversation. Lan blinked at him, then looked up at the lamps set in the walls and ceiling, but they all burned as bright as ever.

  “Not here,” he said. His claws drummed once beside his plate. “Not yet. But it is coming. The power stations require maintenance, the maintenance requires parts, the parts must be manufactured, the manufactory requires machinery, the machinery requires maintenance, and so it goes. What is to be done?”

  “Let ‘em go out,” she replied with a shrug and had another bite of cake. “Candles are fine.”

  He nodded as if this were just the response he expected, but not as if he agreed.

  “You never liked them anyway,” she reminded him.

  “No. I never have.”

  “And there’s nothing you can do about it, after all.”

  His eyes darkened as the shadow of his thoughts passed through him. He did not reply.

  “Oh stop,” she said, determined to be only cheerfully exasperated with him tonight. “There’s nothing you can do! Even before the war was over, folk knew they’d never be able to keep the electric on. They were already running out of petrol and oil and all that, and with the power gone, they’d never be able to refine what they had left, so they put everything they had into solar charging stations and all that, but now what? Sure, we can charge up the batteries, but it’s not like we can ever make new ones. Or tires or engine belts or any of that tinkery shit that makes up a car, so what was the point of it all? And now the docking stations themselves are starting to break down and who didn’t see that coming? What good is a solar charger when the panel cracks? No,” she said, giving his hand a comforting pat. “It’s all over, but life goes on, yeah?”

  He turned his hand under hers and closed his fingers briefly around her, then opened them again. He still did not reply.

  Lan’s appetite dwindled in his silence. She used her fork to catch up crumbs on her plate, only to tap them off again. “I really wish this wasn’t that important to you,” she said at last. “Because it’s ugly, Azrael. I love you, I do, but this is really…really ugly.”

  He frowned behind his mask. “The lights?”

  “Not the lights. The reason you want them on.” She couldn’t look at him anymore, so she looked at the lamps instead. “Because you know they’re the last. You want them seen. You want everyone who’s left to know what they lost and know you have it. The Land of the Beautiful Dead, land of electric lights and lemon cake.”

  “Lan—”

  “It’s ugly.” She shoved her chair back.

  He touched her arm. He didn’t grab it. If he had, she might have yanked away, but he just touched it and after a long, tense moment, she pulled herself back to the table.

  “They are the last,” he said, seeking and ultimately finding her reluctant gaze. “I do want them seen. For all the reasons you say, yes…but those days were past years ago. Now, I keep them lit because…because this is Haven and all the best that ever was in Man is here.” Now he looked at the lamps. “And I am not ready to see that light go out.”

  ‘Ready or not,’ she thought pragmatically, but her pudding heart went out to him all the same. “Is there anything you can do?”

  His eyes flickered. “Perhaps.”

  “But you don’t want to,” she guessed.

  “The risk is enormous, the outcome…uncertain at best.” He beckoned a servant to bring him wine, but did not drink once he had it. He merely held the cup, brooding over his reflection. “It would be a lengthy and difficult endeavor, both here and beyond my borders.”

  “How far beyond?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That far, huh?” Lan pushed a bit of sausage around her plate, drawing pictures with the congealing grease, her appetite gone and nausea returned. “So…you don’t actually mean Haven’s borders when you say ‘beyond.’ You mean out in Britain somewhere.”

  She waited, but he did not agree.

  “Beyond Britain?”

  He brought his hand up to rub first at his brows and then under his mask.

  “So just to make sure I’ve got this right…” Lan set her fork down on the edge of her plate, dabbed her lips with her napkin, then folded her hands together before her on the table and pleasantly said, “You pushed everyone out, you killed everyone who wouldn’t go, you’ve killed everyone who ever came back, but all that wasn’t enough.”

  “Lan…”

  “I know you didn’t want to,” she said and could mean it. “The last thing I want to do tonight is throw it in your face, but you did what you did because you had t
o draw a hard line. And now you’re stepping over it. And for what? What makes you think you’re going to find better salvage on the continent than here? Is it really worth hitting the hornet’s nest just to keep the lights on?”

  “It is not my intention to provoke the living. It is not my intention that they should ever know of this endeavor.” Now he glanced at her, just a tap and a flash of one eye. “Even I can be discreet at need.”

  “I’m sure you can, but you’re not going, are you? You’re going to send your…” There was plenty more she wanted to say at that point, about his deadheads and their less-than-discreet attitude when it came to dealing with the living, but it all went out of her head when she saw his eyelight flicker deep in his stoic mask. “Are you going?” she pressed. “You’re not, are you?”

  “Not…necessarily.” His thumbclaw scraped softly up and down the side of the cup. “My Revenants could oversee the—”

  “Your Revenants? You can’t send Revenants!”

  “Merely to defend those who were not imbued with the power to defend themselves. I trust them to obey my orders, even those that may conflict with their risen instincts.”

  “Do you?” Lan fought her incredulity and lost. “I spent days in a ferry with Deimos! I know exactly what his instincts are. The first place we stopped to charge up, we didn’t have any ‘slip, so they tried to turn us away. We had a crate-load of goods to barter; Deimos pulled a sword. If I hadn’t been there, he would have tap-stabbed his way through the whole town and probably never even looted the corpses for ‘slip to pay at the next stop. That’s how a Revenant deals with problems. Oh, I’m sure they’ll follow your orders to the letter, but there aren’t enough letters in the world to cover every possibility, and the first unexpected thing that comes along, the instinct they’re going to fall back on is, ‘Hmm, how can I solve this with a sword?’”