Land of the Beautiful Dead (29 page)

CHAPTER NINE

S
he dreamed of Norwood, but not the usual dreams. Just what made her think so, Lan could not guess, since she didn’t remember her dreams as a rule and didn’t really remember this one either. All she had were impressions, like the stink of char that lingers long after the fire or a print in the mud after the boot has marched on. So she knew she had been in Norwood and she knew it had been empty, although the only image that stayed with her was that of the long table in the cooklodge, long abandoned, with a half-empty jar of peaches and an old weathered rucksack at one end. There were no bodies, no smoke, no blood. Only the silence, broken by a sudden explosion of sound that ripped her right out of sleep.

She did not immediately know where she was. The noise that had awakened her had become the crash of falling water, a sound her brain stubbornly tried to insist was the waterwheel at the village mill, even though she could clearly see indoor-walls hung with bedcurtains and smell the indoor-smell of sweaty sex in a windowless room. She was lying sideways at the foot of a bed. There were claw marks on the headboard and tears in the sheets. Lan had been half-wrapped in a blanket and left in defeat, discarded on the field of battle. The victor had long since left and she knew she was alone, so when she raised her head and saw a dark figure in a white, flowing gown coming at her, she very naturally let out a caw of alarm and threw herself back in a mad scramble that propelled her out into empty space and then to the floor, where she knocked her head hard on the tiles.

Eater, was her only thought and now that her legs were hopelessly tangled and anchored somewhere to the bed, she would be caught, torn, devoured…and raised up.

The figure did not slow, but did affect a curt sigh. Then it knelt to unwrap Lan’s kicking legs, slapping her once to stop her struggles. It was the slap that brought recognition.

“Serafina?” Lan scooted back, trying to cover as much of herself as she could with one arm. “What are you doing here? What do you want?”

“My lord has appointed me your handmaiden,” the dead woman said, although she didn’t sound very happy about it. She began to strip the bed, moving with brisk motions and touching the materials she took away as little as possible.

“I don’t want a servant,” said Lan, still more asleep than awake and so baffled by this unexpected ‘gift’ that her emotions bordered on horror.

“I am not your servant. I am his. I am merely your handmaiden.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I prepare you at
his
command. But you are not my mistress.” Serafina threw her a black and blameful stare over one round shoulder. “My mistress is dead. Begin your bath. I will be with you presently.”

Bath? The last cobweb cleared. She looked and saw, instead of the waterwheel she had known deep down would not be there, the intricate screen that concealed Azrael’s bath, with the topmost curves of the lion-headed fountain visible over the top. Now and then, rebel droplets found a way to splash up on the wall, catching firelight that slowly faded as the wet spots dried.

“Are you still sitting there?” Serafina straightened up with an armload of linens and a menacing look in her eye. “Our lord has summoned you and you will not embarrass him with this…this unseemly…” Words failed her. Pursing her lips, she threw down her linens and came around the bed. “Clean yourself,” she said, hauling Lan to her feet and giving her a shove toward the bath. “You stink of your trade.”

The insult almost hit. She could feel the wind of its wake, but other things were more important now.

“Summoned me?” she said. “Are the Revenants back?”

“My lord said you would ask and that I should answer.” The words were civil enough, but just the fact that she spoke them managed to convey her disapproval for the question. “They have just passed Haven’s gate and will soon be at the palace.”

Lan grabbed at a blanket and ran for the door.

The dead do move fast and the handmaiden had her before she was halfway there. Lan tried and failed to break her grip and was subsequently dragged back across the bedroom in spite of her struggles, stripped of her cover and bodily flung into the water.

She came up thrashing and sputtering, then slapped a palmful of water directly up into Serafina’s impassive face. “I don’t want a bath! Get out of my way!”

The handmaiden did not even wipe at her face, only glowered down at her and dripped. “There is soap there beside you.”

Lan waded toward the stairs. Serafina moved to block them.

“I said, I don’t want a bloody bath!”

“I do not care what you say, warmblood. I don’t care what you want. I do my lord’s will.” Serafina looked her over and shook her head, her perfectly-painted lip curling with unfeigned disgust. She headed for the wardrobe. “Use the soap.”

She couldn’t fight and time was wasting. The drive from Haven’s gate to the palace was not a long one. Swearing, Lan sloshed over and grabbed the soap. She looked clean enough to her eyes, but she supposed she did need it, if only to get her blood moving. In addition to some understandable soreness, her entire body felt stiff and too heavy. Just tired, she thought. It had been a long night, if the night was even over.

“What time is it?” Lan called.

“Not yet seven.”

“Seven what?” Lan asked impatiently. “Is it morning? Half-noon? High-noon? What?”

Serafina came over to the screen to make certain Lan could hear her loud sigh of annoyance and then moved away again. “Morning.”

“How long has Azrael been up?” Lan asked next, trying to guess how long she’d been sleeping.

“I’m sure I would not know!”

“No, of course you wouldn’t. Bloody useless, you are.” Lan climbed out of the bath and past her sniffing handmaiden to dry herself by the fire. Bending over to wring out her hair, she caught sight of some bruises on her thigh…and her arm…and her ass. And far from upsetting her, she found herself actually smiling. Like she was proud of them. When she looked up, Serafina was there in front of her, looking at them too. Her lips were pursed again.

“You should see the other guy,” said Lan and went back to drying her hair.

The dress Serafina deemed worthy was high-waisted and low-cut, with a skirt that was both too tight and too long. She couldn’t run in it, and in fact could barely walk in it, since Serafina slapped her hand every time she tried to pick up her stupid skirt. It was also pink. Not sunrise-pink or ripe-peach pink, but some lackluster greyish pink Lan had never seen in nature, like a moldy rose. She had plenty of time to hate it, mincing all the way from Azrael’s chamber to the dining hall and tripping over the damn hem every few steps, especially on the stairs.

At the doors to the dining hall, Serafina made her stop to give her some final primping, a process her new handmaiden did not conclude as much as abandon in despair. As Azrael’s steward went in to announce her, Lan received a final adjustment to her bosom and two quick slaps “for color” before Serafina retreated.

“You aren’t coming in with me?” Lan asked.

“My orders are to prepare you, not to wait on you,” Serafina added with a toss of her braids. “I will do no more than I am ordered. You are not my mistress.”

And with that, she stalked off, but Azrael’s steward was already glaring at her, since it seemed she’d missed her cue to enter, so there was no time to think of scathing things she might have said. She went in.

The breakfast meal was still being laid out. Pots of tea and coffee were all that she initially saw, but even as she walked, servants appeared with platters of morning cakes and sweetrolls, sausages and ham, fried tomatoes and mushrooms and stewed prunes. Seeing it, smelling it, reminded Lan that she hadn’t had anything apart from tea yesterday, and reminded her so well that she forgot her stupidly tight skirt and tripped on the dais stairs, banging her knee and scraping both wrists in an effort to catch herself.

No one laughed, which meant that her voice rang out like a brass bell when she shouted, “Oh, you fucking thing!” Seizing it by its smirking hem, she ripped it right up the seam as far as her thigh, eliciting quite a few gasps from the crowd, especially considering none of them had to breathe. None of them had to wear this skirt either, she reasoned, and if it shocked them to see her flash some skin as she climbed the stairs, that was their malfunction.

Azrael pretended to be utterly absorbed in the buttering of a heel of brown bread, but as she limped up the stairs, he said mildly, “I like it better that way.”

“I bet you do. Where are they?”

“In the garrison, I should imagine. Deimos will be here shortly. I left orders he was to wash before making his report.”

“You did what?” Lan shot a hot, embarrassed glance out into the hall, counting all the heads that had turned, and made an effort to at least try and sound like she was joking when she said, “And then what? A little nap, a light tea?”

“Would you rather have seen the blood?”

She looked away, at the floor in front of the dais steps where Deimos would have stood. The tiles were polished to such a high shine that they already appeared to be wet. “Is there blood?” she asked, not quite as evenly as he.

“I don’t know.” He waved a hand at the empty chair beside his throne without looking at it or her. “But I thought it wise to anticipate. Sit with me. Eat, if you can.”

If she could? Of course she could. She was hungry. Even now, as much as she wanted to keep staring at that not-wet, not-bloody spot at the foot of the dais, her eyes were straying to the tables where the dead court pretended to eat. And it was only as she was doing that and silently berating herself for daring to be hungry when all of Norwood was maybe burnt and maybe not, that she noticed something she probably ought to have seen from the moment she walked in the room.

The twin rows of tables that lined the long hall were filled with dead people, just as they had been the night before. In fact, they were so unremarkably the same people, dressed in the same finery and laughing the same laughs, that her eye had gone right over them without considering at all how really odd that was…the morning after a death. Now that she was looking, she even recognized some of Batuuli’s and Solveig’s courtiers in their usual places. Beyond them, the normally empty chairs that had surrounded Tehya were now filled with strangers. Only the imperial thrones had been removed, so that the tables where his Children once sat were now no different from any other in this end of the hall.

His Children were not mourned. They weren’t even missed. It was as if they had never existed at all.

“Must we do this every morning?” Azrael asked in a hard voice. “Whose wounds will you close with hunger? Whose suffering will you end? Sit, I say.”

She did, but could not seem to stop staring out there and really, what was she looking for? Black veils and remembrance candles? What did the dead know of mourning? For that matter, what did she? In Norwood, grief was for young mothers and the silly girls who loved reckless boys. Funerals were fires where folk lined up with empty pails because the ash was so good at repelling slugs and snails. If the departed was someone important, there might be a word or two said the next time the village gathered, but more often, it was to argue over debts.

Lan’s mother had died owing Mother Muggs five ‘slip for a winter blanket, the twins ten days labor for the seed in their two rows, and the sheriff…the sheriff and his rent…and that was grief in Norwood. Was that indifference any better than Haven’s?

Lan glanced at Azrael and found him gazing back at her with eyes that knew too well what she had been thinking.

“Yes?” he said coolly.

“What? Nothing. Good morning.” There were a few covered serving dishes close to her. Lan rattled through them until she found some hot oats and dipped herself out a bowlful to prove how undisturbed she was. What did a dolly talk about at the table the morning after her johnny killed his kids? “How are you?”

“What should I have done?” Azrael lifted a hand, managing nearly without any motion at all to indicate the entire room, maybe even the whole of Haven, and banged it down again. The sound made ripples of silence at the nearer tables. He raked his eyes across them and poured himself a large cup of tea. “What should I have done?” he asked again, quietly now. “I gave them no command. Lacking such, they can do only what they know to do.”

“This is fine,” Lan said, somewhat chagrined. “This is…just fine. Cheery.”

“Indeed. They burned my Children in my garden as if they were common offenders of my law. And then they made lemon cakes for breakfast.” Azrael took a slice and tossed it on her plate. “Here. In remembrance.”

Lan pinched off a corner and uncertainly ate it. It was the most impossibly delicious thing she’d ever had in her life and never mind how hideously inappropriate it was in the circumstance. Sweet and tart and light and moist. It tasted like angels kissing. Like angels
fucking
.

Azrael was watching her, his chin propped on one fist, idly stirring his tea to cool it. “Do you favor it?”

“
Yes
!” Lan said, sounding and probably looking more appalled than pleased. “Bugger me, that’s
blinding
!”

“Mm. I favor it myself. Which is why I am fairly certain it would have graced this morning’s table regardless of last night’s events.” He looked out over the room, his gaze lingering on each of his Children’s former tables in turn, before returning to his cup. “They have no memorial.”