Land of the Beautiful Dead (31 page)

“But it was their home!”

“Home? Home is a word, child. Your mother could have told you of a time when humans changed their home simply because they did not like the view from the windows. No, this is not their
home
. This is a forsaken grey hell of stony soil set down in the very shadow of the greatest evil humankind has ever known, and the only reason to root themselves to it is to harry me. So is it not a little funny that they choose to farm this vile land and starve when they could easily travel to more arable lands?”

“Easily. You keep saying that. Through hordes of Eaters all the way to the coast and across the sea to a strange land where there are more hordes of Eaters, looking for another village willing to take hundreds of foreigners in. Yeah. Easy.” Lan shook her head, more frustrated than angry. “The more you talk, the more I think you really have no fucking clue what is going on out there.”

His thumbclaw tapped at the side of his cup. “I could move them.”

“How?” She pointed at Deimos, who put a hand back on his sword and stared back at her. “Send your Revenants to round them up and take them away? Yeah, that’s sure to end well.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Get rid of the damn Eaters!”

“No. What else?”

“You could…I don’t know! We’ll figure something out! You act like it’s one or the other—either you kill us or we kill you—but I know there’s another way!”

“In all my years, I have not found one.”

“You stopped looking a long time ago. You don’t even believe another choice exists.”

“I don’t believe dragons exist either, shall you find me one of those?” he shot back.

“One thing at a time.”

He leaned back and stared at her for some time, then shook his head and smiled, albeit in a thin, humorless way. “There was a time I thought only if you had half as much passion in my bed as in speech would it be worth having to endure your never-ending argument. Now I find myself thinking that if you had half as much passion in speech as in my bed, you could convince me.”

“Does…does that mean—?”

“No. Sit down,” he added as she rose. “I’m certain we can come to some agreement. As I have said, I reward those who please me. And you…” He reached out to brush the backs of his fingers along her cheek. “You pleased me. I know you would rather appeal yet again on the matter of my hungering dead, but you will never have that. I am, however, willing to negotiate terms on behalf of one more insignificant and ungrateful cluster of humans. You could save them. If not from my dead, at least from their own stubbornness and empty storehouses. What say you?”

Lan scowled and reached across his plate for another slice of lemon cake. “How much food are we talking about?”

“As with Norwood, I will send whatever remains of that evening’s meal.”

“Every month?”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“For however long you remain with me in Haven.”

Lan nodded, tapping her cake against her plate. “Sounds suspiciously fair. What exactly is it you want in return? It can’t just be fucking, because I’m already your dolly and you get that anyway.”

“Much depends upon your enthusiasm, but my desires, as I have already said, are not so particular. Share my table. Share my bed. Be for my pleasure and pretend some pleasure in return and I will pour the wealth of Haven into my enemy’s larder.”

Lan searched his eyes, glowing coolly through the sockets of his faceless mask, then shook her head. “There has to be a catch.”

“Some might argue I am the catch.”

“Well, you’re not.”

“Thank you, that’s very flattering.”

“You keep talking like it’s so awful just to be with you, but you’re—”

His brow climbed invitingly.

“You’re not that bad,” Lan muttered, forcing another bite of cake into her stupid mouth. Was she blushing? She thought she was. Damn him anyway.

“When you tended your trees in Norwood, which took the greatest toll? The first? Or the last?”

“It’s not the same thing.”

“Oh, but it is. You’ve tended me twice and tended me well, but if you truly intend to purchase every human settlement in this land, you will have to preserve that energy and dedication row after row. You may be able to comfort yourself for a time with thoughts of the good you are doing, but you will never see their grateful faces.” His smile went crooked. “You will see mine.”

“I’ve seen it.”

“Mm.” He picked up his teacup and scratched at the rim. “There is one more thing.”

“I knew it. What?”

“You will not mention my hungering dead.”

“But—”

“Not one word,” he warned her, leaning forward to point a claw in her face. “If you speak of them—however indirectly, even once, at any time, for whatever reason—our negotiations to feed the living of this land are concluded.” He gave that a moment’s dramatic emphasis, then took the uneaten portion of cake from her and ate it himself. “You may of course continue to press me in vain for the ending of the Eaters after that,” he said with a careless wave, “but you will never have another village fed by my hand. Is that clear?”

“Why? What difference does it make to you if I ask for one thing or the other?”

“I am under no obligation to explain my reasons. Those are my terms. Shall you agree or not?”

She spit on her hand and held it out unhesitatingly.

Quite a few conversations throughout the room broke apart at that and all heads turned when Azrael bemusedly copied her. They clasped hands briefly. His spit in her palm burned like a live coal at first, but quickly cooled to something merely hot. It called up the intensely unwanted memory of his tongue teasing up between her thighs. Suddenly flustered, Lan pulled away first, not quite able to suppress a shiver.

Azrael wiped his hand on a napkin. “Yes, it is a cold morning, isn’t it?”

She nodded, avoiding his eyes. Her palm still tingled.

“No matter. The nights are warm enough. Or will be, with you to share them with me.”

“You don’t think I can do this, do you?”

“No, but I mean to enjoy you anyway.” He ran an eye over her in a manner calculated to intimidate. “I won’t be hurrying our negotiations. And before you boast to me of your rustic mettle and incorruptible purpose, you might bear in mind, my patience is measured in centuries. You cannot win.”

Lan lifted her chin. “I don’t know what kind of girl you’re used to, but it’s clear you’ve never had one from Norwood. We don’t give up and we don’t back down.”

“But you taste just as sweet as the peaches you grow,” he replied. His head cocked. He smiled. “You blush like one, too.”

Lan drank her coffee, trying to will away the burning in her cheeks. “I’m not blushing.”

“How many times must I tell you? I do not keep company with liars. No matter how prettily they blush.” He ran a finger along the curve of her cheek, then rose. The dead court stopped talking to stand up and bow at him, but he ignored them all to bend low, putting his mouth right against her ear. “Or how sweet they taste.”

She shivered again, tight-lipped, and felt him smile.

“I’ll pretend that’s anticipation,” he murmured, straightening up. “Until tonight, then.”

CHAPTER TEN

A
lthough she had been in Haven nearly half a month by then, that was when it really began for her. With a goal to work toward, even if it was more of a ‘delay’ than a ‘goal’, she felt herself again. It was a good feeling, one that gave her something solid to hold onto when she left the dining hall and fell again into Serafina’s clutches. She was Lan of Norwood again and when the state of her skirt was immediately called to the attention of quite possibly everyone in the palace, Lan of Norwood could shrug it off. She let her handmaiden’s mutters lead her through the palace while she thought ahead to bed that night. Not about Azrael, not about his hands or his mouth or that hoarse growling sound he made just before he came, but just the act…although it was strangely difficult to separate the two.

How many villages could there possibly be at stake here anyway? She couldn’t remember how many she’d passed through on her way from Norwood, but that alone said something: it was more than could be easily counted and that on just one road. Did waystations count? And if they did, did she really want to pay for them? There again, there were only so many days in a month, so Azrael only had so many nights to barter. Say she bought them all…

Moments from the previous night spilled through her mind, magnified by a month’s worth of repetition. She felt something. A hot, shivery feeling she refused to name. She tried to chase it off by reminding herself how cold and clammy and dead his hand was, but even in the privacy of her mind, it was a trap—she couldn’t visualize his hand without seeing it against her skin.

Enthusiasm, he’d said. He wanted her enthusiasm. Somehow she didn’t think that was going to be a problem.

Serafina brought her to an unfamiliar room, small and plain and poorly lit, whose only furnishings were a handful of gowns on fitting molds, a few shelves stacked with shoes and some boxes heaped with belts and gloves and stockings and every other kind of dolly costume. Lan extracted herself from the first dress without complaint and was cinched into another one, just as pretty and ill-fitting, but that at least allowed her to walk. Then her hair had to be rearranged to better suit the new dress and her face scrubbed off and repainted, with the dead woman muttering under her breath all the while about how impossible Lan was to work with. “And now you’re late!” she concluded, throwing up her hands before shoving Lan toward the door.

“For dinner?” Lan asked sarcastically.

“You have an appointment with Master Tempo and after that, your usual lessons.”

“Oh bugger, still? I thought I was done with that nonsense.”

“Our lord insists his warmblood women use their time in Haven to better themselves,” Serafina told her, adding, “A more perfect waste of time and effort, I cannot imagine.”

Although Lan had been thinking just that, if not in those exact words, hearing it from her unasked-for handmaiden put her hackles right up. “Well, fuck you very much!” she said irritably. “Where is this attitude of yours even coming from? What have I ever done to you?”

Serafina raised her hands in a gesture of frustration. “You are not my mistress.”

“You know what? If that’s the way you want it, fine. I don’t want a handmaiden anyway. Sod off.”

Serafina stayed, tight-lipped, right at her heels.

“I said, sod off.”

“And I do not follow your orders. You are not my mistress!” Serafina said again, her voice rising shrill and strained. “He made me for
her
. Only her.” She pressed her lips together, fighting with it, then burst out, “I know she’s dead, I know it, but I also know that if only I were not with you, I would be with her! You are keeping me from her! And don’t tell me it’s a lie because I already know, but knowing doesn’t make it right! So don’t tell me I can’t blame you.
He made me for her and he gave me to you
!”

They just looked at each other for a while and then, without a word, both started walking again.

“I’m sorry,” Serafina said stiffly. She may have even meant it, in some deadish way. “But I don’t have to like you, you know. Our lord provides well for his companions. If you are obedient to his rule, you are certain to have a comfortable life here in Haven, even after you’ve fallen out of his favor.”

This was said so matter-of-factly that Lan could not immediately take offense, but she rallied and managed. “Thanks a lot!”

Once again, her handmaiden seemed surprised. “Well, how long do you think you’ll have it, warmblood? You are very plain.”

“And you’re a bitch.”

“That wasn’t an insult,” Serafina said. “That is a fact. You are also coarse and unmannered, and
that
is a choice, which ought to be a far more pressing matter of concern to you.”

Lan defiantly bit at the edge of her thumbnail and spat it onto the floor. “Anything else?”

“Yes. You are opinionated and stubborn and resistant to every effort to educate or refine you. You have none of the womanly graces, no artistic talent I’ve been made aware of, and certainly no virtue, as you yourself have remarked. Above all, you are mortal. Your looks, such as they are, won’t last and then what will you rely on to hold our lord’s interest? Your charm?”

“I can be plenty charming when I try.”

“I must always just be missing it then.”

The rest of the walk was a silent one.

Lan did not recognize the room they eventually ended at, but she recognized the people waiting for her on the other side of the door: Azrael’s musicians, surrounded by their instruments, although none of them appeared to be playing, not even to pass the time while they waited for her. Neither were they in any great hurry to begin the meeting when she finally did stumble in. They looked at her; only the living flute player had any readable expression and hers was not a happy one.

“I am Master Tempo.” One of the dead musicians came forward a single step, but kept his hands clasped behind his stiff back to make it clear there would be no touching. “I shall be overseeing your musical education.”

“What’s that mean?” Lan asked warily.

The dead people exchanged a group glance.

“It means,” Tempo said, speaking very slowly, as if to a stupid child, “our lord desires you learn to play music.”

If he had told her Azrael wished her to learn to fly, she could not have been more dumbfounded. She stared at him for some time before sputtering, “That’s…What…I don’t know the first flipping thing about music!”

“Hence the need for an education. Beginning tomorrow, you will attend lessons every morning until noon.”

“Balls if I will! Every day?”

Serafina whapped her on the back of her head, hissing, “Ladies do
not
say ‘balls’! Stop being difficult! I told you, our lord requires his companions to better themselves.”

“Lady, I hate to tell you this, but I’m all the better I’m ever going to be. Why should I have to plunk away at one of these stupid things when I’m never going to be any good at it?” she demanded, slapping the top of the nearest piano (and trying unsuccessfully to shake away the resulting sting). “Can’t he just chain me up in the garden again if he thinks I’m going to run riot in the street when he’s not around?”

The flute player sighed and went to the window, hugging herself too tightly as she looked out into the winter rain. “It isn’t meant as a punishment. Music is a gift and a wonder.”

“For you, maybe. For the rest of us, it’s a waste of bloody time! I—” With effort, Lan bit the rest of that off, reminding herself that this lady was living and therefore probably one of Azrael’s dollies and as such just might have his ear at least some of the time. “I’m not interested,” she said instead and if she said it through clenched jaws with a scowl on her face, that was just too bad. “So, thanks…I guess. But no thanks.”

“None refuse our lord’s command,” Tempo told her. “He has generously allowed you your choice of instrument. Now. What will you play?”

“Bagpipes!”

Slap, went Serafina’s hand.

“We don’t possess…bagpipes,” the dead man said coolly. “Nor have we anyone to instruct you in their use. I’m afraid you will have to choose again.”

“You should be afraid,” Lan told him. “Because if I don’t get to play what I want, I’ll play whatever the hell it is
you
play. Oh yeah,” she said as his eyes narrowed. “I’m going to get my grubby hands all over your whatsis and I’m going to play it just
so
badly it’ll make your ears bleed. Eventually, you’re going to lose your temper. You may not think so, knowing what’s at stake, but this nobby bitch is my handmaiden and she still slaps me around even when she knows damned well one word out of me will put a pike up her muggins and plant her in the yard.”

Serafina sniffed haughtily, but took a small step aside so she wasn’t quite in line with the aim of Lan’s pointing finger.

“You, now? I know you were raised up just to play that whatsis and for no other reason and it’s going to make you sick to see me make a muck of it, isn’t it?” Lan waited, then said again, with steel, “Isn’t it?”

He did not reply, but the answer was there in the flat shine of his dead eyes.

“The truth is, you don’t want me here anymore than I want to be here, so what do you want to do? Show me which one of these bloody fool things is yours so I can start bashing away on it? Or send me off to my next appointment and see the back of me forever? Those are your options. Pick one.”

He considered and said, “Shall I be honest with you?” in the sort of voice that suggested he would, whether she agreed or not.

“Please.”

“If I had a choice in this matter, I would happily allow you to refuse our lord’s request. Our small orchestra already has a full complement of winds, strings…and warmblood whores.”

Lan pursed her lips and looked sidelong at the flute player. The flute player did not react, just kept watching the rain.

“However, it is our lord’s request and so I have no choice. I must ask you to select an instrument now or I shall assign one to you. I play the piano,” he went on. “But if I may make a recommendation, perhaps the clarinet would be more suited to you. We could use a woodwind and your…kind…seems to have more talent with your mouth than your hands.”

Lan gazed thoughtfully at the dead man. “Which one’s a claret?”

“Clarinet,” he corrected and fetched a long, black something from one of the racks on the wall. It looked a bit like a flute and a bit like a horn, and certainly seemed sturdy enough for Lan’s purposes.

Tempo handed it over, launching as he did so into the beginnings of what promised to be a lengthy speech that would help her to appreciate the significance of the stupid thing, but Lan didn’t bother to pay attention. She hefted it lightly on her palms, getting a feel for its weight and balance, and then she swung it around and whalloped Master Tempo right in his pretty face just as hard as she could. He staggered back into a rack of violins and they all went down together in a not unharmonious crash.

All the deadheads took a sharp breath. One of them rushed over, but it was an instrument he reached for and not the groping hand of his fallen colleague. His eyes when he looked up were almost living-bright with hate as he clutched the broken neck of the violin to his chest.

“You got something to say about my talents, too?” Lan asked him, hefting her new weapon.

“You’re impossible,” Serafina sighed, but went to open the door. “Hurry up, then. You’re late for lessons.”

“How could I possibly be late already?” Lan asked, stepping over one of Tempo’s sprawled legs on her way out. “I just barely got
here
.”

“But you’re not staying, are you?” Serafina countered. “Which means this interview was nothing but an interruption to your usual lessons, which means you’re late. Get rid of that.”

‘That’ was the clarinet, forgotten in Lan’s hand. Still in one piece, but she doubted it would ever sound the same. She held it a moment more, indulging a friendly little fantasy in which she planted it like a flag in Tempo’s upturned arse, but in the end, she settled for holding it out.

The flute player came to take it. Their eyes met and, strangely, Lan felt a twinge of shame. She’d been trying to scrape up a good line to go out on (something wonderfully bitchy and smart, maybe with a music pun in there somewhere, although she already knew she’d settle for a ‘Fuck you.’ She wasn’t good with words), but something in the other woman’s eyes made her half-formed efforts shrivel up and sink away.

Fortunately, she had Serafina sighing over by the open door, so she had an excuse to turn away first. She told herself she wasn’t slinking away, she just had lessons. She told herself she hadn’t meant to hit the dead bastard so hard and even if she did, it was only because he’d called her a whore. She told herself she wasn’t sorry and she wouldn’t look back, but she did and saw the flute player watching from the hallway with the clarinet cradled in both hands, silent.

* * *

Master Wickham was not alone when Serafina thrust her through the doors of the library. The dead woman who was her etiquette instructor was also waiting, pacing back and forth in front of the table where Lan usually did her lessons, but this wasn’t one of her etiquette days.