Land of the Beautiful Dead (48 page)

“I’m not the one who leaves people in the middle of the night.”

His jaw clenched, but his eyes dimmed. “No,” he said after a moment’s silence. “I suppose you’re not. So be it. Go where you will then, upon two conditions.” He took a drink and gazed again into its depths. “The first: Cross my borders even once, for any reason, and I will put you in chains the rest of your life. No excuses. No forgiveness.” He looked at her at last and his eyes were cold and distant as stars. “You. Will. Die. In chains.”

Lan shrugged. “And the second?”

He held his stare another moment or two before that awful light first fluttered, then failed. He looked back into his cup. “Tell me where you go. Tell me what you see.”

“You sure? That hasn’t worked out too well for us so far.”

He didn’t answer.

“Okay,” she said uncertainly. “Okay, so the first time Master Wickham took me out—for real, I mean—he took me to see this one house. Or a palace, I think. Whatever. The chimneys there were just…amazing. You don’t use words like that on a chimney, but these chimneys were. They were made out of bricks, like everything there, but they were all braided up or woven, like nothing I knew you could do with bricks. And each one was different from the others. They were stood up there in a row, four of them, like four little brick…” She groped for a word and found one, a dumb one. “…princesses.”

Azrael grunted and scratched at his cup.

“But here’s the thing,” said Lan, leaning toward him. “We had to look at them with binoculars. There was no place to see them from the ground, not really. Someone had built them like that, to be on the roof and be just…so pointlessly beautiful. And then we went inside,” she continued, spreading her arms wide, “and everything was like that. Not just the walls and the ceiling and the windows, but the…the doorknobs, the hinge plates! Everything was prettied up, even worse than it is here, some of it.”

“Worse.”

She fell quiet, picking at the edge of the table.

“Even worse, you say,” he mused. His thumbclaw dug at a groove in the side of the cup and slowly scratched up a thin curl of gold. “Humans are, I know, prone to adopt perverse attitudes when in captivity. They hate the squalor of their little lives without these walls, but hate even more the beauty that must be bestowed upon them when they believe they are entitled to it already. So they are all like you in the beginning, determined to take no pleasure and covet nothing while in the devil’s domain. Fair becomes foul, foul becomes fair. I understand. I sympathize. I have done much the same in my time.” He shrugged one shoulder, even as his claws flexed. “But I do wonder…if I were not here to be impressed by your defiance, would you continue to scorn Haven’s many luxuries or simply seize them?”

“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.” His 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
un
happiness she endures in Haven, so be it. It costs me nothing.”