Land of the Beautiful Dead (90 page)

“There was cake, but I ate it.” Heather dragged her sleeve across her nose and let her skirts drop. “Yeah, so. Bring me lots of presents.”

Azrael’s eyes flickered. He looked at Lan, as if for help, then down at the girl again. “All right.”

“Cheers, then.” She waved, scooped up her skirts and ran back into the palace, ducking the switch with a flexible ease Lan genuinely envied, although by the sound of it, she got nabbed just inside.

“That was unexpected,” Azrael remarked, staring after her. “I cannot think of any cause I have given her to show me affection.”

Lan could, but now was not the time to remind him of the life the child had known before Haven. She said instead, as noncommittally as she could, “Kids can surprise you.”

“That they can.” He glanced at her, seemingly about to speak, then moved abruptly away and spent altogether too much time placing the flowers in the ferry. Keeping his back turned and his tone as careful as her own had been, he said, “I find the longer I live, the more inclined I am to celebrate surprises. You, now. Ages after I believed the world had nothing new to show me, you have proved me wrong again and again. I would have you do so once more before I go.”

She blinked. “Do what? Surprise you?”

“Please.” He straightened and faced her again, broadly smiling beneath a too-bright stare. “As an omen, shall we say? They needn’t all be sinister. Send me off with one more first, mine…or yours.”

Sure, like she kept surprises in her pockets. Lan thought, rubbing distractedly at her stomach, which had begun to cramp and roll with its own sinister promise, and slowly said, “All right, I have one. Come here.”

He came at once, taking both her hands in his and gazing at her with what felt like far too much heat, even for a goodbye.

“Closer,” she told him. “It’s a secret. I have to whisper.”

He bent, turning his head so that she could touch her lips to the ragged shell of his ear. He waited, tense and silent.

Too conscious of the living and the dead looking on, even if none of them were near enough to hear, she lowered her voice to no more than a breath and said the words she had never said out loud, words she had herself only heard once before, because secrets were more precious than ‘slip in this world, and this was the most precious she had left: “My mother’s name was Maya.”

As soon as it left her mouth, she felt silly. What could it mean to him, another name? Blushing, confused, she would have stepped back, but his grip on her hands tightened.

He looked at her, his eyes dim in the sockets of his mask. It seemed to Lan that he was too quiet for too long, but that bad moment blew away like smoke when he smiled. He shook his head, not at her, and laughed softly, still not at her. “Thank you,” he said and closed her briefly in a full embrace. “Ah Lan…my Lan…thank you.”

Then he released her, raised his hand once to all those watching, and put himself without another word into his waiting ferry. The Revenant acting as his driver started the engine at once and before the door was even shut, the ferry was pulling away. One of Azrael’s dollies called out loudly and some of the others followed suit, like birds on a wire, all fluttering feathers and shrill voices, but when the ferry was out of sight, they all stopped.

The gardeners were the first to disperse, moving away to pull up all the plants they’d put there for farewelling to make room for the plants that would be welcoming him home. Their return to their established routine started a ripple of like movement among the rest of the dead and although it was not a long walk back from the road to the palace stairs, by the time Lan got there, the foyer was empty apart from the assembled guards who presumably waited upon Deimos for their dismissal, Azrael’s dollies, and the girl, dancing on the end of a switch while her instructor drilled her on the finer points of etiquette.

“So,” said Lan, once more rubbing her stomach, as if it were a surly cat that could be quieted with petting. Like a cat, it growled beneath her hand and twisted, all claws. Doing her best to suppress a wince, she turned to Deimos, who had followed her inside and stood with his dog at attention just behind her. “Do I have to give you orders or do you mostly know what you should be doing?”

“Giving orders now,” one of the dollies said, just a hair too loud to be a mutter.

Deimos’s steely eyes shifted in that direction before they came back to Lan’s. “I can manage the city’s concerns, although I stand ready to receive your will. Have you any orders?”

“No,” said Lan, ignoring the whispers behind her. “I just want to know if I can go back to bed without Haven turning tits-up.”

“High opinion of herself, hasn’t she?” someone not-muttered and someone else sniffed.

“Have you any orders?” Deimos asked again, holding Lan’s eyes with his as he put a hand on the hilt of his sword.

“I don’t know,” Lan sighed and turned around. “Do I?”

Azrael’s mouthy red-head gathered in her cohorts with a glance and, as they formed ranks around her, fixed Lan with a sneering sort of stare. “I’m sure I don’t know,” she sniffed. “I don’t know the first thing what it takes to run a city the likes of Haven and I wouldn’t pretend I do. But then, I’m just a dolly, not some jealous chavvy who thinks being under him last puts her above them what’s been under him before her.”

Lan had to take a moment to work that out. “Is that what you think I am?” she asked, once she was fairly sure she had it. “His dolly?”

The red-head blinked, a bit nonplussed by the placidity of Lan’s response, but recovered quickly. “And what do you think you are? His wife?”

“Oh no. No, I’m a magician.”

This was not the answer her opponent was expecting. She tried to hold onto her haughty face, but it slipped some and never quite pinned itself back. “You’re what?”

“A magician.” Lan caught Heather’s attention and asked, “Want to see me do a trick?” When the child curiously nodded, Lan turned to Deimos and said, “Captain, round up those eight bitches there and take them to France.”

Deimos turned at once and gestured. Sixteen pikemen stepped up in unison and laid hands on eight gasping and protesting dollies. The ninth gripped her flute and frowned.

“Coo,” said the child, impressed.

“Hold up a moment,” ordered Lan as the dollies were pushed into a line preparatory to being marched out into the courtyard. She went directly to the red-head and put her face right up in the other woman’s face. “You call me a jealous chavvy just once more and I’ll act like one, is that clear?”

Thin lipped, lightly trembling, the other woman nodded.

Lan stepped back and nodded at Deimos. “Turn them loose.”

Freed, she and her fellows made themselves scarce, leaving only the flute-player and the girl for Lan to deal with.

“Want to see me do another one?” Lan asked the girl.

Heather nodded excitedly.

“For my next trick—” Lan looked at her former etiquette teacher, standing behind Heather. “—I’m going to make that switch disappear. Forever.”

The dead woman opened and closed her mouth a few times, her eyes darting from the switch in her hand to Deimos and back to Lan, but in the end, she surrendered it without speaking at all.

“I’m going to be a dolly someday,” Heather said admiringly.

Lan mustered a smile for her and even patted her head, much as she’d hated having her head patted at that age. “No, you won’t. Go on, then. Go to lessons.”

“I hate lessons,” grumbled the child, but she went, goose-stomping down the hall toward the library with her tutor.

Now it was just Lan and the flute-player.

Deimos glanced from one to the other of them, rolled his eyes, and gestured again to the pikemen. Soon, they were alone.

“You didn’t pack me in with the rest of them,” the flute-player said.

“I wasn’t sure what she’d say to me next. It would have been awkward to have to take just you back and send all the rest off.”

“Because I bled for you?” The flute-player tossed her blonde curls. “We all bled for you.”

“Because he loves your music.” It came out sounding like a curse. Lan made an effort to swallow her anger, but it kept rising. “But I don’t. And I don’t want to see you from now until he comes home, you get me?”

She headed for the hall, silently congratulating herself on getting out of the room without punching anyone in the tit.

“You’ve got your nerve, don’t you?” said the flute-player, not loudly. “Turning up your nose at me after you ran out on him.”

Oh…almost.

Lan turned around. “I ran out on him,” she repeated. “Me.” And started walking back. “You’re the one who ran out on him, you cold bitch. You left him there with all their bodies. All it would have cost you was one night, one
hour
, of human fucking compassion and you ran out.”

Incredibly, the flute-player laughed, but before Lan’s vision could make the hot leap to red, she said, “Is that what you think happened?” And then her smile faded into something that sure looked genuinely surprised and angry. “Is that what he told you?”

“No,” Lan admitted, beginning to frown. “But that’s what I heard.”

“Who said so?” the other woman demanded and rolled her eyes. “Oh, of course. Batuuli’s deadhead dressing girl.” Shaking her head, the flute-player regarded Lan and finally nodded at one of the pretty sofas tucked up against the foyer wall. She went over without looking to see if Lan followed. And of course, Lan did. Side by side, arms and thighs touching, each of them staring straight ahead, they sat.

“They were all dead already when he sent for me,” she began. “Just me, not all of us. So I knew it would be bad, but I never thought…Anyway, they were already dead. And himself just sitting there, reading his cup as he does in his moods. He didn’t say anything to me.” She rolled her shoulder a little. “I didn’t really think he would. I’ve been here four years. Not the longest of any, but longer than most. I know his moods.” She fell quiet a moment, then shook her head again. “I thought I knew. So I played for him.”

She said the next bit with the flute, piping something low and slow, but not sad, somehow. It filled the air, first with sound and then with feelings—not her own, but real all the same. Lan severed herself from it as much as she could, but she couldn’t listen and still be entirely herself, not until the music stopped.

“It wasn’t enough,” the other woman said, lowering the flute. Even now, she continued fingering at the keys, as if the music were still going on inside her. “And maybe I should have let it alone, but I couldn’t do that either. It’s been years for us, you understand? Years. And it was never…never…good. I can’t want him,” she said with sudden, savage despair. “He’s horrible and I can’t! But he’s been a fair johnny all these years and never once took what I couldn’t give him, even if he’d already paid for it, so I went to him anyway. Like you said, one hour of human fucking compassion, right? So I went. He let me take my clothes off. He let me put my hands on him. He let me do whatever I did, but he didn’t do nothing back. Not a thing. So I had to ask, you know. I asked him what he wanted. And he said you.”

The flute-player stopped there, as if to give Lan a chance to explain, then shrugged and went on. “I suppose you could have walked out with your head up. Hell, you could have stayed and done him anyway, done him so he never wanted anyone else again. Well, bully for you, but I couldn’t. I got my clothes on…mostly on…and I ran. I’m no porcelain dolly, think of me whatever you want, but I’m still a woman and woman’s got her pride even when she’s got nothing else.”

The flute-player stood and headed for the stairs, but stopped before she got there and turned back. “You’d been gone
months
,” she said, carving out each word separately and stabbing it in. “You were gone and I was there, naked on his damned lap for the first time in years and he said he wanted you. Understand?”

Lan nodded, hugging her stomach and staring at her knees.

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“So you’ll understand when I say I’m happy to ask Tempo to keep us in rehearsal until himself comes home.” Her voice never raised, never strained, but all the same, she was not calm. “I’d be happy if you ferried me off to France. I’d be happy to do any damned thing at all as long as it meant I never had to see you again.”

“I’m sorry,” said Lan and tried to mean it. “I didn’t know.”

“You didn’t ask, did you? Why should you care what the truth was when you’ve got your deadheads to tell you stories?” The flute-player managed a few more steps and turned back again. “I called you a traitor once and I guess I’m sorry. I had no call to do that. We all turned our backs on someone to show him our bellies. But you are a jealous chavvy. If you weren’t, you’d maybe realize there ain’t a one of us who cares you’re with him, and some who might even be glad, but fucking him don’t make you queen over us. We lived here long before you ever showed and we shouldn’t have to worry about getting dragged out of our home and dumped in a ferry if we don’t lick up to you the right way. So if you don’t want to be called a jealous chavvy, maybe you could try not acting like one, just for the challenge of it, like, and stay out of our way instead of expecting all of us to stay out of yours.”

She set off again and this time made it all the way, leaving Lan alone in the foyer to wonder if Azrael had made it to the gates of Haven yet or if she’d managed to fuck the day over before he was even technically gone.