Land of the Beautiful Dead Page 4

  “But never mind. You are here now, however it happened.” Azrael raised a beckoning hand, but not to Lan.

  Marching boots behind her. Lan looked back and saw not a pikeman or a palace guard, but a Revenant in full uniform, the mark of the scythe in silver on his chest-piece and his rank indicated somehow in black braids and skull-shaped pips. He did not give her so much as a glance, but went directly to the dais and dropped to one knee beside her. Even at rest, his hand gripped the hilt of his curved sword, as if restless to draw and be about the slaughter for which he and his kind were so widely known and feared.

  He was so young, or had been when he’d died. Younger even than Lan, maybe. She looked at him and tried to see someone’s son, someone’s older brother, someone’s sweatheart gone away to war and never returned…but couldn’t. He was a Revenant now, whatever he’d been in life.

  “I require a vanguard of Revenants sent to Norwood,” Azrael said, breaking Lan from her sickened fascination. “Bring back peaches.”

  “At once, lord,” said the Revenant, bending his neck in a curt bow.

  Lan unthinkingly lunged to intercept the Revenant as he marched away, but her way was immediately blocked by crossed pikes. She swung on Azrael next and was forced to her knees before she managed a single step. “Stop it!” she shouted, straining against the pikemen who held her so easily. “You can’t do this! You can’t kill them!”

  “I assure you, I can,” said Azrael, not without humor. “Yet my Revenants do not kill without provocation. They go to offer my continued benevolence in exchange for a token showing of submission, no more than can be spared. For this, they shall be reviled and assaulted, and therefore entirely justified in the slaughter to come. Those of Norwood will earn their fates, as do all who stand against me.”

  Before reason could shut her mouth, her temper surged and spat out, “Murderer!”

  The dead don’t breathe, yet candles guttered all around the room as members of his court gasped, either playing at shock or genuinely gripped by long-buried living instincts. They watched her, tense and silent, all except the musicians, who merely played on. Azrael himself merely huffed out a muted sort of laugh behind his mask and favored her with a tolerant glance. “You have a strange way of seeking favors.”

  She blushed, breathing hard, hating herself. After everything she’d done to get here, how could she have made such a mess of it already? In minutes only, she’d betrayed Norwood, insulted Azrael, lost everything.

  But he was in no hurry to have her executed, it seemed. At his gesture, the hands at her neck and shoulders released their grip and slowly, Lan stood.

  He beckoned.

  She did not move.

  His head cocked. He beckoned again and when she continued to stand, he let his hand fall and drummed his fingers once on the tabletop. He gazed at her a long time without moving as the rest of his court whispered among themselves and the guards lining the walls shifted and waited for his orders. At last, he said, calmly, “Do not imagine for one moment if you are fearless, if you are defiant, you will win my interest. Every man, and yes, every woman, who comes before me believes they are the first to show me insolence, that I will be somehow charmed by their rebellious spirit. That I will admire their strength and, through that newfound admiration, learn what it is to be human and show mercy.”

  He leaned forward over the table, lacing his fingers together and resting his chin atop them. “Do you know the one thing I have never seen a human show me in our first meeting? Hm? Respect. Not the respect of a conquered people for their conquering god, that would be asking a great deal, I think. Merely the respect of one stranger to another, a guest in my house.”

  She would not flinch. She would not drop her eyes. She would not back down and most of all, she would not bow. She was Lan of Norwood and she was not afraid.

  She said, “It’s not your house.”

  The people of his court murmured. Azrael did nothing. Even if he had not been wearing the mask, she doubted his expression would be much changed.

  “If it were invalid to claim the lands taken through force, Men would have no homes at all. You,” he said, now seeming to lose interest in her and transfer it instead to his wine. “Where came you by your shoes?”

  “What?”

  “Your shoes.”

  Lan looked at them foolishly, then up at him again. “I bartered for them.”

  “From?”

  “Posey Goode.”

  “And where did she get them?”

  The teeth of the trap were suddenly visible. Lan could feel her hands wanting to tighten into fists and had to force them to stay open. “From a ferryman.”

  “And where,” Azrael asked calmly, “would he have found them?”

  If he thought she wouldn’t answer, just because he was right…

  “He got them off a dead man, I reckon,” she said and never dropped her eyes.

  Neither did he. “Take them off, then. They aren’t yours.”

  Lan did not move.

  “So, we are agreed. Possession is law.” He resettled in his throne and took a deep swallow of wine, then smiled at her, broadly and without malice. “You are in my house, child, and I have been a gracious host to an uninvited guest, but my grace is at an end.” Signaling to the guards behind her, he turned his attention back to the musicians. “Nevertheless, your invasion here tonight was as courageous an act as it was impertinent and I have a whim to reward it. You will have an escort to Haven’s borders and safe transport beyond to the destination of your choosing. Within reason.”

  The guards took impersonal hold of her arms. Lan kept her gaze fixed on Azrael. “I haven’t had my audience.”

  “Neither are you owed one,” Azrael said. “You have seen me and will live to tell the tale once you are safely returned to your land. That is honor enough.”

  “I’m not leaving until you’ve heard me.”

  The royal guards bristled, their cool fingers digging at her with supernatural strength. Behind her, the orchestra came to the end of their song and began another. Azrael swirled the wine in his cup and said, “Mercy is not lightly offered in this court and should not be lightly spurned.”

  Lan lifted her chin. “You have to hear me out.”

  “I…have to.” Azrael tapped idly at the rim of his goblet, seemingly unaware of the whispers of the watching courtiers, but plainly very much aware of Lan’s trembling. At length, he stirred and waved one dismissive hand. “Leave us.”

  His command had no clear intended recipient; all obeyed. The music halted mid-note as the band gathered their instruments. The waiters stopped serving, put down their platters and ewers, and returned to the kitchen. The dead court withdrew, all their colors and the rustling of their fine clothes making them seem like a flock of birds startled into flight. The door-keeper shut the doors and they were alone.

  In the quiet of this empty room, the smallest noise scraped the ear. Lan’s breath, the rustling of her clothes, the pounding of her heart—Azrael heard and judged them all with the same unblinking stare.

  At last, he leaned back in his throne; she could hear his body creaking as he moved, the sound of a leather glove drawn into a fist. His hand toyed briefly with his cup and then lifted. Beckoned.

  Unsure, she took a step. Just one.

  “To me,” he said, with what might have been a small sigh. “I want a better look at you. And you want a better look, I think, at me.”

  Did she? Her feet rooted, but her heart raced even faster. Some people said he had no face, that beneath the masks, he was only a broken shell filled with fire. Others said he had the head of a snake or a jackal or a swarm of spiders. Or that he wore human faces nailed onto his own skull—a mask beneath the mask—and that beneath that, there was only darkness. And these were just the whispers in Norwood and at hostels along the road. Who knew how many other thousands of rumors there were across the world? Did she really want to know the truth? Could she know and still say what she’d come here to s
ay?

  Lan was not entirely aware just when she started walking. She only knew that somehow she was drifting toward him, pulled in as if by his will alone.

  —no true eyes, only a pale glow set in deep sockets, like twin stars in an empty sky—

  As she grew nearer, she could see his scars more distinctly and they filled her with a hopeless dread.

  —the blackened burn across his left side with stripes of white rib showing through—

  Had he ever been a man once?

  —the deep slash over his hard stomach that he’d sutured with silver rings, from each of which dangled a polished finger bone or a tooth—

  If he had been a man, a live man, he was dead now.

  —the many lines carved across his throat, the leavings of countless blades, some of them still open to let dry tendon and bloodless meat peek out from behind tatters of skin—

  And if he was dead, why should he care if he killed the world?

  She reached the edge of the dais and stopped, staring up at him—Azrael the God, the Conqueror, Azrael Who Is Death—and he leaned forward over his table to look down at her—Lan, who had no more home and who was no one’s daughter. There were only three shallow steps to climb the dais, three more short strides to take her to his table. She could go right to him. She could get close enough to hear his breath, if he breathed. She could touch his hand if she dared and see if it was cold and dead or hot with the hellish fire that burned out of the holes in his mask.

  Lan stood where she was, shivering.

  He spoke first, in a slow wondering way that did not, for change, seem feigned: “Why, you’re a child.”

  “I’m old enough,” Lan insisted at once, before she even stopped to think what she might be insisting upon.

  “Hm.” Azrael settled back in his throne, considering her. At length, he raised one hand and swept it outward in an open gesture toward the many tables around her, the gluttonous wealth of his unnecessary feast. “Be seated, child. I see no reason you should not be fed before I decide your fate.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “It is not wise to lie in my presence, even in such trivial matters. Those without my borders hunger always. I have seen to it. And even if you had a field of crop and pens groaning with stock, still I would hazard your belly to be too full of nerves to allow for much of a meal before setting out on this endeavor. Share mine.”

  “I ate before I came here.”

  “Out, then,” he said curtly, shoving back his heavy throne to stand. “I do not waste my time with liars. Guards!”

  The doors opened at once. In desperation, Lan said, “I did eat! It was just…a while ago.”

  Azrael paused, no more than one long stride from the table. She could feel his eyes on her, cutting deep wherever they rested. “A while.”

  “Last night,” she admitted. “At a waystation.”

  “Fed from the hand of your ferryman, I suppose.” After a long moment, Azrael returned to his chair. Lan saw the shadows cast by his laconic wave and heard the guards once more retreat and quietly close the doors. “One of mine?”

  Lan hesitated, knowing she was too near to being thrown out and that this chance would never come again, but unwilling to betray the man who had brought her into the city.

  Her hesitation was answer enough for Azrael. “Did you think I did not know? And who else would have such certainty of passage through my walls that they could sell the privilege? I bear them no ill will,” he said without concern, almost without interest. “They do me no harm. What did your ferryman feed you?”

  “Stew.”

  “Ah yes. Roots boiled in sweat.”

  “It wasn’t that bad.” It hadn’t been much better, though. “There was meat.”

  “Hm.” There was so much knowing amusement in that small, wordless sound that he hardly needed to say, “Rat or crow?”

  “I don’t know,” Lan said, blushing. “And I don’t care. I’ve eaten worse.”

  “So have I,” he replied mildly. “Which is why I prefer to eat better. Come. It may be grotesque to your young eyes, but I assure you, there is nothing more succulent than the cheek of a young boar. You are hungry,” he remarked, watching her stare at the pig’s head that was the centerpiece of the imperial table. The boar’s eyelids had slipped down over the empty sockets, giving it an appearance as if it were only sleeping, but its swinish mouth leered in such a way as to suggest that its dreams were not particularly pleasant. “Are you not?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Yes. And there is nothing so terrible to feel as hunger, even for just one day, two or three wanting meals. It gnaws at you.” He scratched one claw through the thick sauce that pooled over his plate and slipped it into the mouth-slit of his mask to taste. “That is why I reserve it for those who rebel against me. But you are not guilty of that crime. Yet. Therefore, sit. Anywhere you please.”

  She told herself she didn’t have a choice, that refusing him again would only get her thrown out. Maybe it was even true, but in the end, it was not the reason Lan fumbled her way to a chair and sat, realizing only after she’d done so that she’d taken Lady Batuuli’s place for her own. Platters of food surrounded her, swallowed her in an orgy of spices: towers of roasted apples studded with cloves and cinnamon spears, fish crusted with pepper, vegetables baked in herbed butter. Choice cuts of boar meat floated in a pool of that dark, glossy sauce, so smooth that she could see the candles reflected there, not only their glowing flames, but their golden holders. She could see her own face staring down, watching, waiting to see if she would eat the Devil’s food just because he sat her at his table.

  “So. You enter my home without invitation. You bring no tribute. Now you refuse my hospitality.” Azrael leaned back in his throne, lacing his hands together over his scarred stomach. The silver rings holding his wound mostly closed jingled softly. “Which of these did you imagine would earn you the audience you say you came seeking?”

  “I came to talk to you. To ask—”

  “Demand.”

  Lan stammered to a stop, but he said no more, only continued to watch her. Hesitantly, she began again. “I came to ask—”

  “Demand. One who asks does not invade the home of him before whom she supplicates herself. One who asks receives his will with respect and goes meekly upon dismissal. No,” he concluded, sweeping his arm through the air as though her reasons for being here were no more than insects he could brush away. “You have not come here to ask, so make your demands and go.”

  Frustration and nerves once more broke her. Before she could stop, she’d snapped, “I won’t talk to you until you listen.”

  “Go, then.”

  “I’m not leaving until you let me talk.”

  “Aha, a conundrum. How to solve it…?” He pretended to consider while she pretended the smell of pork and roasted apples was not clawing up her guts. Suddenly, he snapped his fingers, making her jump. “At the first meeting I had with Men upon my ascension, their minions informed me that a show of faith was necessary to achieve any audience with their leaders. So. Remove your weapon,” he ordered. “Set it here, before me.”

  “I’m not armed.”

  “I warn you again that I do not tolerate lies in my presence,” he said impatiently, rising from his throne. “Speak another and your time here is ended. Remove your weapon. Set it down.”

  Blushing, Lan reached back beneath her shirt to the little knife she kept strapped there. “It’s for defense,” she insisted as he descended the dais. “I’ve had to travel a long way.” He was still coming; she shoved her chair back and jumped up, even though there was nowhere to go, no way she could outrun him. “I wasn’t going to use it on you!”

  “No? But by all means, child.” He opened his arms. “You might save the world with one good blow.”

  She looked in disbelief at the knife, at a blade no longer and no wider than her forefinger, and at him, this god with ten thousand bloodless scars. “No,” she said. It
hardly needed saying, but she said it anyway.

  “I insist.”

  “No!”

  “To ease your mind.” He closed the last distance between them to tower over her. Up close, she could see the twist of his smile through his mask’s mouth-slit. “To prove a point.”

  “The only point you want to prove is that none of us are trustworthy!” She threw the knife down on the table. It clattered unimportantly, like a spoon, like a pencil. “That’s not why I’m here! You can’t make it be that way! You can’t use me to prove it!”

  “Do not presume to know my mind.” He picked up the knife, tested the ridiculous toy of its edge against his thumb, then touched the point to his breast. “How would you have it, little hero? Here?” The knife moved to his throat, actually inside that terrible open scar to press somewhere unseen amid the muscle and bone. “Or here? Tell me, shall I stab or slash?”

  Lan pressed her lips together and said nothing.

  “Both have been tried, of course.” Azrael removed the knife from his throat and studied it with amused contempt. “By greater blades than this. I have been cleaved by swords with names as fine and lineages as noble as the men who wielded them. In every bygone age, I have met with heroes who have learned to their loss—” He touched the tip of the blade to his arm and drew it slowly downward. His flesh parted; black blood welled like beads of tar, too thick to fall. “—I do not die.”

  “I didn’t come here to kill you.”

  “Witness all the same.” He moved the knife back to his chest, glanced at her, then pushed it in as deep as it would go. “I’ve found it saves time.” He released the hilt, gestured to it. “Twist, if you desire.”

  She shook her head, her hands in fists.

  “So be it.” He pulled the knife out and tossed it into her plate. The blade was smeared black, but he did not bleed. “You cannot wound me. You might open every vein, but you will never bring my life gushing out. My flesh may tear, but it does not burn and does not decay. My bones do not break. The heart you seek to pierce—”

  “I do not.”

  “—beats in time with this world’s own ageless pulse. It feels no love, no remorse and no mercy, and it will never stop.”