Land of the Beautiful Dead (49 page)

“How many have you got?”

He looked at her in some surprise. “Swans?”

“Dollygirls, I meant.”

“Presently?’

Lan braced herself. “Yeah.”

“Twelve, apart from you.”

She supposed she should feel relieved it wasn’t more. She didn’t. But he was watching and even if she didn’t know what she was feeling, she was somehow sure he did. To hide it, whatever ‘it’ was, she tossed off a shrug and said, “Unlucky number, thirteen.”

“Mm. There’s also Chloe, although we’ve not entered a true contract yet.”

Yet. Dicky word, that. Yet.

“Why not?”

His smile twisted inward and became bitter. “Were I you, I would say you’d ruined me.”

“Me?”

“You. The mark by which I have come to measure the living.” He glanced at her. His eyes lingered, dimming, before they turned away. “And find them wanting.”

“Is that a compliment?” she asked uncertainly.

“No.”

“Oh. Well…how many have you had?” Lan asked. “In all, I mean.”

He didn’t ask why she wanted to know or even if she was sure she did, he only looked up at the ceiling as he counted them up. “Four hundred…fifty-three.”

“That many,” she said, not meaning to say anything. She’d known it would be a lot, but even her most masochistic estimates had not run so high. She tried to picture them—a crowd equivalent to six Norwoods—all young and beautiful with ribbons in their hair and jewels on their corsets. “How many did you keep?”

“Keep?” The side of his mouth twitched up. “You imply…what, exactly? I cast them out when they bore me?”

“When you’re done with them, yeah.” It wasn’t a deliberate jab, but she saw it hit all the same and it made her sort of a little sorry. “Who would ever leave all this, if they had a choice?” she asked, waving at the high windows and glittering lights of the dining hall in an attempt to soften the edge of her words.

“They don’t.” He pushed his throne back and drew his hand downward, displaying the ravaged landscape of his chest. “They leave this.”

She sat a moment, then reached out and touched him.

The sound of half a dozen servants all taking an unneeded breath was not loud at all, but it made the candles on the table gutter. Azrael turned an amused eye their way, then leaned back to watch Lan’s hand following the path he’d indicated. She took her time with it, tracing old scars and young ones, reading ages of pain by Braille until her fingertips brushed the silver rings that closed the gruesome gash over his side. The skin growing up around the rings was thin and smooth, warmer than the rest of him. It should have felt like real skin—human skin—but it didn’t. Even so…

“You’re not that bad,” she said.

He gave her a narrow stare and a crooked smile.

“I didn’t mean it like ‘You’re not
that
bad.’ I meant ‘
You’re
not that bad.’” But she took her hand back, so awful was the feel of that newgrown skin among his scars. “Anyway, I know some of them are still here, so…where are they all?”

“Are you afraid you might open some forbidden door and find them hanging from hooks?”

“Not until now.”

He studied her for some time, still smiling, but never quite lost that searching stare. At length, he said, “Two of them cook. One plays the flute in my orchestra. Three work in my greenhouses and another tends the palace gardens. Additionally, there are five who, like Felicity, make themselves available upon my request, but otherwise have nothing more to do with me.”

“Do you miss them?”

“I remember them.”

“But do you miss them?” she pressed. “When you see the lady who plays the flute, do you ever think—”

He laughed convincingly. “No.”

“Seems like you watch her pretty close when she comes to play.”

“She’s talented.”

“I’ll bet. Is that why you don’t let her go?” Lan asked and winked. “Because she’s so talented?”

“She doesn’t wish to go.”

“Is that what she tells you? Or what you tell her?”

“Shall I summon her?” he offered, plucking at her corset ties, but not cutting them. “She could answer these questions better than I.”

“Yeah, right, answer questions. And hey, as long as she’s here—”

He laughed, both with humor and with bitterness. “No.”

“Balls. I’ve seen the way you look at her.”

“No, Lan. You’ve seen the way I listen. My musicians, practiced as they are, yet can do no more than play notes on a page. She, alone of all my orchestra, makes music.”

It was not a rebuke. Nevertheless, Lan ducked her head as she thought of her one and only music lesson. “I reckon I could give it another go,” she said sourly, “if that’s what you want.”

“You needn’t.” He started to drink, then shrugged. “You shouldn’t. True music can only come from those who feel it. You may eventually learn to play it, but not, I think, to love it. Ah, but no matter. You have your own talents.”

Encouraged, Lan got up (the floor wobbled a bit, but stabilized quickly) and went to him. It seemed a very long way to go for one step and only once there did she discover there wasn’t enough room between him and the table for her to slither in.

He watched her tug ineffectively at the arm of his throne for several seconds before he finally said, “What are you doing?”

“Sitting on your lap.”

“Hm.” He pushed his throne back at an angle, allowing her to settle without giving her any help, and to be honest, she could have used it. “Now what are you doing?” he inquired, steadying her with one hand on her back. Just the one. Just her back.

She put her mouth close to his ear and in her sultriest voice, the one that didn’t at all sound like a pig with a sore throat no matter what stupid Eithon Fairchild said, whispered, “You, johnny. I’m doing you.”

He caught her wrist as she groped at his belt. “You’re drunk, Lan.”

“No, I’m not. Just nicely lubricated.” Again, she reached.

Again, he stopped her. “Not tonight.”

“Oh, come on!” she groaned, slapping in frustration at his shoulder. “It’s been forever!”

“Then it can wait another day, surely.”

“I don’t want to wait! I want you!” For the third time, she went for his belt and for the third time, was firmly rebuffed. “Don’t be so bloody noble!”

He gave her one of those half-laughing grunts and had himself another drink of wine, muttering, “There’s more flattery I’ve not heard before,” into his cup.

Lan plucked grumpily at his golden collar. “Bet if your bloody flute-player were here, you’d do her.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” he said, unruffled.

“Balls.”

“I’ll not claim I’ve never enjoyed her, but my touch—”

“Don’t even say it.”

He paused, then finished, “—lingers on in her music. I find the scars I leave displeasing to hear.”

“Are you sure you don’t miss her?”

“Are you jealous?” His hand moved in stroking motions along the small of her back, strumming at her corset stays. “Tell me you are.”

“I am, a little,” she said ruefully. “Do you think she’s pretty?”

“I think you are beautiful.”

“Did you ever tell her that?”

He shrugged, his hand still moving slowly up and down, up and down. “Yes.”

“Did you tell them all?”

“In their own way, they all are.”

“Oh yeah? What’s my way?” she challenged. “Tell me how I’m beautiful, Azrael. Tell me what you’ve never told any of them. And tell me the truth. I can hear lies too, you know.”

“I believe you.” He leaned back as far as he could go, studying her through his mask, and smiled. “How are you beautiful? You are…two unflinching eyes and the chin where you carry all your stubbornness. You are the blush you never admit to and that rebel lock of hair you are forever pushing back. You are the throat that arches and the lower lip you bite to keep from moaning…just before you moan anyway. You are my Lan and you are radiant.”

“More than your flute-girl?”

“More than,” he agreed.

“More than Cassius?”

She didn’t mean to say it, except she sort of did, and she had plenty of time to regret it in the minute that he sat motionless and silent, gazing at her without readable expression. She thought she couldn’t feel any worse about it and then he looked away, so she guessed she was wrong. “I’m not mean,” she mumbled, hooking her littlest finger through one of the silver rings in his side and making the others jingle. “I’m just very, very drunk.”

“What would you have me do with her, Lan?”

The question pierced her; the wound was cold. “You can do what you want.”

“And I will,” he agreed. “But what would that be, if you had your way of it? If the fate of hungry Cassius were yours to decide, what would you?”

She didn’t know what to tell him and didn’t want to think about it too much. “I’d feed her,” she said at last. She did not say, ‘And then move her the hell on,’ but she thought he probably heard it anyway, because he grunted in that almost-laughing way. Annoyed, Lan leaned out for the bottle of wine—sensing disapproval, she offered it, but he shook his head—and had a pull straight from the neck. “How many dollies do you need, anyway?”

“Always one more.”

“Goat.”

“I? I did not summon her to my court.”

“You let her in.”

“Has she not as much right to stand before me as you?” he asked, not arguing, but only asking. It was beginning to bother her just how unaffected he seemed to be. “She might have walked as far, risked and fought and lost as much, or more. What monster would turn her out after so much suffering?”

“I don’t want you to turn her out, I just want her not to be here. That’s reasonable, isn’t it?” Lan played with the neck of the wine bottle, avoiding his eyes. “You know, I keep saying I don’t care how many dollies you’ve got, but I’m starting to think I don’t mean it.”

“She won’t stay.”

“That’s what Master Wickham says.”

“Does he?” Azrael made a sound somewhere between a growl and a laugh, both honest. “Well, he would know.”

“He doesn’t like her,” said Lan, because she was drunk.

“Mm.”

“Do you like her?”

“Emotions can so muddy the simple business of bedding one’s concubines. I prefer my relationships be kept purely professional.”

“Do you like me?”

“Well,” he said after a short pause. “I set that trap and walked right into it.”

“Answer me,” she insisted in a quavering voice. “What am I to you? The…the professional? Or the mud?”

He sighed, rubbing under his mask with one hand and at her hip with the other for several long minutes. “If I send her away,” he said finally, “would that be worth something?”

“Like what?”

“One year. In its fullness. Swear that you will eat at my table and sleep in my bed and press me for no further audience, and I will see that woman fed and provisioned and sent away this minute. I will not remove those to whom I have promised refuge, but I will have them housed elsewhere in Haven and for so long as you keep your word, I will take no other in. Agreed?”

One year. The whole year, and every day one more day she had to take baths and use napkins and wear gowns while alive people died and dead ones ate them and no one did anything about it. One year lost, but every night, safe in his bed. In his arms. One year.

“No,” said Lan.

He showed no surprise, no disappointment. He merely nodded.

“I’m not being very consistent, am I?” She tried to laugh. It wasn’t a very good effort. She had another drink. She was a lot better at that. “I swear I’m not doing it on purpose, except I sort of am.”

He hooked a claw under her chin and tipped her head back so that she had to look at him and see his smile. “You are first in my favor, Lan, and for so long as you consent to remain, you will always be first…but you will not always consent to remain. I have to think of the future.”

“I offered you mine. You didn’t want it.”

His face closed. “I have told you, Lan, we do not speak of that night.”

“Why didn’t you want it, Azrael?”

He gave her a nudge meant to move her off onto her own chair again. She refused to move. There was a bad moment when she thought he might pick her up and put her aside (in her present state, that possibility took on portentous weight, that if he did it, he wasn’t just doing it here, but everywhere, in every way), but when he reached, it was not for her, only for the bottle. He took a long drink and put it down on the table where she couldn’t take it back. His arm around her waist was relaxed and easy; his other hand rested on the arm of his throne, scratching and scratching at the paint.

“I reckon that’s my answer, then,” said Lan, watching curls of gold flake up under his claws.

He frowned, but did not look at her.

“I’m your dolly. Just your dolly.” She repeated it a few times, getting used to the taste, and had to laugh, if only to keep from crying. “Mom would be so disgusted with me.”