Land of the Beautiful Dead (83 page)

He glanced at her, then raised his hand and brushed the backs of his knuckles along the scar on her neck.

“This is not about me,” she said tightly.

“Do as I say, not as I do.” He looked away, smiling. “I have missed your unique style of diplomacy.”

“Of all the things you could be missing…”

“I did not say I missed it most of all.”

“But, like peaches, you noticed the lack.”

“Yes.” His eyes dimmed and his voice roughened. “Like peaches.”

Her frustration did not disappear, but she was able, with a little effort, to put it aside for the moment. She put her hand over his. He let her, but as the minutes passed, each one a little longer than the one before, he made no move to hold it or to invite any other touches. Even as she felt his flesh cold and inhuman against her side, he was far away and he seemed to want to stay there.

“I’m sorry,” she said at last. “I realize it’s too late now, but I’m…so damn sorry. You told me exactly how it would go and you were right. I thought I was saving the world.” She laughed a bit without feeling it at all. “I thought the world was worth saving.”

“It is.” The cave had a way of muffling sound, but his voice in those two words was all edges, a scrape across her ears.

“I believed that once. I must have, to have gone and done what I did, but now…now I don’t even remember what that felt like. It all went so wrong!” she burst out, flinging up her empty hands just to slap them on her thighs. “I got everything I asked for, everything I went there to get…and now I’m not just sorry I did it, I’m ashamed.”

Some of the stiffness went out of his body. He looked at her, his eyes barely lit at all.

“I should have chose you. But as much as I hate myself for what I did, there’s always some stupid little part of me that thinks it really could be better now. We can pick ourselves up, bury our dead and build it all back again. Hope.” She all but spat the word. “I loved you. That was real. I loved you and I traded it for
hope
.”

“That precious light,” he murmured. “The light that glowed out so fiercely, even I felt it once.”

“Did you ever love me?”

“I had to.” He rose with half a laugh, half a snarl, to pace as far away as the little room would let him go. “Against all reason. Such was the power of that pure, white light.”

“Did you stop?”

He was silent a long time, turned away, watching his own shadow flicker on the wall while he stood motionless. At last: “No.”

“Then what are we still doing here? Come back with me!”

“How can you ask? How can you wish me upon this world, knowing what I have done to it? In thirty years, I have undone all that Man has created in one hundred thousand years of his dominion! I have crushed all that I ever sought to hold, destroyed all that I have ever coveted and ruined this Earth beyond all rebuilding! Am I not Death? Am I not the very body of Evil? What…” He swung around, his arms outflung and all his heart bared to her. “For the love of
God
, woman, what do you want with me?”

She got up. His arms lowered, but not far; he held them out, held them open, as she went and pressed herself close to the cool slab of his chest. “Just this,” she whispered, listening to the deep, unnatural workings of his heart. “Sorry it’s not more noble, but it’s all I want and if you really won’t come back, well, I guess I have to stay.”

He groaned her name, but his arms closed around her. “No,” he said, holding her. “No, I won’t keep you in a grave.”

“And I won’t leave you alone in one. So there.”

“I’ll carry you out,” he said, but he didn’t. His claws passed once through her unbrushed hair and then he rested his chin atop the crown of her head. “I’ll command Deimos to take you away and never return.”

“I’ll come back without him,” she warned and laughed through the threat of tears. “Have you even met me? I’ll be back in this room before you are. Is that really the bed you want to lay me down in?”

His head turned to look at it.

She waited.

“Damn you,” he said and sighed. “So be it. Take me home.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I
t took all night to get back to the wall, since they had to pick their way over blackened, uneven terrain. Lan gave up the last pieces of her jacket and half her shirt to wrap her boots, but they were full of blood before they were an hour gone. She did not complain; Serafina’s shoes had already been cut away by the sharp rock and Azrael’s naked feet were open to the bone. When the time came to tear her trouser legs off, she offered to share out the fabric, but Azrael declined. His was the power to mend dead flesh, he reminded her, and as for his own wounds…he’d live. Lan argued, but not very long, and limped on with her feet padded as best she could manage.

As morning colors of yellowish-grey stained the sky, they arrived, only to find the van’s bonnet up and all that remained of their supplies gone. Deimos set off at once on foot, gloved hand already on the hilt of his sword, to address the theft and acquire new transportation. While they waited, Azrael called Serafina to him and began to mend her feet. Under his careful fingers, scored bone smoothed, torn muscle wove itself whole, and flesh as pliable as wet clay came together without scarring. Lan watched for a while, but the sight made her queasy, so she crawled into the back of the van and fell asleep.

She did not wake until Deimos came back in an old tub-cart pulled by a plodding mule with a skeletal deerhound straggling along after, hunched but hopeful-looking. He brought with him a fresh battery and tires for the van, several bottles of water, a large pot of dubious stew and a pair of boots for Lan. The boots were stiff with blood in places and everything smelled strongly of smoke, that particular smoky smell that comes not from burning wood or even meat, but cloth and hair and mortar as well. Lan put on the boots, drank the water, shared the stew with the dog, and then went back to sleep so they’d have an excuse not to have to drive through the village again until it was too dark to see it.

Deimos drove through the night (with one hand on the wheel and the other idly scratching at the deerhound’s ears) and the following day, and the night after that, and by morning of the third day, they were back in France and headed for the coast. The deep-ferry that had brought them was still there, with its Revenant crew exactly as they’d been left. The crossing was rough and uneventful, apart from Lan hanging over the rails the whole way, and it seemed that no sooner were the white cliffs of England’s shores in sight than they were back on the road. In another hour or two, she was riding in the back of the van through the fluttering field of all those corpses with the man who’d ordered it done sitting beside her with his arm around her shoulders to comfort her. A few miles later, they were home.

They would have made quite a sight walking through the marble halls of the palace—Azrael, maskless, naked but for a plain loincloth; Lan, unwashed since leaving Mal Henri’s weeks before; Serafina, still in her civilian ‘disguise’; and Deimos, impeccably handsome in his Revenant uniform, with the dog close on his heels—but Deimos took them into the palace the same way Lan’s ferryman had brought her so long ago, so that they entered from underground. Deimos and the deerhound went before them to clear the way, so that no one going about their duties could glimpse their lord stripped of his imperial finery. That was the worst part of the whole journey for Lan: knowing every stair, hall and door that stood between this place and Azrael’s bedchamber below, but having to wait in that dark place, where minutes did not pass, but only piled up.

And when Deimos did appear, Azrael raised a hand to halt Lan’s first eager step and turned instead to Serafina. “Take her to her room—” he began.

“Oh, the hell she will!” Lan exploded. “After all I’ve gone through to have you back and you put me on the shelf? You must be joking!”

“No, I’m demonstrating restraint and consideration. You are exhausted and, given the choice, I would rather have you rested.”

“You mean bathed,” she grumbled.

“I mean…” He slipped a hand around to the small of her back and pulled her hard against him (where it was unavoidably obvious that they could both use a bath), leaning close enough that the heat of his eyes warmed her face as he growled, “…rested. Even I am wearied by travel and you…” His gaze moved over her, dimming with concern wherever it lingered. “You…”

“You look awful,” Serafina supplied.

Azrael sent her a warning glance, but did not correct her. When he turned back to Lan, his smile was still troubled. “You’re tired,” he told her. “A night’s uninterrupted rest will improve us both. I have missed you and I intend to prove…arduous.” He sealed the promise with a kiss while Serafina sighed at the ceiling and Deimos impatiently scanned the empty hall, then released her, asking with pointed unconcern, “After all, there is no hurry, is there?”

“No.”

He smiled at her sullen, slightly breathless tone. “Patience is a virtue, child.”

“I’m your dolly. Me and virtue aren’t even on the same street. Fine,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’ll rest up. But you better not keep me waiting.”

“Never. I’ve seen the lengths to which you go to hunt me down. I would not want you for an enemy. Lan,” he said, softly now, just as she’d turned away. When she looked back, he was no longer smiling, but neither did he speak. She could see thoughts in the flickering embers of his eyes, but in the end, with a scarcely perceptible shake of his head, he said merely, “Sleep well.” And to Serafina: “Take her to her room and see to her comforts.”

“Yes, my lord,” said Serafina, hiding her scowl with a deep curtsey.

Lan did not bother to disguise hers.

Azrael brushed his thumb across her lips with a chuckle, then gave a nod to Deimos and the two of them left with the dog cringing after them.

Alone with Serafina, the very last person she wanted to be alone with on her first night back in Haven, Lan rubbed her eyes and said the words she bloody well ought to be saying to Azrael right now: “Take me to bed.”

“This isn’t what I wanted to come home to either,” her handmaiden grumbled and pinched prettily at the bridge of her nose. “Right. Refresh my memory. Which room was yours?”

“The Red Room.”

“Nonsense. None of the tower rooms even have a bath.” Serafina considered the matter with the expression of one considering a platter of fresh dung and at last threw up her hands and slapped them down on her thighs again. “I’ll have to take you to my lady’s chamber,” she said disgustedly. “Come along.”

Lan wasn’t any happier about spending the night in Batuuli’s rooms than her handmaiden was, but at least she didn’t have to climb all those bloody stairs. And it was just for one night.

It had better be just for one night.

It had been more than a year since Lan had last seen these rooms, but little had changed. The table where Batuuli had laid out her poisoned pasties was still there, with a tea service set out and only lightly filmed with dust. The drapes could use a beating and the floors a good sweep, but the neglect was only as old as their journey had been long. Deimos had told her that Serafina had been pressed into Azrael’s army since the purge, but clearly, she had not surrendered all her former duties.

Serafina dragged her fingertip along the topmost curve of a low-backed chair and sighed to prove she was unhappy. “Wait here,” she said, moving toward the other room, the one with the bath. “Don’t touch anything.”

“Are they still here?”

“Who?”

Lan shrugged and went over to open the wardrobe. The last time she’d done this, there had been two pikemen inside, put away like all the rest of Batuuli’s possessions. She’d let them out once, but they might have been put back, maybe wrapped in white canvas with a handful of cedar chips to keep the moths out of their open chests. But no, the wardrobe was empty, apart from a small selection of Batuuli’s dresses, which were themselves suspiciously moth-free for having been neglected all this while.

“No,” said Serafina, watching her. “I…That is, they were discovered and removed to the gatehouse so the sight of them could serve as warning that none enter Haven save by our lord’s command.”

“I didn’t know he’d done that.”

“Yes, I imagine that was deliberate.” Serafina switched on the light in the washroom and planted her hands on her hips, looking it over. “What a mess.”

Lan went to see, but apart from a bit of dust, everything seemed to be in its place. “Can I help?”

“Certainly not! Just stand there. Don’t you dare!” she snapped as Lan sat on a padded bench to unlace her boots. “I’m supposed to do that.”

“I won’t tell if you won’t.”

Serafina sniffed, but did not insist. Taking a cloth from the linen cupboard, she stepped down into the empty tub to clean it. “In any event, after you left, our lord ordered them released and gave them true death, along with the rest of them.”

“Rest of them? You mean the ones in the meditation garden?”

“And on the battlements and the outer walls and I think there may have been a few hanging in the lesser servants’ dormitory. But yes, all of them.” Serafina finished wiping out the tub and started the water running. As it filled, she bustled back and forth from cupboard to vanity to cupboard, arranging a bathing tray and muttering to herself about how dusty everything was.

“Well, I’m glad,” Lan announced.

Serafina huffed out a laugh, glanced at her, then ducked her head and admitted, “So am I, as far as that goes. But it was a bad time. Winter was the worst. He went just as dark as the weather. He never spoke. He rarely ate. Sometimes, you would see him at the window in the great hall in the morning and he’d still be there when they changed out the guard at night. Other times, he would shut himself away for days on end and no one would see him. And when he did come out, he had such
moods
.”

“Yeah, I heard.” Lan dipped a toe into the rising water, then shut it off and climbed in, hissing at the heat of it in the cold room. It was actually hard to settle without writhing and after only a few seconds, she tried getting out. “It’s too hot.”

Serafina impersonally shoved her back in, then swished her arm through the bath and gave her a scornful stare. “It isn’t either, you’re just being difficult.”

And maybe she was. It had been a hell of a long trip, especially if one started counting from France, which Lan did. She hadn’t slept well in the ferry and had spent the last leg mostly being sick; she’d chucked up more in the last three days than she had in the three years preceding. Her stomach still felt a bit abused and expressed itself now and then with ominous gurgling noises. No, she wasn’t in the best of moods and it was just possible she was taking it out on her handmaiden unfairly.

“Fine.” In an effort to distract herself from the sensation of being dipped in liquid fire, Lan said, “Deimos told me all about Azrael’s moods.”

“He killed his entire court, did Deimos tell you that?” Serafina nodded solemnly at Lan’s startled stare and knelt beside the bath to begin sponging soap onto Lan’s back. A year’s respite had not improved her handmaiden’s technique; it was like being rubbed with a rock. “Not long after you left. I was ordered to look after that horrid child, so I was there that night, waiting for dinner to end so I could make up the ungrateful little beast’s tray, and I just knew something was going to happen. I could feel it in the air. He had been shut up for more than a month and then he just came to dinner like he’d never been gone. He took his chair and called for wine and then sat and looked at his court and I tell you, that look gave me shivers.” Serafina attempted a shiver. It was not very successful. “And then he killed them. He waved his hand and they all dropped and he just sat and drank his wine.”

“That’s awful,” said Lan, but she was thinking of Azrael, not the courtiers he’d killed.

“It gets worse. Rinse.” Serafina waited for Lan to dunk herself under and when she came up again, she went to work on her hair. “After, oh, an hour or so, he sent for his flute-player.” Serafina raised an eyebrow. “You know about her.”

“We’ve met.” And because she could see the gleam in Serafina’s eye, Lan added, “She was his dolly once.”

“Most of the servants withdrew, so that he could…enjoy the music…without distraction. And he never called them in again. They were in there alone for hours, with all those poor people dead in their dinners, and him listening to music. Then the music stopped,” Serafina said meaningfully.

Lan caught herself frowning and scrubbed her face. “Yeah, and?”

“And nothing. A few minutes and a few more.” Serafina rolled a careless shoulder and massaged soap into Lan’s scraggly hair. “And then out she comes at a run, holding her clothes on and crying herself all the way to her room.”

Lan closed her eyes, but again, it was Azrael she saw in the darkness, not the flute-player.

“He stayed there the rest of the night,” Serafina went on. “At dawn, he finally came out, only to shut himself up again and no one saw him for weeks. No one who lived, at any rate. You could always tell when he came out and where he went by the bodies he left in the hall. I never saw him like that, not even after you warmbloods murdered his Children. His toys, you called us that night, and for a time, that was just what we were. Toys he’d long outgrown. Rinse.”

Lan went under and stayed for a while, closing herself in the warm muffle of the bath until the ache in her lungs eclipsed the one in her heart. She came up only reluctantly, surrendering herself to Serafina’s comb and looking at her distorted reflection in the water. “I’m sorry.”