Land of the Beautiful Dead (87 page)

“That is not what I mean and you know it.”

“What do you mean then?” she challenged. “Go on! Tell me what I know!”

He turned a cool stare on her that became gradually uncertain the longer he searched her face and did not find whatever he was looking for. “You’ve been ill,” he said at last, but there was a slight lift on the last word, almost making it a question.

“I got better!”

“Your first day risen from a fever is perhaps too soon to make me such an assurance.”

“I shouldn’t have to make you any assurances at all!”

“Lan, be reasonable.”

“Balls!”

“How come she gets to say it?” a child’s indignant voice wanted to know.

Reminded of their audience, Lan shut her trouble-making mouth and cut another slice of cake, even though she hadn’t yet finished the first. She didn’t eat it, just slapped it on her plate and glared at it, occasionally poking at it with a fork. The servants brought coffee, steaming hot, and all Lan’s favorite things. She made herself a cup, but didn’t get it quite right. The taste was bitter. She had only two swallows and put it aside.

Azrael wisely let her fume. Several minutes must have passed before he finally said, “You could talk me out of it. You can pluck me like a harp, you’ve proven that often enough in the past. But I should think you, of all people, would appreciate that mine is not a selfless nature and the opportunities to rise above it are rare. Shall you not give me your blessing?”

“You’re leaving me.”

“Briefly.”

“We just got back and you’re leaving me.”

“How can I mend this, Lan? Tell me how.”

“I’m going to have affairs while you’re gone.”

He raised his cup as if to drink, not quite quick enough to hide his smile. “With whom?”

That stumped her, but only for a second.

“Deimos.”

“Of all prospects,” he mused, looking annoyingly curious and not at all out of sorts. “Why Deimos?”

“He’s the only other man I know by name,” she admitted.

“Is that your only requirement? Truthfully?” His head tipped. “I’m not certain how to feel about that.”

Lan didn’t smile for him.

He sighed, setting his cup and his teasing tone aside. “I don’t want to leave you. Even for so short a time, I would never want to leave you. I do only what I must to preserve Haven.”

“And it has to be now? It has to be right now?”

“Yes. We’re moving on, Lan, and as I once heard someone say, I can’t move on if it means leaving everything the way it is, because that’s not moving on at all. That’s giving up.”

“I’m not going to stop you,” she muttered. “I said you could go.”

Azrael tipped his head back and spent several seconds loudly thinking over the idea of having her permission to do anything before he said, “Thank you.”

“But I have conditions.”

“Of course you do.” He moved his throne to face her full-on and laced his hands together over his stomach. “I will hear them, diplomat. Proceed.”

“First.” She stuck out her thumb. “You don’t leave me in the night. You do it right in front of me or not at all.”

“So agreed. Next?”

“Second.” Up went her finger. “You give me a few days first. I’m not ready to miss you yet.”

“I would not have it otherwise. It will take time to make arrangements, to assemble—”

“Third,” she interrupted, adding another finger to the count. “I don’t want to know the details. Where you’re going…how many Revenants you’re taking…” She shook her head hard. “If you thought I’d agree with any of that, you’d have already told me. You’ve been really careful not to say one word more than you had to and don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

He seemed about to speak several times, but in the end, he only nodded.

“Fourth. You promise me you’re doing this for the right reasons and you’ll do it the right way.”

“Done.”

“No,” she said sharply. “You say the words. You
swear
.”

“I swear. Upon my word. Upon my honor.” He shrugged. “I would swear upon my life if that had any meaning.”

“Then swear on mine.”

His eyes fell, like a flinch, to her neck and dimmed. After a long silence, he reached out his arm and lay his cool hand over the scar. He looked at her. “So sworn.”

Lan uncurled her last finger and held it up a moment before letting her hand drop to grip his wrist and grip it tight. “Don’t you leave me if it’s raining. You leave me on a nice day, you hear me?”

“It’s a trap,” he murmured, stroking his thumb along the curve of her jaw. “You’ll hold me here forever that way.”

“Promise,” she insisted. “Leave me in the sunshine and I can wait for you, thinking it’s not real and I’ll see you again any day. Any day. Don’t you leave me in the rain.”

“Done.” He dropped his hand, raised his cup, and saluted her with it. “You always get the best of me, negotiator.”

“It’s all I want.”

“Mm. The best of me…” His thumbclaw scraped along the side of his cup as he studied her, and then he set it again aside and rose. “Come to bed, Lan. It can’t rain all the time, even in this accursed country. I’ll give you all I can until it stops.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

T
hey did not talk about it after that and for a while, it was all right. Azrael gave her all the time he could, more than he had given her before and certainly more than he gave anyone else, but it still wasn’t enough. There they’d be—having dinner, walking on the lawn, even in bed—and some deadhead would come bowing up to tip a word in Azrael’s ear and off he’d go.

She couldn’t blame him. Well, she could, but she shouldn’t. It was no small thing to coordinate several hundred dead people for an open-ended departure, let alone trying to do it without her knowledge. That it was several hundred dead people she knew because from any front-facing second-floor window, she could see a caravan of ferries being assembled on the road just beyond the iron gates of the palace courtyard, each one carefully checked over, tuned up and even washed before it joined the ever-expanding queue. As for who would soon be filling those ferries, from the right westerly-facing second-floor window, she could see all the way into the garrison yard, where Deimos could regularly be seen drilling his Revenants.

And the rain fell.

Lan’s sunburn faded, but she was slow to recover from the other effects. Her stomach in particular remained annoyingly delicate for days after, especially in the early mornings, forcing Lan to find new and creative ways to be sick without anyone knowing about it, since Azrael had a tendency to treat her like an invalid and Serafina would only snipe at her for having warmblood dramatics. Much as she hated to admit it, she had a feeling Serafina was closer to the truth. The exhaustion and nausea haunting her came and went without cause. What else could it be but her fears and unhappiness about the situation finding its own way out of her?

But for the most part, she did not feel ill. She didn’t have much appetite, but she enjoyed taking her meals with Azrael again, even if he so often came late or left early or was interrupted in the middle to chat with Deimos out in the hall. He went walking with her nearly every day, out in the gardens or down to the river or even just around the palace to look at paintings and silly fluff like that, which was nice, as long as she could pretend he wasn’t doing it just to get her clear of the area where he was moving his deadheads in and out, putting everyone in their special place so that when the day came, they could all up and go with the least amount of fuss. And he took her to bed at night, where he could always make her feel as though time itself had stopped and nothing mattered to him but her, but then she’d wake up alone.

Until she woke instead to the sound of a quiet knock on the bedroom door.

She couldn’t have been asleep long; Azrael was still with her, his arm heavy and right-feeling around her waist and the blanket bunched up between them to spare her the unnatural cold of his flesh. He raised himself up to look at the door, then shifted away from her and eased one leg out over the edge of the bed. The mattress rocked. He froze, his probing stare warm on her bare back. When Lan sleepily cupped her palm before her face to catch his eyelight, he bent and brushed his rough mouth across her shoulder.

“It’s early,” he murmured. “Go to sleep.”

“Are you coming back?”

“I don’t know yet. If I can.”

“Who’d stop you?”

“Matters—”

“Demand your attention elsewhere,” she finished for him and blew out a rude sigh, snuggling deeper under the blanket. “Go on then. Chew your leg off and leave me.”

He kissed her again, his blunt claws just skimming the sensitive scar at her neck, and moved away from the bed. She listened to him find his clothes in the dark and dress, making no more noise than a rat running up a curtain. Then, more silence. His hand passed once, light as a breeze, along her hair and then he left her. She could hear his chamberlain’s voice out in the hall, too low to make out words, and the rumble of Azrael’s reply before the door closed them away.

Lan rolled over, staring at the door for what felt like an hour, but she already knew it wouldn’t open again. Not tonight. She got out of bed to pace for a while, giving her tummy a chance to decide if it wanted to be sick since it had the opportunity to do it in privacy (it did), and as soon as she’d buried the evidence in the chamberpot under a thick layer of ashes and a sprinkling of rosewater, she got back under the covers. She told herself the cold lump sitting in her stomach was just more sick working its way out the other end and not a premonition. He might not be back tonight, but she’d see him at breakfast, just the same as every day. She eventually convinced herself, but it was still some time before she found her way back to a thin and unhappy sleep.

The second time she woke up, it was to Serafina wanting to dress her for breakfast.

“I can’t,” Lan mumbled. “Go away.”

“And what shall I tell our lord when he wants to know why you haven’t seen fit to join him at the table?” Serafina demanded, yanking the blankets back.

Lan’s answer was to hang her head over the edge of the bed, pull the chamberpot over and yark up in it.

Serafina sighed and covered her back over.

Lan slept, but although Azrael’s chambers had no windows and no timepieces, she didn’t think it was very long before her handmaiden was back with a breakfast tray. She drank the coffee, ate a few bites of porridge and half a triangle of buttered toast, and then just stared at the rest. She should eat it. It would all go to Azrael’s pigs if she didn’t. Or out to the greenhouses as mulch. Or just down the pipes, wasted like her bathwater. Knowing that, Lan waited to feel some spark of shame sufficient enough to make her pick up her fork and clean her plate, but she didn’t.

This was what Haven had done to her, she thought morosely as Serafina dipped her in and out of the bath and wrapped her in a robe. If it could be said that Norwood’s hardships had pulled her from the earth and shaped her as a rough, muddy stone, then Haven’s luxuries should have smoothed and polished her. Instead, it had made her a spoiler of food and a fouler of water, just because she was pouting.

She didn’t feel like she was pouting. Well, all right, maybe a little pouty, but mostly, she felt sick.

Lan studied her face in the mirror as Serafina performed the usual post-bath rituals. She could see dark rings under her eyes and a sallow tone to her skin she was almost halfway certain hadn’t been there before. No, she’d never been a beauty and never would be, but she didn’t always used to look like this.

Suddenly, she realized she wasn’t alone in the mirror. Deimos was standing in the doorway, his face white as bone in the darkness of the hall beyond.

Lan turned around, earning herself a swat from Serafina, but yes, he was still there and when he saw that he’d been seen, he took that for permission to enter and he didn’t come alone. Trotting along beside him was the damned deerhound they’d picked up on their return trip to Haven, possibly even mangier than it had been the last time she’d seen it, but nicely filled out. What was left of its fur was well-groomed and even its claws were trimmed.

“Absolutely not!” Serafina shrilled, pointing at the door. “That animal has no business in our lord’s bedchamber! Remove it at once!”

Lan felt a moment’s conflict. She didn’t like dogs in general and deerhounds in particular, but this dog had not spent the last half-hour exfoliating her with a pumice stone and Serafina had, so her loyalties shifted. “It’s okay,” she told the dog, reluctantly offering up her open palm to be first sniffed and then slobbered on. “I’m sure she says the same thing about me.”

“What are you…? What is it…? It’s dribbling on you! Captain, get that thing away from her immediately! Immediately, do you hear me? I won’t have
dribbling
in our lord’s chamber!”

“Phobos, fall in.”

The deerhound obeyed like it had been all its life in the Revenant guard and sat at its captain’s side, chest out and feet firmly planted, happily panting.

“You named it?” Lan asked, surreptitiously picking hairs off her robe with one hand while Serafina scrubbed the other one raw with a fingernail brush. “How long are you planning on keeping it?”

Deimos looked at the dog. The dog looked at Deimos.

“Well, I hope you’re feeding it,” said Lan, although she could see for herself it hadn’t missed many meals lately. “Dogs eat, you know.”

“There is nothing you can tell me about this animal’s digestive system I have not already discovered,” Deimos replied grimly. “Are you well?”

“She’s fine,” said Serafina, finishing the sterilization process of Lan’s hand and resuming the attack on her cuticles. “She’s just sulking.”

“I am not.”

“Not well?” Deimos asked with a hint of frustration. “Or not sulking? I need to know.”

“I’m fine,” said Lan, glaring at Serafina’s reflection in the mirror. “Thank you for your concern.”

“I’m not concerned. I’ve been sent to inform you it’s morning.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Serafina said dryly. “We never would have determined that for ourselves. It isn’t as though I passed by a hundred windows on my way here and could see the sun for myself.”

The sun? Lan pulled free of her handmaiden’s grip and turned around again. “Has it stopped raining?”

Deimos inclined his head. “Our lord would like to know if you will see him off.”

“Now?”

“If you are well enough.”

“She’s well enough,” Serafina said before Lan had a chance. Or at least, before Lan would admit she’d had a chance. Or an answer. “She’ll be up as soon as she’s dressed.”

Deimos looked Lan over, clearly unable to see the difference between a dressed woman and a woman wearing a robe, but he didn’t argue the point. He was a Revenant; he knew everything there was to know about killing the living. When it came to putting clothes on them, he deferred to a handmaiden’s judgment. “Quickly, please,” was all he said. “They’re all waiting. Phobos, fall out.”

The dog did so, head high and tail wagging as he followed the dead man from the room. Lan watched them go in the mirror, waiting until the door was shut behind them and it was long past too late to say, “I don’t feel well.”

“Nonsense.” Serafina packed away her ritual tools and went briskly to the wardrobe. “I suppose you’ll want to wear white for him, no matter how pasty it makes you appear.”

“I don’t care what I wear. He’s leaving me,” Lan grumbled, her eyes locked with those of her scowling reflection. The face she saw was not, she had to admit, the picture of an ideal traveling companion at the moment. “Why the hell should I dolly up for him? What has he ever done for me?”

The sound of rattling hangers and rustling fabric stopped. Serafina turned all the way around and stared at her, one eyebrow raised and lips pressed tight together.

“Yeah, right, fine, he ended the Eaters, but what else? I gave up everything to be with him! He gets all of me and I have to share him with all of Haven. Not even all of Haven’s d…people,” she amended grudgingly. “Now I’ve got to share him with the bloody lightbulbs!”

Serafina sniffed and came out of the wardrobe with the closest thing she had to a white gown—the creamy underdress that went with that blue lacy nightmare—and laid it out over the foot of the bed. “If you wished to be his sole concern, you should have remained with him in the cave instead of convincing him to return to his duties as our lord in Haven, where his d—people,” she said with special emphasis, “are entitled to a small measure of his consideration.”

Lan knew she was right, but wasn’t ready to be reasonable. “He’s never even said he loves me,” she muttered. “He lets me say it, but he never says it back.”

Serafina’s pretty face twisted with disdain. “He changed the world for you. What further declaration do you require?”

“I don’t expect you to understand, but sometimes a lady needs to hear the words.”

Serafina sniffed and went back to the wardrobe for a pair of slippers. “You are the most appallingly selfish creature I’ve ever met.”

Lan’s first reaction was a guilty blush, followed by a surge of anger, followed by overloud laughter. The three together left her slightly dizzied and, feeling vulnerable, she went on the attack. “That’s rich coming from you.”

“It ought to be,” Serafina said seriously. “It ought to be just as rich as cream, but that doesn’t make it a lie. I was made to love my mistress despite her faults, not to be unaware of them. She blamed her father most bitterly for the circumstances of her existence, yet it cannot be said she had no cause. He earned every accusation she ever made. Even the last,” she added under her breath. “But he’s done nothing but cosset you since you first invaded Haven and when have you ever shown gratitude?”

That hit much deeper than any words from Serafina ought to. “You can go now,”’ she said, shrugging off her robe. “I can dress myself.”

“No, you can’t. Clearly. Stop fighting with that before you tear it. Arms up. Hold still. This is exactly what I mean,” she said, shaking fabric down in effortless drapes around Lan’s body and beginning the fiddly work of lacing it up the back. “Where else have you seen such fine clothing? Where else could you hope to wear it? Yet you treat it like a rag. He showers you with gifts and you spit on them. Always, it is what
you
want, what he should say or do or give to
you
. Here you are in the most magnificent palace left to the world and you’re sulking.”