Land of the Beautiful Dead (9 page)

They descended the narrow, winding stairs in a silence broken only by her breath and the dual tromping of their boots. His were nicer and made a crisp, soldierly sound; hers, patched leather with soles made from strips of old tires, clumped along out of rhythm. Here on the cramped, dingy stairs, it wasn’t so bad, but soon they were out again in the oppressive grandeur of his palace, where her footsteps were small and awkward and even the air felt too clean for her to use.

The pikemen stationed outside the dining hall uncrossed their weapons so that her guard could open the doors, although both sneered at her a little as Lan passed. Within, the same long table, the same multitude of platters and ewers, the same silent banks of servants lining the walls, and Azrael, of course, seated in his throne.

Apart from them, the hall was empty. There were no plates set before the rows of chairs where his Children and their courtiers had been the night before. The amounts and variety of foods appeared undiminished, but they were for Azrael alone, it seemed. Azrael raised his hand, palm upturned, and lazily beckoned. Until he did so, Lan had not realized she had stopped and was just standing there at the foot of one table, staring at the emptiness. Now she forced her feet to unroot and walked forever down the length of that hall to reach the chair he indicated, but she did not sit.

“Where is everyone?” she asked.

“I have elected not to provide you an audience in the hopes you will not feel so inspired to perform.” He glanced at her and resumed disinterested dissection of the meat occupying his plate. “Be seated.”

She eased into the chair. The arms were padded with some soft fabric she could not name; when she ran her hands over them, she left smudges. Seeing them, she put her hands on her knees.

Azrael gestured without bothering to look at the servant who came running to set another place at the table. “Eat. You must be hungry.”

She was, but still she tried to ignore the insistent watering of her mouth as the servant filled her platter with a meal as abundant as Azrael’s own—breads, both sweet and savory, baked in braids, rolls, loaves and even more fanciful shapes; more meat than she’d seen even in the market, some cased into sausages, some carved into slabs, some still on the bone and some whole-roasted, but all hot and gleaming with juices; bowls of every kind of cooked grain awaited her selection, surrounded by dishes of milk and cream, sculpted butters, honey and jam and even sugar. All these things the servant artfully arranged across silver platters and crystal bowls, but Lan touched none of it.

Azrael waited, watching her as he picked unhurriedly through his own breakfast, and finally said, “I take it this means you refuse my offer.”

“I’ll do it,” she said. She waited to feel something—her mother’s disapproval, maybe—but all she felt was tired. She had to wonder…had she sold all the pieces already? Was there nothing left to even
care
?

“So you merely refuse my table. Or is it my company—” He passed a hand over his body, putting the whole scarred horror of him on display. “—that puts you off your appetite?”

“I just don’t feel like eating.”

Her stomach growled.

Azrael scraped his thumbclaw along the rim of his cup and tapped it twice, then put it down. He laced his fingers together and leaned back in his throne. “I have nothing you want,” he said for her. “I have nothing you need. You will do only what you must, grudgingly, and I am never to forget it. Is that the way of it?”

Lan didn’t answer, but she didn’t drop her eyes either.

“I see you still believe yourself the hero of this little farce. In your mind, you stand for all your beleaguered people and especially, for those of Norwood. They starve and so you will starve, for you are one heart, however the distance. Ah, humanity, whose spirit conquers even in chains.”

“Stop making fun of me.”

“You are not in Norwood,” he told her, each word like the final cut of a headsman’s axe. He gave that a moment to sink in, then smiled. “You are in Haven, under my shadow, and you will find that my shadow stains. You abandon your noble human principles when you embrace me.”

“You can have my body,” Lan told him. “But that’s all you get.”

“No,” he replied calmly, quietly. “I will have it all, whether you give it gladly or no.”

“Do your worst,” Lan said, as trite as that was. She even laughed when she said it. “Do your very fucking worst.”

The grey skin above his mask creased as he raised one eyebrow beneath it. “All right,” he said mildly.

Lan’s bravado had enough momentum to last a few seconds more, so that she could still watch with her head high and a smile she didn’t feel frozen on her lips as he beckoned a servant to him and gave a command too quietly for her to hear, but after the servant hurried away, he only sat there, watching her watch him, and the longer she had to wait for it, the less ready she felt for whatever was coming. She made herself think of her mother—her bare feet kicking in the fire, her head lolling on her broken neck—but it didn’t shore her up like it had on her long walk to Ashcroft.

The servant returned with a tray on which was set a covered dish with a high, domed lid. She placed it before Lan.

“Eat with me,” Azrael ordered. And smiled. “We can still speak of pleasant things.”

He waited. She said nothing.

“And so we begin.” Azrael dipped his fingers in a little bowl of water, wiped them on a napkin, and gestured.

The servant removed the cover to reveal a single fruit.

Lan’s heart dropped out of her. She felt it tear free, felt the hole where it had been. It was a hole about the same size as the peach she saw before her—round and ripe and just blushed with pink on one side. A Norwood peach.

“It’s a lie,” she heard herself say.

“Is it?”

“You couldn’t possibly get to Norwood and back so soon.”

“The dead travel fast. And truthfully, child, it wasn’t far.”

“I won’t eat it.”

“I think you will.”

“Well, I won’t!”

Her little shout was nothing in that great hall. She grabbed the peach and threw it. Azrael did not flinch as it flew by, missing him by a hand’s span or less.

The servant fetched it back again and placed it, bruised, on its dish.

“I think you will,” Azrael said again, softly. “If you share my bed, you share my table. If you do not share my table, you will be removed from Haven. Consider that. All your heroic ambitions ended, your mother’s bones unavenged and my hungering dead yet at large in the world, because you would not eat a peach. Is that truly such a sacrifice?” He took another peach from the bowl on his table and carved out a slice with a knife. He ate slow, savoring, and smiled when it was gone. “They are especially sweet, aren’t they?”

“You can’t make me do this!”

“Oh, I could,” he said with disturbingly quiet confidence. “But I won’t. I’ll not starve you, or have you pipe-fed, or prize your jaws apart to force its flesh between your teeth, but neither shall I wait all day for you to admit what you have already decided. When I am finished—” He carved out another slice of peach and held it up for her to see before eating it. “—so are you.”

“What did you do to Norwood?”

“I? Nothing. I was here.”

“
Your
Revenants. Obeying
your
orders.”

“Was it not you who planted the seed of my interest?” he countered. “Why should you not share in the fruits?”

“Did you kill them? Just tell me what happened!”

“What matter? The flavor is neither sweetened nor soured by counting the dead.” He ate another slice of peach. Half of it was gone now. Half, so fast. “A dry field welcomes blood as much as rain and yields as fair a harvest.”

“You’re a monster.”

“So I’m told. Eat.”

She looked at the peach, but did not touch it.

“It is in the nature of Man to see symbols in the most ordinary things,” Azrael mused, watching her. “To make relics out of objects and divine omens from natural phenomena. You see Norwood before you now, don’t you? You see people and homes and how noble it is to suffer oppression and defy tyranny…but it is just a peach. Those whose insignificant lives you wish it to encapsulate will never know what happened here at my table. What difference does it make to their misery and grief if you go hungry or not? Shall you go home to them and boast of your sacrifice here as they stand in the ruins my Revenants left them, as if your suffering was equal to theirs?”

“Just tell me if they’re dead!”

“What if they were? How does that at all alter the equation? Suppose my Revenants slaughtered all, burned the orchards, salted the earth…are you any less resolved to end my hungering dead? Or to put another way, is your determination to do so dependent upon those in Norwood celebrating your return? Because if it is,” he said with a chuckle, “I think you have rather a shock coming. The living who seek welcome in Haven are rarely held in high regard by those denied it.”

“They can think what they want.”

“They will,” he replied evenly. “And they already think you a traitor. Now, after my Revenants have followed your wake to their homes, they will know it. You will never convince them otherwise with the tale of fruit you would not eat, so all that remains is to decide how steeply you sold your integrity. For the Eaters? Or for a peach.” He carved into his diminishing peach, eying hers, as yet untouched. “You’re running out of time, child.”

Her traitor hand rose, reaching. She looked at him, hating him, hating herself. “All of it?” she asked. Her voice shook, scarcely louder than a whisper.

“A bite sufficed Eve in the garden,” he replied nonsensically. “It’s enough for me.”

Lan took the peach. It was soft in her hand, perfectly ripe. She looked at him, her dirty fingers digging furrows into its golden flesh, and bit; its juice filled her mouth, as thick as blood. She forced down a swallow and threw it back into the bowl with a shaking hand. It bounced out again and rolled off the table for the servant to chase after.

He waited until her trembling had stopped and the room was still once more before saying, gently, “But it
was
sweet, wasn’t it?”

“Now tell me! Tell me what you did!”

“I did nothing,” he said again. “And my Revenants merely collected what I already possess, after some small resistance. Norwood stands where and as you left it, its farms hale and walls sound. I wish them only well. What a sorrowing world it would be without peaches.” He returned his attention to his meal, waving distractedly at her plate. “Now eat. You’ve brokered your soul the same, whether you pay with one bite or many, so eat your fill. I’ll be no less impressed by your defiance, I assure you.”

“You couldn’t be less impressed, you mean,” she muttered, pulling the bowl of porridge to her—cooled now—with one hand and snatching at sweet rolls with the other.

“You would seem to understand that well for one who still defies me. Needlessly, I might add. You are not my slave. I will not hold you in chains and demand submission to my lustful will upon pain of torture. You have a spoon,” he remarked, watching her scoop up heaping mouthfuls of porridge on chunks of bread.

“So?”

“Use it.”

She laughed through her porridge. “Why?”

“Because I tell you to,” he said evenly. “Shall we revisit what that means?”

“Which one is mine?” she asked, eying the assortment of utensils close to her plate.

“All of them.”

“Which one am I supposed to…?”

“It doesn’t matter for today. I am content only that you make the effort. In the future…but I presume. Shall you stay?”

“I said I’d do it.”

“You did,” he agreed. “And then you attempted to starve yourself to prove how unwillingly you acquiesce. Hear me. I do not ask my concubines to pretend affection, but I see no reason I should tolerate hostility in my own house.”

He paused, perhaps waiting for her to tell him again it wasn’t his. She didn’t. She sure thought it, but all she said was, “Sorry.”

“I accept your apology. I understand this is not easy for you.” He drummed his fingers once on the tabletop. “Did you sleep well?”

She looked up, spoon in hand, puzzled.

“It is customary for the host to make polite inquiry as to the guest’s comfort,” he told her. “And for the guest to make gracious acknowledgment of the host’s hospitality. Pleasant conversation is one of your new responsibilities. Did you sleep well?”

She wasn’t sure how to answer, so she said, “Did you?”

“When last I slept, yes. But that was many months ago and is a circumstance unlikely to recur during your tenure here.”

“So what was that room you took me to last night?”

“My own. Although the bed is, I admit, mainly ornamental.”

“Will I have to sleep there?”

She didn’t particularly relish the idea and it must have showed, because he looked at her for a long time before he finally said, “I prefer to enjoy my concubines in my chamber, but if it so disturbs you, I can easily make other arrangements when we meet.”

“It isn’t that, it’s just…it’s so different from the rest of the palace. Like a prison.”