“What’s your favorite color?”
The hard line of his mouth went crooked. He broke a loaf of herbed bread and gave her half. “White.”
She started to take a bite, then gave in with a little shiver of excess and buttered it first. “And when did you first know you had power over the dead?”
He glanced at her and away, immediately absorbed in his meal. “I told you of my first memory. It was then.”
“Does it bother you to talk about it?”
“I see no reason to talk about it.”
“I see no reason to sit here and stare at each other in silence.”
“Steward!” Azrael bellowed. “Musicians!”
“You make such a point of saying that people judge you without knowing anything about you, but how is anyone supposed to know you if you don’t talk about—”
“Enough!” Throwing the remains of his bread onto the platter, Azrael leaned back and glared at her. “What is this unwise game you play with me? How can you think it will help your cause to stir up the muck of these still memories? I realize you are very new to the diplomat’s arts, but even you must know you would be far better served to incur my favor than my wrath.”
“Would it help if I sat on your lap?”
His eyes flickered, losing much of their piercing intensity. “What?”
“Would you feel better about answering questions if I sat on your lap when I asked them?”
His head tipped back, as if he needed the extra inches to bring her all the way into focus.
“It’s called barter,” she explained. “This is how we buy things in Norwood: in pieces.”
He studied her through narrow eyes for several seconds before moving his throne wordlessly back and slightly spreading his thighs.
Lan rose from her chair and went to his. Taking the hand he offered, she hiked up her long skirts and straddled him. It took some wiggling to get comfortable, settling at last with her skirts rolled up into a cushion between them, but draped long in back, so even if every blank-faced servant in the room knew what she was about under there, at least her bare ass wasn’t on display. “How’s that?” she asked, rocking back and forth to test.
His eyes flickered. “A fair trade. Very fair.”
“Then tell me,” she said.
He put a hand on her hip, starting her in small, slow rolling motions she agreeably continued. “The humans who had been my mother’s people cast us both—her, dead, and I, undying—from a short cliff near to their warren. I recall the wind around me as I fell and the rocks growing huge below me until I broke upon them. I tumbled across the stony drift to fetch up against my dead mother’s belly. These were my first moments and they were all in pain and terror. The heat of that day baked her spilled blood onto my skin. I could smell her flesh rotting, taste it growing sour in my mouth. The dark warmth of her womb which had been all my world was gone. The wet drumming of her heart, the muted lilting of her voice—all lost. Shall it surprise you that I sought comfort?”
He was hardening, the horror of his words notwithstanding. Lan ground gently against him as, behind her, his musicians quietly filed into the room and took up their instruments. The melody they chose was soft and unobtrusive; the low beat that kept their time matched the rhythm of Lan’s hips. It was very distracting.
“How long I lay there, I cannot say,” Azrael murmured, his eyes sliding shut. “The blinding light eventually darkened and with it came the cold and the hungry cries of unknown beasts. All my fear turned to a simple wanting, a silent cry for my mother. I felt it flow out of me, felt it strike and sink deep, and then I felt her shudder beneath me. Her arms rose—” Azrael’s own arms lifted, his hands slipping as light as an errant breeze around her back. “—to embrace me. I did not know that she was dead. I did not care that the milk I suckled from her slack breast was cold and clotted in my mouth. I knew only safety in her touches.”
“How can you remember all this so clearly?”
“Immortality is a curse upon the mind as much as the flesh. I remember all things. There is no part of me that decays.”
“That sounds awful.”
“It is,” he said, still without opening his eyes. “Yet a thousand or ten thousand years hence, I shall remember this as well…how you moved on me…and the warmth of your hand on my shoulder…”
She glanced at her hand, flexing the fingers self-consciously.
“…and it may bring me some echo of pleasure undiminished by time. Even my life is not all pain. When I exhausted the resources of my mother’s dead breast,” he continued, “my hunger and loneliness eventually grew stronger than my fear of the pain I endured in my place of birthing. In the cold and dark of each successive night, I remembered the warmth and light of fire. When it became too terrible to bear, I caused my mother’s flesh to rise and walk.”
“She wasn’t really alive again, was she?” Lan asked, rubbing herself lightly along the full constrained length of him.
“No. Neither was she what you would call an Eater. She was my first, little more than a doll of my infant whims. By the time I had schooled myself well enough that I might have given her a mind, her body had fallen into decay beyond even my power to restore. I remember her with some regret. I would that I could have done better by her. But she is well behind me and you…” One of his hands slipped down to grip her ass, kneading in a way that reminded her disturbingly of Solveig, while the other wedged itself between them, burrowing past the protection of her skirts to pry at his belt buckle. He pulled her close, the edge of his mask’s mouth-slit scraping at her as he nuzzled her neck, working his way hungrily downward. “…you are here. And I can do very well by you.”
She didn’t mean to. She really didn’t. But she froze.
And, after a second or two, so did he.
She felt his breath hot on her throat, made to feel even hotter by the chill radiating from his flesh. She knew she should say something, but the longer the silence lasted, the harder it was to start.
“Later, then,” he said, lifting her off his lap and setting her down—just a bit too hard—on her feet.
“Azrael, it’s not…it’s not you, I swear. It’s just…”
“I know what it is. No matter.” He unbuckled his belt, gesturing to one of the many silent servants lining the walls. “What shall we talk about next? My father? I’ve no idea who he might have been. Or what. If my mother knew, she lost her chance to tell me, so I’m at a loss as to what coin I can use to purchase the next small piece of your compliance. Truthfully, I begin to wonder why I should purchase it at all.”
Lan tugged self-consciously at her skirts as she backed away, unsure where to look as the servant went to her knees before the throne. “It’s just…I’ve never done this before. I mean, sure, this, obviously, but…” She looked up into the crystal lights and down again, taking it all in—every glint of gold and flash of reflected light, the servants, the wine, the throne where the Devil sat, being serviced in a pensive and joyless manner. “Not this.”
“You’ll have to overcome your shyness if you intend to stay,” Azrael said in an unforgiving tone.
“I’m trying.”
“By shrinking from your duties?”
“By getting to know you.”
He didn’t seem to know what to say to that. His gaze dropped, lingering on the bobbing head between his thighs, before his attention returned to his half-finished meal. “Perhaps we should talk about your mother.”
It threw her. Hard.
“Why?”
He looked up, his eyes narrowed and cold. “Is that the way of it? I lay all my secrets bare, you hoard yours? Have I not as much right to know my bedmate as you?”
“So talk about me, not her.”
“Oh.” He propped an elbow on the table and leaned into it. “Oh, but now I think I must. Do you remember her well?”
Lan’s shoulders twitched in a defensive shrug. “She only died a few months ago.”
“Suspicious timing�
��” Azrael tapped at his cup, then took it up and drank. “And was there some relation between her death and your departure from Norwood?”
“I had no more reason to stay.”
“Did she send you to me?” he asked curiously. “With her last breath, did she bid you leave the squalor of Norwood to seek out the protection of my glorious shadow? Is it possible I knew her?” He reached down to comb his claws once through his servant’s hair as she finished him off and began impersonally to clean him. “Intimately?”
“You killed her.”
“Intimate, indeed. Yet I must repeat, I’ve killed no one in recent years.”
“Your world killed her, your glorious shadow.”
“Ah, well, that is a slightly different matter.” Azrael dismissed his servant with a wave and bound on his loincloth again. “But then, I’ve noticed you are somewhat prone to exaggeration.”
“And you, so dismissive.”
“Modest.” His voice held a smile. “I’m modest. And, as my baser nature is presently satiated, you may as well tell me of your mother. Her terrible youth, a stranger in a dying land, alone and vulnerable. A tragic tale and well-rehearsed, I’m sure. It would be a pity never to find an ear, so eat and tell me of her. Was she pretty?”
“No.”
“You’re baiting me, I think. All children find their mothers pretty.”
“Not mine. She was hard. Scarred.”
“How uncharitable. And untrue, I should think. If you were made at all from your mother’s mold, she must have been fair enough at one time.”
The words ran through her head twice before they came together. “That’s another compliment,” she said, her rising frustration now eclipsed by puzzlement. “Why do you keep complimenting me?”
“Perhaps it amuses me to see you so unmoored by them. Do you much resemble your mother?”
“A little. I don’t know.” She looked down at her platter, trying to remember what her mother looked like enough to compare it to the painted stranger staring up at her. “Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Look like your mother.”
He managed somehow to shrug with only his eyes. “I did once, particularly about the nose and jaw, but every part of her that ever could have been found in me has gone now. And hers were not, you understand, conventionally attractive features.”
“Everyone thinks their mother is pretty,” she reminded him.
“So I did, once. And given the chance, I think I may have continued to believe so, for all her decay. I have learned to look beneath the skin for beauty.”
She snorted.
He looked at her.
“Your children are awfully pretty,” she told him.
His eyes narrowed behind the mask.
“So are your guards.”
“Hm.”
“And your musicians. And your servants. And your chamberlain. And your ferrymen, for that matter. If you brought the bloke whose job it is to unblock the toilets here, I bet you a year’s labor he’d be pretty.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were trying to distract me.”
Lan picked at her dinner, scowling, then put down her fork and said, “You want to know about my mother? Okay. Here’s everything you need to know about my mother.”
“I’m all attention,” he said, ignoring her to carve into his bird.
“She lost her coat the night she got here.”
She could see him trying not to react to that, but after a few awkward seconds, he looked at her. “There must be more to the tale than that.”
“There is, but if you want to hear it, you have to hear all of it.”
“Have I, indeed?”
“This is a big piece of me,” she told him, erasing his crooked smile. “You want to buy me tonight? Let me say it all. I’ve only got it in me to do it once.”
“It can’t be so precious, surely,” he said after a considering moment. “It isn’t your tale.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s hers. She gave it to me and I’m selling it to you, and if you can’t understand why that makes it worse, then I guess we’re done.” She grabbed up her apple and bit, chewing hard and staring straight ahead.
Azrael watched her eat, his fingers drumming now and then on the edge of the table. “Tell me,” he said at length.
“You interrupt me just once and so help me—”
“I won’t.”
“Fine.” Lan put her apple down and pushed her plate away. It felt slightly obscene to be eating when she said this. She’d been so hungry the night she’d heard it. They all were, except maybe the mayor and his family, but maybe even them. It had been a bad winter, so cold the last ferryman to come through had claimed the Channel was freezing over. The ground had gone too cold, even in the greenhouses, so the peaches were all drawing down. The ones in fruit were bitter; the rest wouldn’t flower. Everyone said the cold wouldn’t last, but the soup got thinner and loaves got smaller and everyone went to bed hungry for all that no one was worried. And lying there in the bed they shared, listening to Baby Ivy crying two beds away, for no reason whatever unless it was just to take a hungry child’s mind off her pinching belly for one night, her mother started to speak, whispering in her ear so no one else could hear, “I was a child…”
“She was a child when she came to this country,” Lan said now. “She didn’t remember how old. Maybe seven. Maybe only five or six. She used to live in a big house, painted grey and white. She said from her bedroom window, she could see the sea, but they never went there that she remembered. Not until the Eaters came. No one knew what happened yet. No one knew it was you. There was a whole ocean between you and my mother’s home, but the dead rose up anyway and started eating people.”
Azrael did not respond.
“They couldn’t get out of the city. All the cars were stuck on the road and so people were driving crazy, trying to get through anyway and crashing their cars and then they’d raise up and so there were Eaters on the road, going car to car and no one could get away. So they couldn’t get out of the city, but the city was even worse. People were shooting Eaters and shooting each other, which only made more Eaters, and buildings were burning and no one even knew why or what had happened. But somehow, someone over there came up with this plan to put all the kids in town that could get to them on a boat and take them to England. Just until whatever was happening was over, because they didn’t think it was happening in England and England was the only country they could think of that was far away and friendly. This was the plan. What kind of plan was that?” Lan asked him. That wasn’t part of the story. She hadn’t really meant to ask, but it came bubbling out of her all the same. “What kind of ass-headed plan…? She had no one, knew no one. Her parents thought they were saving her. Instead, they put her on a boat and sent her right to you. And she was five or six or seven. And she was all alone.”
Azrael said nothing.
“The ocean was cold. That’s all she remembered of the trip across. It took a long time and she mostly stayed in her room with the other kids. Sometimes, they were let out on the deck, but the wind was so cold and sometimes it snowed, so even if they were let out, she mostly stayed in her room. All she had was what she was wearing: her pajamas, her rubber boots, and her coat. There wasn’t time to pack others or even to really get dressed. And it was so cold that she hardly ever took the coat off, even indoors. It was pink, with white fuzz on the edges like fur, but not really. When the boat came close to the shore, they called all the kids up onto the deck. It was dark and it was snowing. All the kids were trying to stand in the middle of other kids because it was warmer there, but my mom was so little, she got shoved to the outside. She was right next to the rails in the very front of the boat. So she saw everything. She could see fires burning in the city, but no lights on. And the boat was going to dock anyway,” said Lan, shaking her head. “How could anyone see that and just dock anyway? How could they not know?”
“What would you have had th
em do?” Azrael asked quietly. “Sail the Earth forever? Perhaps they were out of food. Perhaps they thought…at least it would end quickly.”
“Nothing ends. That’s the point, isn’t it? They all but fed those kids to your Eaters and, quick or not, that’s a fucking awful way to go.”
He did not answer that.
“It was dark,” said Lan, after a few calming breaths and a drink of water. “But my mother could see shapes moving on the shore. She thought they were people, their new moms and dads, coming to get them. But they didn’t stop when they reached the end of the pier. They fell into the water, she said, and they kept coming until she could see this white, churning wave coming right at them. The boat never even had the chance to dock. The Eaters hit the side of the boat and kept piling up. It wasn’t quick, but it was…inevitable, she called it. Like the sun setting. They piled up higher and came over the rails and suddenly everyone was screaming. The boat kept going. It broke through the pier and crashed into the whatsis, the docking place. The hull stoved in and the boat started to flip over. The waves came over the side and kids were being washed overboard, right into the Eaters in the water. My mother fell too, but a wave picked her up. She grabbed hands with a boy in the water and the wave took them both to the pier. It put her down on top of the boards. It slammed him into the side and crushed him dead. That was how my mother came to England.”
“She lost her coat in the water, one assumes.”
“No, she still had it then. It was a big, puffy coat. She used to say it was what saved her, actually. It was full of air, like a life-vest. Anyway, there was no one left of the crew on the boat. No one to meet them on shore. Eaters bloody everywhere and no one to help. All she could see of the city was burning buildings and the boat sinking off the pier. All she could hear was sirens and screams. The kids all scattered as soon as they reached shore and most of them got taken down by Eaters pretty much right off. My mother was one of a group that climbed in through the window of a dockside warehouse or something. Understand, this place was in sight of the boat she’d come in on. She could have thrown a rock and hit it. But she thought she was safe, like a child who thinks pulling the blankets up over her head at night will keep the monsters out. She slept that night with her hood pulled up, the hood on her coat, for just that reason. It was a big, puffy coat,” Lan said again. “She couldn’t hear through it very well. She never heard the Eater come in through the window.”
Land of the Beautiful Dead Page 12