“I acknowledge the possibility, but I strongly doubt it, for two reasons. First, it would have left the hypothetically ‘real’ Wickham naked as a jaybird somewhere in the world while I scampered about in his full attire. I find that sort of thing, those…pranks,” he said, as if to rhyme the word with ‘feces’, “to be the entertainment of low minds and a cruel nature. Second, as I say, I am a tidy man. When I was raised, I wore a suit. The pockets were emptied, of course, but the tie was still properly knotted. The shoes were neatly laced. I wore sock suspenders. And, making no assumptions as to my former self’s private life, I say such a man would never wear another man’s underpants under any circumstances.”
“Nice detective work,” Lan said with real admiration. “None of the other deadheads seem the least bit curious who they used to be.”
“Don’t call me that, please. I find it offensive. Anyway, I was something of an early specimen. Perhaps he hadn’t yet perfected his technique.”
“So do you still teach him?”
“Oh no. No, I rarely see him anymore. Every so often, he takes a notion to discuss a particular subject—philosophy, theology, art—but he hasn’t done so for several years. I suspect I make him uncomfortable.”
“Why?”
He studied her for a moment, oddly reserved. “Do you honestly want to know?”
“Sure.”
“Honestly.”
His reluctance…but that wasn’t the right word, was it? There was no uncertainty about his question, no hesitance in his hesitation. Looking at him, Lan had the unreasoning and unshakeable sense that he was ready to tell her, if—and only if—she wanted to know.
And if she didn’t before, she really did now.
“Yes,” she said.
“I was raised to be his teacher,” he said again. “To that end, I had to retain some of my previous knowledge, else how could I teach him? And although I have no clear memory of my former life, there are impressions, very indistinct, that resonate now and then. His voice…a room with white walls…I’m quite certain I knew him in life, worked with him in an—” He gestured to the closed book on the table between them. “—intermediary capacity.”
“What happened?”
“Something foolish, I should think. I’m not a very likely looking assassin,” he added, almost as if apologizing, “but then, I should think few of them would be. If one went skulking about in a perfidious manner all the time, it might draw undesirable attention. Shall I tell you a secret?”
“I can keep one.”
He leaned a little closer and dropped his voice to something that was not quite a whisper, only a breath that took the vague shape of words. “I can only surmise I tried to kill him, although I’ve no idea how I went about it. But I do know, as near as one can come to knowing, that he killed me. Himself.”
“How did you—How do you reckon?”
Master Wickham hooked two fingers under the collar of his suit jacket and pulled it and the crisp white collar of the shirt he wore beneath down maybe two inches. There, after a moment’s squint, Lan saw two white specks, almost perfectly rounded and slightly indented from the rest of his skin. Her first thought, bubbling up from the deep well of childhood, was vampires. Which was silly, but how much sillier than any other walking undead?
“What am I looking at?” Lan asked, touching one. It didn’t feel like skin at all, not even Azrael’s skin.
“Scars. Of a sort. Left by his claws. When I was raised, I could even see the mark of his hand, but it faded after a year or so. The dead don’t heal of their own power,” he added, covering himself up again. “And those like me don’t decay. Truthfully, I’m not certain of the physiology at work, but even though the worst bruises break down over time, our wounds never close unless our lord himself sees to it. There are yet a number of mortuary cosmeticians on staff who tend, ah…formerly tended to Lady Tehya, but I hardly think this little matter requires their expertise. I find a little wax keeps them nicely sealed.”
“Wax,” Lan echoed. Her fingernail pricked at one of the marks and she felt it pry up a little. “May I?”
“Certainly. It doesn’t hurt.”
Lan pinched the thing out, watching with queasy fascination as its true depth revealed itself. It was as long as her thumb-knuckle, much longer and far, far sharper than Azrael kept his claws now.
“It was an impassioned grip,” Master Wickham remarked, studying the white, waxy thorn in Lan’s palm as she peered into the dark, dry opening left in his neck. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think he meant to kill me.”
Lan started to nod, only to twitch back in the first double-take of her entire life. When Master Wickham cocked a brow at her, she tried out a laugh that dispelled none of the shock she was still feeling (and had to be showing) and said, “That’s got to be the first time I’ve ever heard anyone here suggest Haven’s ‘glorious lord’ could even make mistakes.”
“Has he not peopled this city with them?”
She double-taked…double-took? She rocked back and stared at him again. “Wow. I don’t believe you said that. Couldn’t you get in trouble if someone heard you? Someone else, I mean.”
He smiled at her. “I can trust you, can’t I?”
“Sure. We’re intermedi-mates. But it’s still a pretty daring thing to say out loud. Seems like that’s exactly the kind of talk that can get a dead man killed.”
“The evidence is suggestive. I have never known him to kill solely for amusement, therefore it was a punishment. If he were of a mind to execute me, I would have been impaled or dismembered or dispatched in some other manner by a third party. He very rarely takes a personal hand, so to speak, in executions, unless he was himself provoked to rage. Even if so, the damage done to me was minimal. My larynx, trachea, thyroidal cartilage—all intact. He could have broken my neck easily, yet did not. This suggests a certain element of restraint. Yet his claws punctured my flesh, which again points to rage.” He spread his empty hands with a smile. “I can only conclude my death was, if not entirely an accident, at least unintended.”
“You think he’s sorry he did it?”
“Perhaps. He raised me, after all, and set me to serve him in a position of some importance. He’s always treated me fairly. Some might even say with respect.” He seemed to think it over, only to shrug it off. “It’s a moot point, but in any event, it’s all over now.”
“Moot as a boot,” Lan agreed, because she really did not want to know what moot meant or how to spell it. She handed the bit of wax back, thinking he might fit it into the hole again like a cork in a bottle, but he simply dropped it in the bin he kept under the table. “So you don’t miss him at all?”
“Him? No. When I have no student, I miss that. And I miss talking,” he said in a tone of some surprise. “He didn’t require much in the way of teaching. Mostly, we’d just talk. I enjoyed that.”
“What did you and him talk about the most?”
“You and he,” he corrected. “This is the subjective form, used when the people referred to are doing the action in the sentence. ‘You and him’ would only be used when the people referred to are the object of the action.”
Lan covered her eyes. “Fine, yeah, whatever…”
“When in doubt, remove the ‘you’ from the sentence and consider again. ‘What did him talk about?’ or ‘What did he talk about?’”
“I’m not even sure I care anymore.”
He opened his book to make another note, then gave her hand a pat. “We’ll have plenty of time to study nominative and accusative case during our lessons. To answer your question, we frequently discussed architecture. As you know, I’m quite taken with the subject, so much so that I suspect he inadvertently imbued me with the interest.”
“Again with that accidental stuff. That’s subversive, that is.”
“Let us examine the evidence. I may have been raised before the taking of Haven, but there was never any real doubt it would be taken. He would have known, long before he
began his last march, that any holding he seized would need defending the rest of his days…or Man’s. Such a city could not merely be inhabited, it must be built. These are among my first thoughts upon awakening to this existence, and yet, he instead made me his teacher. He never asked me to conduct research or put me to any use whatever, apart from this one. Why would he deliberately imbue me with an interest of which he never intended to take advantage? I say again it was a mistake. I say further, he is unaware he made it. Even in our discussions of the subject, he seldom invited my opinion and never asked for advice.” He paused, then said with a tentativeness that Lan found almost poignant, “Which is a pity. I had opinions. And I did my own research.”
“Why? I mean, if you’re not doing anything with it, why bother?”
“Why does anyone indulge a hobby? And for whatever reason, I find the subject fascinating. Haven’s architecture is uniquely diverse, you see. One can find examples of Gothic, Classical, Jacobean, Elizabethan, Georgian and numerous other styles all within walking distance of each other.” Crooking a finger at her in a ‘come with me’ gesture, he went to the wall, catching a ladder on the way and rolling it along with him to a particular set of shelves. He climbed up and began to thumb through the spines there, pulling this or that book out for closer examination. “So many accomplishments of the modern age have been made obsolete by…well, circumstances…but architecture is as vital today as it was fifty years or even fifty thousand years ago. And the more one understands it, the more one appreciates just how far we’ve come.” He passed her a book, smiling. “And how far we’ve fallen.”
“What is this?” she asked, taking it.
“What does it say?”
Lan glared at the runic scrawl across the cover, forcing the lines and loops to join together in that magical way that made sounds. “A wuh…wor…World. A World h…hiss…tor…yuh. Ya? What’s the sound a ‘y’ makes again?”
“At the end of a word, usually the same as a hard ‘e’.”
“Histor…ee? History. A World History of aaar…chuh…Archery?”
He tsked at her distractedly, picking out a few more books. “Try again.”
“Arch…Archer…damn it.” Lan took the book to a table and banged it down so she could use both hands to frame each letter at a time. “Aaaar…Oh, for fuck’s sake, it’s architecture, isn’t it?”
“I’d rather you sound it out than guess,” he told her reprovingly. “And this one?”
Heaving a sigh, Lan went over and took the book he held out. The first word was impossibly long, so she skipped over to the next one and hoped he wouldn’t notice. “The f…Four…el…Elephant? Is it elephants?”
“No, Lan. Elephants had surprisingly little to do with the founding of the British Empire. Excepting India, I suppose,” he remarked to himself in a thoughtful way, before returning his attention to her. “Try again.”
She looked at the book, running her eyes over and over the same word, but still could only untangle the first three letters before it all broke apart. “Oh give over, won’t you? There’s, like, a thousand letters! Just tell me!”
“Understanding,” he said with a meaningful stare over the tops of those glasses he wasn’t wearing. “Understanding the Four Elements of Design.”
“Only four, huh? Let me guess. Windows, walls, roof and floor?”
“Close, actually. And you’ll like this one, I think. From the Ground Up. It focuses on pre-industrial methods of construction and is very relatable in our present era. And finally, one of my favorites.” The last book he pulled was bigger and heavier than the other three combined and, unlike the others, which were mostly words with some drawings, this one was all photographs with hardly any words at all. He also didn’t pass it down to her right away, but opened it up and began to flip through it, speaking in a slow, distracted manner as he studied each page. “It’s a pity so many of the modern landmarks are gone, because some of them were really very interesting…in their own way. Our lord has gone to considerable pains to preserve and restore areas of historical interest, including a number of cathedrals and estates…ah, the Royal Exchange and Old Bailey…several museums and, ah, monuments of note. I’m afraid he didn’t have much of an eye for what we would consider modern movements…but what one so often fails to take into measure is that, to him, they’re all modern movements. He has no more frame of reference for Tower Bridge than he has for City Hall.”
“Uh huh,” said Lan, who had no frame of reference for any of the damn buggering things he’d mentioned.
“Here, a perfect example. It’s nothing short of a miracle that the Gherkin survived our lord’s last march when so much of the business district was flattened and yet, he brought it down because he found the style unattractive. Now you can only see it in books.” He finally passed it down to her, open to a picture of what indeed appeared to be a giant glass pickle. “He had a garden installed in its place. It’s a beautiful garden, but it’s still a pity. Mind you, I don’t care for New Brutalism or the rampant commercialism which had risen up in response to tourism and I had no objections whatever when he removed those eyesores. In most respects, the city is quite improved by its restoration, but in a purely historical context, there has been a tragic loss.”
“This is Haven?” Lan turned a few pages, but saw nothing familiar in the shiny glass and steel towers lining the busy streets.
“It was. Before it was Haven.” Bending low on the ladder, the dead man flipped back through the book and tapped a page. The palace on a sunny day. The sky was blue as whore’s eyepaint and the street beyond the foreyard was filled with people, so many that at first, she thought they had to be Eaters. A few men stood watch on the step and beside the gate, wearing uniforms that made them look like caterpillars with bayonets. There was a great, round fountain with another of those golden angel-topped pillars at its center sprouting right where Lan knew there to be nothing but a flowerbed now. To see all this together in the same picture as Azrael’s palace was surreal.
The palace…She stared at it for a long time, knowing something was different, but unable to get her thumb on just what.
Then she saw it. Or rather, didn’t see it.
“Is something wrong?” the dead man asked.
“How old is this picture?” she demanded, turning it around to thrust at him.
“I don’t know, offhand. To judge by their hair and clothing…cameras…cars…” He frowned, his eyes darting over various points on the page. “Say…ten to twenty years before the ascension?”
“And this is the palace, right? This is right where we are?”
“More or less. The North Wing was largely demolished and had to be reconstructed. He was fairly faithful to the original design, but it’s not an exact recreation, as you can see. Our lord never attempted to replicate any one building or even any one era, merely to, as he put it, ‘capture a mood’. I imagine he’s seen a number of architectural eras come and go, and he certainly had strong opinions when it came to which of Haven’s buildings should be restored or demolished. I don’t think it’s at all overstating it to say that not a street lamp stands save by his design.”
She laughed.
He raised an inquiring eyebrow.
“Sorry,” she said, still smiling. “I just had a funny thought.”
And it was funny, if only because it was so blatantly stupid, and this, coming from someone who’d once had the thought to walk all the way to Haven and just ask the Devil nicely to please stop raising up dead people.
Master Wickham brought out another book, found a particular page and passed it down to her. “Do you recognize this?”
“Um…” It looked like a city, just any other slice of pre-ruined ruins. She saw shops and cars and signs she could finally read but that didn’t spell any words she knew—Samsung, TDK, Coca Cola. Maybe he saw Georges and Elizabeths and Jacobs, but all Lan saw were buildings, people and statues. But he was watching her, smiling in that shyish way, so she took another look, focus
ing on each façade in turn, trying to find some point of reference…and she found one. The most obvious one, in fact. A giant, naked point of reference on an even bigger bronze fountain. “That’s just outside the tailor, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. The statue of Anteros, commonly mistaken for Eros, astride the Shaftesbury memorial fountain. And that used to be Picadilly Circus.”
He said it like that meant something. It didn’t.
“You’ll notice some significant changes. The Underground has been sealed and of course, the video display was removed as being offensive to our lord’s eye, but most of the more historical structures were preserved, in spirit if not in a wholly physical sense.” He watched her turn pages, his expression gradually revealing a cautious sort of pleasure. “You are interested, aren’t you? I had the feeling you were only being polite on our earlier outings.”
“Aw, you know I’m never polite.” Lan went to the window and squinted out through the colored glass. The sun was just hitting that sweet spot that turned the sky to grainy gold and made all the buildings look like paper cut-outs. Their silhouettes made it harder to match them up to the color images in the book, but some of the rooftops looked familiar. “I didn’t realize he built so much. I thought he just moved in and kept it all running.”
“That may have been his initial plan, but one is quick to learn that a city is alive, whether or not those who reside there are also. Power needs to be generated and regulated. Sewer and storm drains have to be maintained. The rains that fell in those first years ate into stone and steel, so that everything had to be resurfaced or allowed to collapse. And of course, the living would have preferred to see the old city demolished rather than submit to Azrael’s rule, so there was that. Every brick of Haven required some element of repair, and while he had no end of menial laborers at his disposal, overseeing the work demanded a highly specialized knowledge our lord simply did not have.”
“So he took it.”
“He took it,” Master Wickham agreed. “In the beginning, he offered amnesty of a sort to those civil engineers willing to work for him, but that went about as well as you might expect.”
Land of the Beautiful Dead Page 36