Lan plucked grumpily at his golden collar. “Bet if your bloody flute-player were here, you’d do her.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” he said, unruffled.
“Balls.”
“I’ll not claim I’ve never enjoyed her, but my touch—”
“Don’t even say it.”
He paused, then finished, “—lingers on in her music. I find the scars I leave displeasing to hear.”
“Are you sure you don’t miss her?”
“Are you jealous?” His hand moved in stroking motions along the small of her back, strumming at her corset stays. “Tell me you are.”
“I am, a little,” she said ruefully. “Do you think she’s pretty?”
“I think you are beautiful.”
“Did you ever tell her that?”
He shrugged, his hand still moving slowly up and down, up and down. “Yes.”
“Did you tell them all?”
“In their own way, they all are.”
“Oh yeah? What’s my way?” she challenged. “Tell me how I’m beautiful, Azrael. Tell me what you’ve never told any of them. And tell me the truth. I can hear lies too, you know.”
“I believe you.” He leaned back as far as he could go, studying her through his mask, and smiled. “How are you beautiful? You are…two unflinching eyes and the chin where you carry all your stubbornness. You are the blush you never admit to and that rebel lock of hair you are forever pushing back. You are the throat that arches and the lower lip you bite to keep from moaning…just before you moan anyway. You are my Lan and you are radiant.”
“More than your flute-girl?”
“More than,” he agreed.
“More than Cassius?”
She didn’t mean to say it, except she sort of did, and she had plenty of time to regret it in the minute that he sat motionless and silent, gazing at her without readable expression. She thought she couldn’t feel any worse about it and then he looked away, so she guessed she was wrong. “I’m not mean,” she mumbled, hooking her littlest finger through one of the silver rings in his side and making the others jingle. “I’m just very, very drunk.”
“What would you have me do with her, Lan?”
The question pierced her; the wound was cold. “You can do what you want.”
“And I will,” he agreed. “But what would that be, if you had your way of it? If the fate of hungry Cassius were yours to decide, what would you?”
She didn’t know what to tell him and didn’t want to think about it too much. “I’d feed her,” she said at last. She did not say, ‘And then move her the hell on,’ but she thought he probably heard it anyway, because he grunted in that almost-laughing way. Annoyed, Lan leaned out for the bottle of wine—sensing disapproval, she offered it, but he shook his head—and had a pull straight from the neck. “How many dollies do you need, anyway?”
“Always one more.”
“Goat.”
“I? I did not summon her to my court.”
“You let her in.”
“Has she not as much right to stand before me as you?” he asked, not arguing, but only asking. It was beginning to bother her just how unaffected he seemed to be. “She might have walked as far, risked and fought and lost as much, or more. What monster would turn her out after so much suffering?”
“I don’t want you to turn her out, I just want her not to be here. That’s reasonable, isn’t it?” Lan played with the neck of the wine bottle, avoiding his eyes. “You know, I keep saying I don’t care how many dollies you’ve got, but I’m starting to think I don’t mean it.”
“She won’t stay.”
“That’s what Master Wickham says.”
“Does he?” Azrael made a sound somewhere between a growl and a laugh, both honest. “Well, he would know.”
“He doesn’t like her,” said Lan, because she was drunk.
“Mm.”
“Do you like her?”
“Emotions can so muddy the simple business of bedding one’s concubines. I prefer my relationships be kept purely professional.”
“Do you like me?”
“Well,” he said after a short pause. “I set that trap and walked right into it.”
“Answer me,” she insisted in a quavering voice. “What am I to you? The…the professional? Or the mud?”
He sighed, rubbing under his mask with one hand and at her hip with the other for several long minutes. “If I send her away,” he said finally, “would that be worth something?”
“Like what?”
“One year. In its fullness. Swear that you will eat at my table and sleep in my bed and press me for no further audience, and I will see that woman fed and provisioned and sent away this minute. I will not remove those to whom I have promised refuge, but I will have them housed elsewhere in Haven and for so long as you keep your word, I will take no other in. Agreed?”
One year. The whole year, and every day one more day she had to take baths and use napkins and wear gowns while alive people died and dead ones ate them and no one did anything about it. One year lost, but every night, safe in his bed. In his arms. One year.
“No,” said Lan.
He showed no surprise, no disappointment. He merely nodded.
“I’m not being very consistent, am I?” She tried to laugh. It wasn’t a very good effort. She had another drink. She was a lot better at that. “I swear I’m not doing it on purpose, except I sort of am.”
He hooked a claw under her chin and tipped her head back so that she had to look at him and see his smile. “You are first in my favor, Lan, and for so long as you consent to remain, you will always be first…but you will not always consent to remain. I have to think of the future.”
“I offered you mine. You didn’t want it.”
His face closed. “I have told you, Lan, we do not speak of that night.”
“Why didn’t you want it, Azrael?”
He gave her a nudge meant to move her off onto her own chair again. She refused to move. There was a bad moment when she thought he might pick her up and put her aside (in her present state, that possibility took on portentous weight, that if he did it, he wasn’t just doing it here, but everywhere, in every way), but when he reached, it was not for her, only for the bottle. He took a long drink and put it down on the table where she couldn’t take it back. His arm around her waist was relaxed and easy; his other hand rested on the arm of his throne, scratching and scratching at the paint.
“I reckon that’s my answer, then,” said Lan, watching curls of gold flake up under his claws.
He frowned, but did not look at her.
“I’m your dolly. Just your dolly.” She repeated it a few times, getting used to the taste, and had to laugh, if only to keep from crying. “Mom would be so disgusted with me.”
“Ah, Lan…”
“Were you tempted?” she asked in a cracking voice. “Even a little? Tell me you were, even if you weren’t. Just so I don’t feel like so much of a fool. I promise I’ll never bring it up again if you just tell me you were tempted.”
He was silent a long, long time. Then, in a voice like death itself, he said, “The first night you slept in my bed…in my arms…I looked down on you as you dreamed and felt your breath on my skin and thought how trusting you were. How foolish and fearless. How soft. And I was tempted then. I have never harmed one of those who came to my bed, never before considered it, but I touched your lips and thought how easily I might steal your breath away…and raise you up again before you ever knew you’d died.” He moved his hand over her stomach in a circle just once—she felt an odd, cold pulling sensation, as if he’d found some secret thread inside her and wound it once around his wrist—then came to rest on her hip. “And I would have you forever.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Again, silence, stretching out until she had to fight not to break it herself.
“You wept,” he said at last. He said it mildly enough, but she could feel the tension in his body, ev
en if he didn’t show it. “And when I brushed your tears away, you put your arm around my neck.”
She waited, but that appeared to be it.
“A small thing,” he admitted. “Lasting only a few seconds, no more. And I realized then that I have had a hundred women in that bed, but never so honest a touch. After all the years of my life, that was my best moment.” His eyes dimmed to almost perfect blackness. “Your hand on my neck.”
She raised her hand and brought it to rest at the hollow of his throat. She smiled. He didn’t.
“It was the first time I ever felt like a man. Not a monster. Not a conquering god. Only a man, lying with his woman, watching her sleep. I think back to that moment often. Often. But it always comes braided with that first impulse. Just as all my memories of that night, the night we will not speak of, must come braided with you asking me to murder you…and I, tempted.”
She couldn’t look at him, so she reached out for the bottle.
He moved it further away. “No more of that, my Lan. I am not angry. The night is not soured that ends in your company. Bittersweet, at worst.” He brushed his fingertips across her lips and brought them to his own, smiling just a little as he tasted. “My favorite flavor.”
She had to smile back, had to, even though her eyes burned on the edge of tears. “I know you’re trying to be dovey and all, but that’s been in my mouth, that has. Do you know the sorts of things I do with my mouth?”
“Ah, so well do I know.” He leaned in a little and for one dizzying moment, she thought he might actually kiss her. On his own, so to speak, instead of waiting for her to do it and trying to push her off a few times first. But no, he was only shifting her weight on his thigh, it seemed, because he leaned back again, putting even more distance between them than had been there before, even if he was smiling. “Why did you come tonight, Lan? I admit I’m glad you did…however reluctantly…but I will know why. Plans, you said. Plans that took—” He tapped a claw off the neck of the bottle. “—courage to present. Tell me.”
“You would ask me now. I’m pissed, man.” But she didn’t say no. Instead, with a sigh, she got up and moved back to her chair, raising her voice to say, “Can I get some coffee?”
One of the servants ducked out and came back almost immediately with a tray already made up, just like they’d been waiting all night for her to ask. She was of half a mind to be insulted, but the other half was jiggered, so she took it without comment, because this was the important thing, this was the bit that mattered, and she needed to have her head on.
“It’s a dumb idea,” she began. “You’ll think it’s naive and it would never work and you’ll probably also think I’m a bit of a fool for suggesting it, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t say so out loud.”
“You have my word I’ll refuse gently.”
“You have to promise to hear it all the way through.”
“Agreed.”
“And you have to promise not to say no tonight. You have to think about it at least until tomorrow.”
He acknowledged that with a lordly wave of one hand, and when she opened her mouth, he said, “You built Haven. Why not leave and build another?”
Her mouth stayed open, stupidly gaping in dismay.
“It is naive,” Azrael told her, but he said it gently, just like he’d promised. “And it will not work. But you are not a fool to suggest it. I’m only surprised it’s taken you this long to ask.”
“I didn’t know you had anyone around who could do the job until recently. You can’t just knock up a row of houses and call it done. Well, you can,” she corrected. “Plenty do. Norwood was that way. Daub-and-wattle walls, thatch roof, dirt cellars, and solar charging stations to keep the ferries running and the pumps working in the well. Just like plenty try to live in the old ruins, even though the sewers flood out and the roads fall in and every year, babies are born without eyes or hands, because who-knows-what has been soaking into the ground. It’s one thing to take a place like Haven and keep it running. It’s something else to build it.”
“You give me too much credit. My ascension was not without violence. I merely repaired what I could of the damage.”
“See, I’d believe that if I hadn’t slept in the Red Room.”
He cocked his head at her and when that failed to produce an explanation, said, “I think I must be missing your meaning.”
“The Red Room is at the top of a tower,” she told him. “And that tower has no business being there. I’ve seen pictures of the old palace. There never was a tower.”
“The North Wing was destroyed and had to be restored.”
“And you restored it with a tower?”
He rolled one shoulder. “Call me a romantic. If I’d known how difficult they were to construct or how largely useless they are in function, I would not have bothered. As it is, the palace stands as a rare success among many failures. So many, I did not see fit to finish Haven’s restoration. I did only what I had to do to make the city safe to inhabit.”
“Now you’re just straight-up lying to me,” she said, ignoring the sudden flaring of his eyes. “What about all the other buildings, the ones with all the shiny glass, and all the chip shops and garages and offices and such? Those are just gone, whether they were broken in the war or not. You didn’t need them and you didn’t like the looks of them, so you brought them down and let me tell you, that’s even trickier than putting them up, especially with them all stacked together, nuts to butts. If building was doctoring, that would be surgery! That would be twice the surgery, in fact, because you put new things up and made them look like they’d always been there.”
“I did nothing. And the surgeons, as you would call them, are long gone. I would not know now where to find them.”
“They’re in the library,” she informed him. “And it took Master Wickham all of an hour to hunt them up.” She swallowed some coffee without pleasure. Too sweet. Starting to cool off. She drank it anyway, wiped her mouth and eyed the wine bottle. “We talked a bit, them and me, about the building of Haven. I admit I didn’t understand everything they said, but I got the broad strokes and the broadest stroke of all is this: They did it once and they can do it again. So I say we go.”
“Abandon Haven. Abandon the home I fought for, the home I provide for my people.”
“What was that you said? You said something once…give me a second…” Lan squeezed her eyes shut, thinking back through wine-colored thoughts, and haltingly said, “What is it to me…but a heap of bricks…and a roof over my head?”
He grunted sourly and had a drink, muttering, “Near enough.”
“You don’t like it here. Maybe it’s true you wanted it once, but you never liked it. When was the last time you even left the palace? This is not your home, Azrael,” she insisted as he looked away, “but it’s not too late to have one.”
“Where?” he asked. “Because no matter how long abandoned, when word finds a living ear that Azrael and his undead have claimed another ruin, they will come to take it from me.”
“You’re probably right, but who says we have to live in ruins? We can build a place, brand new, just for us. Only this time, don’t make it look quite so grand. No electric lights. No colored glass windows. No creepy little winged babies hanging off of every corner. Tell your building-blokes to make it look a little rundown, a little dirty. It doesn’t have to be a palace, does it? It can be a town. Just a town. Towns can be good places.”
“It will be found,” he said with just a hint of frustration. “No matter how remote, how small, how well-hidden, the living will come. And when they do—”
“We’ll sell ‘em a mug of ale and a bowl of stew and move ‘em on in the morning,” she interrupted. “Don’t you get it? It will look like every other town, with not enough food and not enough livestock to feed all the people who already live there. Just another town full of starving, mistrustful people…who might be a bit prettier than you find elsewhere, but otherwise, just people. The ferr
yman who brought me here was a dead man and I never knew it until I—eh, that’s not important,” she said, and as Azrael smiled faintly, she went hurriedly on. “You’re the only one we’ll have to hide, but as long as you don’t post your Revenants in full uniform outside your door, that should be easy enough to do. I passed through a dozen towns where I never saw the mayor. Important folk as that never meet with any old johnny off the road.”
“You aren’t thinking clearly.” He tapped his eyes at the cup they shared. “I can’t imagine why.” Back to her. “If you were, you would perhaps realize there are nearly ten thousand people in Haven. How am I to move them unseen?”
“You don’t have to. Crops blight. Walls break. Revenants come.” Lan shrugged. “Folk are used to seeing long lines of strangers trudging down the road every now and then. As long as we go at it in small lots, a hundred or so, we’re not going to raise any hackles. The only thing they’re likely to do is shut their village gate until we’ve all passed by. Once that first group finds a likely place to start building, we send the next batch. We’ll have to be careful, sure, but I can’t see it taking more than a year.”
“Your innocence is showing, Lan.”
Startled, she checked the front of her bodice, but everything appeared to be in order.
“No,” he said patiently. “I mean it is clear you have lived all your life behind walls with no understanding of what it takes to erect them. It is the work of several years to lay the foundation of such a town, years just to quarry the stone. Such an endeavor would attract attention long before it was completed.”
“Now you’re just making excuses. All we need to start is a place for your dollies to bed down and a greenhouse to start growing food. What’s it matter to you how long the rest takes? You’ve got time.”
“Yes, I do. I have time and I have had time, ages of time, more than Men can easily measure or even name. And if my time has taught me nothing else, it has taught me there can be no peace with the living.”
“Well, then just say that,” said Lan crossly. “Don’t pretty it up with fake reasons about moving and foundations, just say, ‘I am a giant jackhat and I hate the living and if I came across one burning in the bloody street, I wouldn’t piss on him to put him out.’”
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