“I don’t know you,” he said, almost as if to himself. His eyes flickered, then steadied. He beckoned and raised his voice to fill the hall with a curt, “Approach me.”
The woman flinched at the sound and Lan’s heart gave a little twinge of sympathy. She had never heard echoes before coming to the palace either. It must seem as though Azrael’s voice itself had this unfathomable, inhuman quality.
She crept forward, clutching the child’s hand tightly in hers, staring in hungry awe at everything around her and shivering whenever her gaze tapped up against one of the dead. When she looked at Lan, her step faltered and her mouth opened in a round o of despair.
The weight of Lan’s gown, the cleanness of it, squeezed at her, making it hard to breathe.
“Here,” Azrael said, pointing at the shining tiles beside the still-kneeling Revenant staring daggers up at her. “Come before me and speak.”
The woman took her last steps and, after a shuddering glance at Deimos, lowered herself painfully to her knees. “My lord—”
“Louder.”
“My lord, I come to ask—”
“No, no. That is not the way. Begin again.”
“M-My lord?”
“If I am your lord, you do not come before me and speak immediately of the demands you mean to make. First, you give your oath and then offer your gift of tribute.” Azrael waved a servant over with the first course of his meal. Beef broth, rich and full of flavor. “Only then, if I am satisfied as to your fealty, shall I consider hearing any requests.”
The woman huddled on her knees, watching the spoon travel between the golden bowl and black mask. The sound of her breathing was very loud, but she said nothing.
Another bowl was set before Lan. She could feel Azrael’s attention, even if he didn’t look at her. She told herself she had never felt less like eating and it was the truth. She told herself she wasn’t even hungry, but that was a lie. It was a lie and Azrael would know it. She touched her soup spoon, but the thought of eating in front of this woman and her child made her nauseous and never mind her grumbling belly. She’d eat later. Broth wasn’t real food anyway.
Lan put her hands in her lap and kept her mouth tightly shut.
Azrael smiled, although he never looked at her. He kept his gaze fixed on the woman kneeling before him, impaling her with his eyes as effectively as with a pike. “No oath?”
“I…I don’t know how…”
“No tribute?”
“Please, I’ve come a long way—”
“Now where have I heard that before?” he asked, staring at Lan. “Ah yes. From everyone. Why is that? Is distance some indicator of obligation? I came a long way, woman. I came through black rain and burning streets and across the dividing sea, and how was I met? Why should I meet you any better?”
“I…Please.”
“Still. You’re here.” He tapped his spoon twice on the side of his broth bowl and put it aside. “Your name?”
“Mary. My lord.”
“Painfully common. And who is this?”
The woman’s grip tightened on the child’s hand enough that she whimpered and squirmed. “Heather.”
“Slightly less common.” Azrael moved his cup to make room for the next course—poached fish in cream. “You needn’t hold her so close. She can’t run far.”
With obvious reluctance, the woman released the child’s hand. Little Heather promptly grabbed on to the ragged corner of the woman’s shirt instead and stuck her thumb in her mouth, staring with hungry eyes at the mountains of food on the nearest table.
“I’m told you come from Mallowton,” Azrael said, taking an herbed roll from the bowl and tossing it onto the lower floor.
The child pounced on it, ate it in three huge bites, then climbed onto the dais and approached him sideways, stretching out her wasted claw of an arm.
The woman’s hands twitched and gripped at her own sleeves in an obvious effort to keep from reaching after her. “Yes, my lord.”
Deimos said nothing, but his eyes narrowed.
“Mallowton,” mused Azrael. “I have difficulty believing that. Captain, how did this woman escape you?”
“I would like to know that as well, my lord,” said Deimos, boring his unblinking stare into the side of Mary’s head like it was a knife he could twist.
“So. It would seem you have a story to tell.” Azrael dissected his fish expertly and pulled out the spine, gently discouraging the child from scavenging it, but allowing her to drag her dirty fingers through the pool of cream sauce on his plate. “We’re all attention, aren’t we, Heather?”
The woman’s mouth trembled, but she did not speak.
“Very well. I’ll start. Were you aware—Lan, is the meal not to your liking?”
She opened her mouth to tell him she didn’t like creamed fish, and only when his eyes sparked did she remember her promise not to speak. Did that still count, since he’d asked her a question? Unsure, she miserably picked up her fork, scraped off a tiny flake of fish and touched it to her lips.
“Were you aware I had sent my Revenants to your village?” Azrael continued evenly. “Or were you by chance visiting relations in another settlement?”
The woman tore her eyes from Lan’s food. “I was there, my lord.”
“And do you know why I sent them?”
She hesitated and shook her head.
Azrael’s jaw clenched. “No? It was an entirely unprovoked attack, is that what you suggest?”
Her eyes flashed wide. “No, my lord.”
“It must be. If you know of nothing at all that could have warranted my attention—” He glanced at Lan. “Forgive me, one moment. Kitchen. We’re ready for the next course.”
The servants whispered in and out again, transforming the fish into filet mignon in port sauce. Lan took up her knife and fork with all the enthusiasm of a woman about to carve into her own leg. It bled when she cut it. She wished it could have tasted of ashes, but it was very good, which made it even harder to swallow.
“Go on,” said Azrael, carving his own filet in two pieces, not quite equal. He offered the larger share to the child, who snatched it off his fork and retreated under the table to eat.
“There were…strangers in town.”
“Yes?”
“There were some calling themselves…like an army. They were talking themselves around some. I didn’t listen!” she insisted. “There’s none in Mallowton who would give ear to a bunch of foreigners with mad ideas as that!”
“As what, exactly?”
The woman’s mouth worked without sound.
“I grow impatient,” Azrael remarked. “And I dislike repeating myself. Did you know there were insurgents in Mallowton?”
“Yes, lord.”
“Did you know they meant to come here?”
The woman bent her neck and nodded.
“I didn’t hear that.”
“Yes, my lord…but I swear I was not a part of it! I heard talk, that’s all!”
“You didn’t see the ferries, then?” Azrael buttered one half of another herbed roll and offered the rest to the girl, who scraped butter off the dish with her hand and licked it up between huge bites of bread. “Or the guns? Did you perhaps know the youths?”
“M-My lord?”
“The youths, or perhaps I should say the vanguard of Mallowton’s army.”
“I…I was no part of it. I didn’t even know which boys meant to go until they left!”
“It was Peter and Yancy, mum,” said the girl around a mouthful of butter.
Azrael looked at her with idle interest, then past her. His thin smile died. His eyes flickered.
“Also Plix and Janner and Olson,” the girl continued, although Azrael no longer seemed to be listening. Her little hand stabbed into his plate and out again with the last bite of beef. “But mostly Peter and Yancy.”
“Lan?” Azrael reached out and touched her wrist.
Lan blinked at him and only then realized she
had been holding her fork halfway to her mouth for several seconds, untasted. Her hand, she saw, was shaking. She let him help her put it down, but picked up her cup and pretended to drink. Peter. Yancy. Plix. Janner. Olson. But there had been seven pikes in the garden. They must have picked up the rest at a waystation, stopping in to charge their ferry’s battery and maybe take a drop of beer, talking the kind of big talk that puts a shine in the eyes of boys even younger and dumber than they were. And she’d killed one of them. Yancy, she decided. He’d looked like a Yancy. The pikeman had killed Plix. And Olson…Olson had been on the fire.
Azrael returned his steady stare to the woman. “It would seem you listen to the wrong gossip. Ah, I appear to be finished. Kitchen.”
The servants cleared the plates—his, picked clean and hers, virtually untouched—and brought fruit and cheeses. Even before the tower was on the table, the girl had a bunch of grapes and was stuffing them into her mouth with both hands.
“M-My lord, you must believe me—”
“I must do nothing. Moreover, I will do nothing if you lie to me again, save it be to send you out from my city. Lan, you’re not eating.”
She reached out blindly, snatching a fruit from the bowl and biting into it without seeing what she had. Peach juice flooded her mouth. She gagged and spit it onto her plate. Azrael ignored her. Instead, he drank his wine while the woman babbled apologies and pleas, and when his cup was empty, he slammed it down and roared, “Do not lie to me!”
The woman scrambled back on all fours and huddled, weeping. The child jumped off the dais, scattering her grapes, but when she decided she was in no immediate danger, she warily climbed back on and approached the imperial table with her hand out.
Azrael selected an apple and gave it to her. She retreated under the table, where nothing could be seen of her except one foot and nothing heard but the gnawing of her little teeth.
“Now then,” said Azrael. “I will ask again and for the last time. Did you know why I sent my Revenants to your village?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know your village was preparing an attack on Haven?”
“Y-Yes.”
“Did you know the youths who set out to murder me?”
The woman nodded. “But I couldn’t stop them, sir! I swear I couldn’t!”
“Did you try?”
The woman’s mouth worked, speechless.
“No. So in point of fact, we will never know if you could have stopped them. They were only boys,” he remarked with a slight frown. “They were foolish…and they were frightened. Perhaps they were only waiting for someone to tell them to stop.” He glanced at Lan and picked up his fork, spearing a wedge of edam and applying it to a slice of pear. “But we’ll never know. The deed was done and consequence meted. And yet, here you are. How did that happen?”
“I—I don’t…”
“If you tell me you don’t know, I will end you and this audience together. You were there, woman. You escaped a man—”
Deimos rose to his feet and drew his sword, all in one movement.
“—whose loyalty and obedience are beyond all doubt and whose skill in the deadly arts are unmatched by the living or the dead. Yet you eluded him. In effect, you bested him. Which means you bested me. And I want to know how that was done.”
Lan felt a tug on her gown. Lifting the edge of the tablecloth, she looked down into the girl’s dirty face.
“Give me a drink,” the girl whispered.
Lan glanced at Azrael, but he was still focused on the weeping woman. She caught his attention only when she took her water glass and passed it down, and even then, he only grunted.
The girl drank without hesitation. She didn’t even ask if it was clean and she was plenty old enough to know she should.
“Woman, if I have to ask once more—”
“Mercy, my lord! I beg you, mercy!”
“Mercy is for those who earn it. Answer the question.”
“I did not plan to escape, my lord! I swear it! I swear I only fled in panic!”
“Your word means nothing to me. You swore there was no rebellion growing in Mallowton and there was. You swore you did not know the youths who set out ahead of them and you did. You swore you could not stop them and you never tried. You could swear me the sun rises in the east and I would give it no weight. You are a liar, woman, and you have this one final chance to perhaps earn your life and no more. Answer.”
“When the bells rang, we all went to the hostel, but I didn’t have enough money.”
“What does that mean?”
She didn’t seem to know how to answer, which Lan could understand. It was like having to explain why you had to ask if the water was clean before you drank it. It was just life, that was all. And a life you had always lived was one you never questioned.
“The hostel,” the woman stammered. “It’s the safe place. The bells rang and we all went to the hostel, but you have to pay—three for standing room, ten for a cell with a door.”
“Three of what?”
“Why, goldslip, sir,” she managed after a brief, baffled pause. “There’s some who still take the coin of the old realm, but not in Mallowton. There, it’s mostly barter. I never have more than a hand can hold after harvest, and then the sheriff took a tax of twenty when my Da’ died, for he came over sudden-like and no one was there to do for him. He rose up…” She stammered to a stop, blushing high in her cheeks. “I had to pay the fine, so I only had two’slip when the Revenants came. It wasn’t enough.”
“Do you still have them?”
Her blush spread in blotches. “One, sir. I…I thought I might have to…to bribe the gate, but I never did, sir!”
Azrael laughed. “No, you never did. There is no need for coin in Haven and no desire for it.” He put out his hand.
The woman clutched at her sleeve, then bent her neck. Fingers trembling, she tore at the worn stitching of her cuff and shook out a single coin. Scarcely had it touched her palm before Deimos had it and carried it to the table.
Azrael took it and rolled it between his fingers with a look of great interest. “Is this meant to be me?”
Lan and the woman both nodded.
“A surprisingly becoming likeness.” Azrael put the coin beside his plate and gestured to the woman. “Proceed.”
“I begged the sheriff to let us in, but he said there wasn’t room. The walls fell. I could hear the men shouting and shooting…and screaming. The sheriff closed the hostel doors and everyone still outside began to run. People were crushed up against the doors or knocked down by others trying to escape. Old women, children…trampled in the mud.”
“Tragic. And you? Where were you?”
“I ran, sir. Wherever there were screams, I ran the other way. Behind the cookhouse, there were barrels. I emptied them and we hid inside. It was all I could think of.”
Azrael held up one hand to stop her and turned to Deimos. “A barrel,” he said flatly.
Azrael had claimed his Revenants had no sense of pity and no capacity to be disloyal, but apparently they did have a sense of honor and could take offense when it was impugned. Deimos actually took a breath and let it all the way out before he took another and said, “My lord, we searched every barrel, bin, crate and grain sack. If it could hold even an infant, it was opened. That they escaped me is undeniable, but they did not do it in a barrel.”
Azrael turned his gaze back on the woman. “Did you?”
“We hid there until the Eaters were…done. Then the Revenants came.” The woman hesitated a glance at Deimos and shivered. “They began to search the lodges and burn them. The smoke was so thick. I could hear the Eaters, but I couldn’t see them. I knew we couldn’t hide forever. I took my children and ran where the smoke was thickest.”
“Children?”
The woman’s eyes brimmed with tears, but they did not fall. “Brandon,” she said. The word tore in her throat and each word that followed came out bleeding. “He couldn’t run fast e
nough. And I couldn’t carry them both.” She reached up a trembling hand to touch her eyes and looked at her dry fingertips. “I had to choose.”
Azrael tapped his thumbclaw on the side of his plate and finally waved a servant over. “Give her water,” he ordered.
“Is it clean?” the woman asked, then clapped a hand over her mouth in horror as she realized what she’d said.
“It is,” Azrael replied, unoffended. “So. You survived the annihilation of Mallowton. You had a new chance at life.” His head tipped. “And you came here. Why?”
“I-I knew you would find me eventually. The Revenants never fail.”
“How gracious of you to say,” Azrael said coolly. “Why did you really come?”
The servant arrived with the promised water. With a dozen cups standing free on every side, she had gone to the kitchen for a plain, unadorned glass. What was meant for the dead was too good for the living. The woman accepted it meekly, but hardly drank. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the glass and water overspilled its sides as she shook.
Azrael drummed his fingers, then leaned back and lifted the tablecloth. “Heather. Come here.”
“Please, my lord, don’t hurt my daughter! She’s all I have!”
“Be silent.” He extended his open hand. “Come, child. Stand here before me.”
Heather’s small hand slipped into his. She crawled out into the light and quickly stepped away, wiping her hand on the side of her thigh. Her lip was a little curled with idle disgust, but her eyes were only curious.
“Tell me,” said Azrael, offering her a cheese tartlet. “How did you come to my city?”
“In a van. Mum called it a ferry,” the girl added scornfully, “but it didn’t have a name or no picture on the side like a real ferry has. It was just a van.”
“Where did you board the van?”
“In Fords. We took a real ferry to Fords. The Screaming Sally.”
“And where did you board the Sally?” Azrael inquired, looking at the woman.
“Some place,” the girl said disinterestedly, sniffing her tartlet. “It was dark and we weren’t there long.”
“How many ferries did you ride to come here?”
Land of the Beautiful Dead Page 54