Serafina sniffed and came out of the wardrobe with the closest thing she had to a white gown—the creamy underdress that went with that blue lacy nightmare—and laid it out over the foot of the bed. “If you wished to be his sole concern, you should have remained with him in the cave instead of convincing him to return to his duties as our lord in Haven, where his d—people,” she said with special emphasis, “are entitled to a small measure of his consideration.”
Lan knew she was right, but wasn’t ready to be reasonable. “He’s never even said he loves me,” she muttered. “He lets me say it, but he never says it back.”
Serafina’s pretty face twisted with disdain. “He changed the world for you. What further declaration do you require?”
“I don’t expect you to understand, but sometimes a lady needs to hear the words.”
Serafina sniffed and went back to the wardrobe for a pair of slippers. “You are the most appallingly selfish creature I’ve ever met.”
Lan’s first reaction was a guilty blush, followed by a surge of anger, followed by overloud laughter. The three together left her slightly dizzied and, feeling vulnerable, she went on the attack. “That’s rich coming from you.”
“It ought to be,” Serafina said seriously. “It ought to be just as rich as cream, but that doesn’t make it a lie. I was made to love my mistress despite her faults, not to be unaware of them. She blamed her father most bitterly for the circumstances of her existence, yet it cannot be said she had no cause. He earned every accusation she ever made. Even the last,” she added under her breath. “But he’s done nothing but cosset you since you first invaded Haven and when have you ever shown gratitude?”
That hit much deeper than any words from Serafina ought to. “You can go now,”’ she said, shrugging off her robe. “I can dress myself.”
“No, you can’t. Clearly. Stop fighting with that before you tear it. Arms up. Hold still. This is exactly what I mean,” she said, shaking fabric down in effortless drapes around Lan’s body and beginning the fiddly work of lacing it up the back. “Where else have you seen such fine clothing? Where else could you hope to wear it? Yet you treat it like a rag. He showers you with gifts and you spit on them. Always, it is what you want, what he should say or do or give to you. Here you are in the most magnificent palace left to the world and you’re sulking.”
“I don’t want—” Lan began, but Serafina cut that off with a particularly vicious cinch.
“Since this is the last time you’ll have his company for the foreseeable future, you might refrain from bringing up your endless litany of wants and instead wish him well on the journey even I have noticed he has no desire to make. You might realize that, as much as you don’t want him to go without you, he doesn’t want to leave you behind, and accept that the circumstances compelling him to do so are surely serious enough without your adding to them. You might, purely as an intellectual exercise, mind you, show him your love rather than insist upon it. I don’t expect you to understand this,” she said acidly, reaching for the brush. “but sometimes a man needs more than words. Now if you’re quite through with your tantrum, sit down.”
Lan sat. The brush tore through her hair in Serafina’s rapid, remorseless strokes until the sting of tears threatened.
“Don’t you dare get your eyes any more bloodshot than they already are,” Serafina warned, pausing to pull the loose wad of hair out of the bristles before renewing her attack. “My job is difficult enough this morning. Oh, you look just awful.”
* * *
The entire palace, it seemed, had packed itself into the grand foyer to see Azrael off. The servants stood two and even three deep in places along the walls, divided by gender and by job, otherwise interchangeable in their black-and-whites. The musicians had tucked themselves up in a corner, playing something soft and cheery, all but the flute-girl, who was up on the stairs with the rest of Azrael’s dollies, all of them trimmed out to the finest and arranged just so on this and that step, like candles on a tiered cake. The Revenants were outside already, waiting in ranks beside their appointed ferry, with Deimos and his dog giving certain among them last-minute instructions. Even the gardeners and groundsmiths were there, neatly lined up before freshly-planted beds of fare-thee-well flowers.
Pity Azrael wasn’t here to see it.
Lan waited at the foot of the stairs as long as she felt like waiting, which admittedly wasn’t long, then found Azrael’s steward in the mob and told him to take her to Azrael.
“Our lord is taking a private moment to meditate before his journey,” the dead man said, but even as he said it, he fidgeted in that uncertain way he had. “He does not wish to be disturbed.”
“He’ll make an exception for me,” Lan assured him. “He always does, doesn’t he?”
The steward thought that over, then set off at a brisk walk, beckoning for her to follow.
His use of the word ‘meditate’ made her think he’d be out in the inner courtyard, but the dead man took her into the north wing, into a whole new room she’d never seen before. Azrael wasn’t in it, but the steward pointed her to yet another set of doors on the other side of the room before he withdrew, leaving her to invade or not as she chose, and bear the consequences by herself.
The doors were fairly fancy ones, even for the palace, but the room beyond was relatively plain. A massive chandelier, far too big for the room, dominated her view; there were no other furnishings of any kind, not even curtains hanging over the windows. A line of carved figures (friezes, said the Wickhamy corner of her mind, and she smiled) separated the deep red walls from the ridiculously elaborate vaulted ceiling, but they weren’t very interesting, just a bunch of blokes and horses. The fantastical pageantry present in so many rooms of the palace was noticeably missing here, and yet it was here that Azrael stood, gazing at the far wall, whose only surviving feature was a small dais, just two steps high and not even big enough to put a table.
She did not announce herself and he did not greet her, yet as she approached, he held out his arm for her to take. She did so, although she wiggled herself in under it rather than hook herself off his bent elbow. Together they watched the wall in companionable silence.
“Did he wake you?” he asked at length. “I told him if you were sleeping, not to wake you, but it only occurred to me after he left that he might knock without realizing how that might wake one. The dead don’t really understand sleep.”
“He didn’t knock and he didn’t wake me. I was already getting dressed.”
“Were you?” His eyes dimmed as they moved restlessly over the wall. “Thank you.”
“You didn’t think I’d let you leave without a good-bye, did you?”
“When you weren’t at breakfast, I thought you might.”
She started to tell him she hadn’t yet known he was leaving at that time, but then realized she might have to tell him the real reason she hadn’t eaten and said instead, “I wasn’t angry, I just…wasn’t hungry.”
“You haven’t had much appetite in the mornings these past days.”
“I got out of the habit,” she said and pulled a face, thinking of all the breakfasts ahead of her with Azrael’s dollies to keep her company. “Don’t suppose I’ll bother getting back into it until after you’re home again, either.”
“No,” he said with an odd sort of double meaning buried in his tone. “I don’t suppose you will.”
“But I’m not angry,” she assured him. “I’m not happy, by any stretch, but I’m not angry. I’d never let you leave thinking I was.”
“No?”
“No. The only way I’d ever let you go is with a kiss.”
He smiled at last, even if it was crooked. “We’ve done our share of angry kissing.”
“And then some,” she agreed. “Come to think of it, that’s an even better way to send you off.”
His rough hand slipped up under her sleeve to stroke at her bare shoulder, but with a distraction that made it clear it would go no furthe
r. “They’re waiting on me.”
“Let them. It’s not like they’ll leave without you.”
“True, but that is no good reason to inconvenience them. Apart from which, when I asked after you, Vivian offered to farewell me in your stead and if she will, Felicity surely will, and that means they’re all there, aren’t they?”
Lan gave him a wicked grin. “In all their frills and flashes.”
He rubbed up under his mask, muttering low and in some other language.
“But that’s sweet,” she said, snuggling closer. “Asking after me and all.”
“You’ve been ill lately.” He glanced at her and his eye narrowed. “In the mornings.”
She shrugged uncomfortably, all her attention fixed on the silver rings stitching his side. The wound itself had fully closed over the past year, but the rings remained, more ornamental than surgical at this point. She gave them a flick to hear them jingle. “Serafina says I’m sulking. If it’s true, I’m sorry. You deserve better than the kind of girl who stamps her foot and cries buckets every time she doesn’t get her way. Especially over something like this.”
He did not answer, but could not conceal the sudden tension that entered his body.
“I don’t know what you’re doing and I don’t understand why it’s so important to you,” she admitted. “But, hell, they’ll always just be dots to me. You’re the one who sees stars. And you’re the one who kept them so they were still there for me to see, whether or not I ever appreciate them the way you do. And that’s all this is, isn’t it? The lights in Haven? Just more stars painted on the wall. Maybe it’s not necessary, but it’s still pretty and worth saving. I’m sorry if I made you feel like it wasn’t.”
He still did not answer, but he pulled her closer, bringing her fully into his embrace.
“And I’m sorry I missed breakfast,” she said, although she wasn’t. To hide the lie, she told the truth: “I’d have gone if I’d known it was the last one for a while.” And to complete the deception, she changed the subject, pretending great interest as she looked the empty walls over. “Where are we anyway?”
A grunt was his only answer for a time, but after another minute or so, he suddenly said, “Where do you think we are?”
Lan looked the place over again, searching in vain for clues to the room’s original purpose. Her eye kept coming back to that tiny dais and, above it, hidden in the paint, a scratched place where a shelf or something might have broken off once and been repaired. It left her with a vague feeling of familiarity, not so much echoing another room here in the palace as it did the rooms in the cathedral Wickham had been so fond of, so she said, “Is it a church?”
He considered that. “Of a sort, I suppose.” He thought some more, then said, as if to himself, “Am I praying?” and looked up through the ceiling with a frown.
“Is this one of those rooms you told me about?” she wondered. “The ones where you go and do nothing all day until dinnertime?”
“No. Truth to tell, this is only the second time I’ve ever been in this room.”
“That explains it.”
He looked at her inquiringly.
“It feels so empty in here. I mean, of course it’s empty,” she added with a nervous laugh, “but lots of rooms here are empty and this is the first one that…you know, feels it.”
“There used to be chairs here. Thrones of the royal house dating back hundreds of years, tracing the line of this land to its very foundation. I had them destroyed. I regret that now.” He ran his brooding gaze down the length of the room, lingering here and there on empty space. Remembering them, perhaps. “No matter,” he said, turning away. “It is years done…and this day is not waiting for me. Come, Lan. Walk with me a little while.”
She fell into step at his side, following him through the echoing halls of the palace, close but no longer touching. He was in no hurry to make his way to the grand foyer, but took the first door they came to that led outside, and from there, out onto the lawn. The grass had been freshly-cut despite the early rain and all the air smelled green and sweet, yet Azrael’s mood only darkened as they made their way around the walls.
“Have you ever seen such a bleak summer?” he muttered, there in full sunlight.
Lan laughed. “Yeah, actually, I have. And if I have, then so have you.”
“This accursed land.”
“It’s a nice day,” she insisted.
“Is it?” He raked his eyes across the sky. “Should it be?”
“Well…not too nice, maybe. I’m not so superstitious as some, but I wouldn’t want to see the sun come out golden and bloody flocks of pigeons fill the air the minute you put a foot out of Haven’s gate.”
“Doves.”
“Eh?”
“Flocks of doves, you meant to say, not flocks of pigeons.”
“Same thing.”
“Not at all. One stands for pestilence. The other, peace.”
“Same bird, though. Doesn’t matter what it stands for. Reckon you could say anything is an omen. See that tree there?”
He looked. “Elder.”
“That’s an omen now,” Lan declared.
He glanced at her, his mouth twisting with reluctant amusement. “I hope not.”
“And see that butterfly? Omen.”
It took wing as the last word left her mouth, fluttered into Azrael’s shadow, and dropped dead to the ground.
“See that—”
“Stop talking, Lan, I pray you. Ah, and there they are,” he murmured as they rounded the last corner and the ferries came into sight. “It is a very good thing I do not believe in omens.”
Lan looked, but saw only a long train of ferries, all their proud colors painted over in plain black. Their headlamps were all on, she saw, because the dead didn’t know any other way to drive than to the letter of the laws the living wrote; although the rains had stopped for now, they would surely fall again before the end of this day and a courteous driver must remain conscious of visibility. She supposed, with their black bodies and glowing white eyes, they might resemble a line of grims with a little imagination, but she didn’t want to ask if that was what Azrael saw when he looked at them, just in case he had it in him to believe in omens after all.
Deimos had noticed them and halted his restless patrol of the line to await his lord’s signal to board. Azrael gave it, using the same gesture to beckon his captain of the Revenant guard to him. The dog came as well, tail tucked and whining. When its master knelt, the dog cringed against the dead man’s side and rolled to expose its shivering belly.
“The time has come, Captain,” said Azrael, moving away to get a better view of the ferries just as if he were unaware he was also putting more distance between him and the anxious animal. “I leave Haven and its people to you. I am confident I leave it well-protected.”
Deimos put a hand on his dog’s neck and coaxed it to sit, although it still shivered and its eyes as it tracked Azrael’s pacing showed the whites all around. “I stand ready, lord.”
“And who will be acting captain in your place?”
“Any of my men, I’m sure, would serve you well, lord.”
“I’m sure. But you’ve elected…?”
“Lelantos.”
“Excellent.” Azrael spared the dog an assessing glance and put a little more distance between them. “Lan has my full authority in all matters. You will see to it this is understood.”
Deimos nodded and moved to Lan’s side. The dog came with him and sat importantly on Lan’s slipper.
“I expect you to act as her intermediary and advisor, whenever necessary.” Azrael looked away, overly casual and thinly smiling. “And to aid her in her affairs.”
“Affairs, my lord?”
“Yes, Captain. Lan is going to have affairs in my absence.”
“You ass,” said Lan, but she had to smile too.
Brows knitting, the Revenant looked at Lan. “Affairs of state?”
“Affairs of…of bloody a
ffairs!”
“With you,” Azrael elaborated.
“I see.” He took it well, although that faint furrow never quite smoothed itself away. “I’ll do what I can, although sexual intercourse requires a certain physiological response, which I, being dead, cannot accomplish without artificial means.” He stopped talking when Lan clapped both hands to her face, waited for her to drop them, then finished, “I will procure a device immediately.”
Azrael’s shoulders were very slightly shaking, although he was careful not to make a sound.
“That won’t be necessary, Captain,” said Lan, her words riding a sigh. “Thanks anyway.”
Deimos accepted this with a nod, neither relieved nor disappointed, and turned back to Azrael. “Shall I be undertaking affairs with all your companions, lord?”
“In good conscience, I can’t recommend it,” he said dryly. “However, your leisure time is your own. For now, if you would, please inform them I will be departing shortly. If there are any among them who would wish a private word with me before I go, I will receive them. I trust you have no objection,” he remarked as the Revenant rose and took his whining dog away.
“I guess not. They have as much right to say goodbye as I do.”
“I refer to my appointment of Deimos as your intermediary while I am away.”
“Oh.” The inadequacy of that response only made itself more apparent in the silence that followed. Lan dug deep in her internal store of enthusiasm and came up with, “I’m sure he’ll do fine.”
“I’m sure.” Azrael watched the ferries board, one by one by one. “You’ve not mentioned Wickham since our return.”
Lan opened her mouth, but there was nothing to say, so she closed it again and just waited.
“To my knowledge, you’ve made no attempt to call upon him, either to make arrangements to resume your lessons or to apologize for the means by which you chose to end them. I can only infer, therefore, you know he is dead.”
“Deimos told me.”
He nodded, his attention fixed on the activity in the courtyard. His voice was steady, almost indifferent, but the light in his eyes was not as he said, “It is important to me that you understand he asked to be released from the life I gave him. It was not a punishment. And if I had known, had thought there was even the slightest chance you would return—”
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