“I’m going to be a dolly someday,” Heather said admiringly.
Lan mustered a smile for her and even patted her head, much as she’d hated having her head patted at that age. “No, you won’t. Go on, then. Go to lessons.”
“I hate lessons,” grumbled the child, but she went, goose-stomping down the hall toward the library with her tutor.
Now it was just Lan and the flute-player.
Deimos glanced from one to the other of them, rolled his eyes, and gestured again to the pikemen. Soon, they were alone.
“You didn’t pack me in with the rest of them,” the flute-player said.
“I wasn’t sure what she’d say to me next. It would have been awkward to have to take just you back and send all the rest off.”
“Because I bled for you?” The flute-player tossed her blonde curls. “We all bled for you.”
“Because he loves your music.” It came out sounding like a curse. Lan made an effort to swallow her anger, but it kept rising. “But I don’t. And I don’t want to see you from now until he comes home, you get me?”
She headed for the hall, silently congratulating herself on getting out of the room without punching anyone in the tit.
“You’ve got your nerve, don’t you?” said the flute-player, not loudly. “Turning up your nose at me after you ran out on him.”
Oh…almost.
Lan turned around. “I ran out on him,” she repeated. “Me.” And started walking back. “You’re the one who ran out on him, you cold bitch. You left him there with all their bodies. All it would have cost you was one night, one hour, of human fucking compassion and you ran out.”
Incredibly, the flute-player laughed, but before Lan’s vision could make the hot leap to red, she said, “Is that what you think happened?” And then her smile faded into something that sure looked genuinely surprised and angry. “Is that what he told you?”
“No,” Lan admitted, beginning to frown. “But that’s what I heard.”
“Who said so?” the other woman demanded and rolled her eyes. “Oh, of course. Batuuli’s deadhead dressing girl.” Shaking her head, the flute-player regarded Lan and finally nodded at one of the pretty sofas tucked up against the foyer wall. She went over without looking to see if Lan followed. And of course, Lan did. Side by side, arms and thighs touching, each of them staring straight ahead, they sat.
“They were all dead already when he sent for me,” she began. “Just me, not all of us. So I knew it would be bad, but I never thought…Anyway, they were already dead. And himself just sitting there, reading his cup as he does in his moods. He didn’t say anything to me.” She rolled her shoulder a little. “I didn’t really think he would. I’ve been here four years. Not the longest of any, but longer than most. I know his moods.” She fell quiet a moment, then shook her head again. “I thought I knew. So I played for him.”
She said the next bit with the flute, piping something low and slow, but not sad, somehow. It filled the air, first with sound and then with feelings—not her own, but real all the same. Lan severed herself from it as much as she could, but she couldn’t listen and still be entirely herself, not until the music stopped.
“It wasn’t enough,” the other woman said, lowering the flute. Even now, she continued fingering at the keys, as if the music were still going on inside her. “And maybe I should have let it alone, but I couldn’t do that either. It’s been years for us, you understand? Years. And it was never…never…good. I can’t want him,” she said with sudden, savage despair. “He’s horrible and I can’t! But he’s been a fair johnny all these years and never once took what I couldn’t give him, even if he’d already paid for it, so I went to him anyway. Like you said, one hour of human fucking compassion, right? So I went. He let me take my clothes off. He let me put my hands on him. He let me do whatever I did, but he didn’t do nothing back. Not a thing. So I had to ask, you know. I asked him what he wanted. And he said you.”
The flute-player stopped there, as if to give Lan a chance to explain, then shrugged and went on. “I suppose you could have walked out with your head up. Hell, you could have stayed and done him anyway, done him so he never wanted anyone else again. Well, bully for you, but I couldn’t. I got my clothes on…mostly on…and I ran. I’m no porcelain dolly, think of me whatever you want, but I’m still a woman and woman’s got her pride even when she’s got nothing else.”
The flute-player stood and headed for the stairs, but stopped before she got there and turned back. “You’d been gone months,” she said, carving out each word separately and stabbing it in. “You were gone and I was there, naked on his damned lap for the first time in years and he said he wanted you. Understand?”
Lan nodded, hugging her stomach and staring at her knees.
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“So you’ll understand when I say I’m happy to ask Tempo to keep us in rehearsal until himself comes home.” Her voice never raised, never strained, but all the same, she was not calm. “I’d be happy if you ferried me off to France. I’d be happy to do any damned thing at all as long as it meant I never had to see you again.”
“I’m sorry,” said Lan and tried to mean it. “I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t ask, did you? Why should you care what the truth was when you’ve got your deadheads to tell you stories?” The flute-player managed a few more steps and turned back again. “I called you a traitor once and I guess I’m sorry. I had no call to do that. We all turned our backs on someone to show him our bellies. But you are a jealous chavvy. If you weren’t, you’d maybe realize there ain’t a one of us who cares you’re with him, and some who might even be glad, but fucking him don’t make you queen over us. We lived here long before you ever showed and we shouldn’t have to worry about getting dragged out of our home and dumped in a ferry if we don’t lick up to you the right way. So if you don’t want to be called a jealous chavvy, maybe you could try not acting like one, just for the challenge of it, like, and stay out of our way instead of expecting all of us to stay out of yours.”
She set off again and this time made it all the way, leaving Lan alone in the foyer to wonder if Azrael had made it to the gates of Haven yet or if she’d managed to fuck the day over before he was even technically gone.
* * *
A month, he’d said. A month at most. A month was nothing.
So she told herself, but time was different in Haven, even when Azrael was there. When he wasn’t, it might as well have stopped entirely.
She did her best to keep busy, but there just wasn’t anything to do. Deimos found her the monument man she asked for, but after telling him what she wanted the stone to say—dedicated to the memory of James Wickham, friend and teacher—she wasn’t needed for anything. She went to see the stone set and to wander a little while through the empty museum, looking at bones and pots and columns until the oppressive weight of all that collected time crushed her out. She went to the place where Tehya’s garden had been, with half a thought to plant some flowers back and maybe have it done and ready to surprise Azrael with on his return, but the sight of that scorched pit and blackened stones sapped her of any energy she had for the project and she never went back. She walked out to the wall once and sat there all day, staring into the wastes where not even Eaters walked any more, until Deimos fetched her home. He offered to take her in a car if she wanted to watch for their lord’s return, but under no circumstances was she to go anywhere without telling him again. She told him that wouldn’t be necessary and it wasn’t. She did not leave the palace again.
She did not go to dinners. She did not go to breakfasts. She ate her meals on a tray in her room and. More often than not, sent them away unfinished. She wasn’t moping, despite what Serafina said, or at least, she wasn’t only moping. The troubles with her stomach persisted, although it wasn’t quite as bad as it had been before Azrael left. It was easy to blame the food—nothing tasted right—but she’d eaten rats, roaches and peaches pl
enty of times in her life without fading away over it. She didn’t feel well. Even on those rare days she didn’t spend her first hour after waking hunched over the chamberpot as she contemplated the meaning of life, she never really felt well. Sad, tired, sore and sick: this was her new normal.
But it would only be a month, he said. A month at the very most.
So she waited.
* * *
Morning arrived, as it always did these days, with the sound of curtain rings sliding on a metal rod. Light like spears stabbed in under her eyelids. Lan groaned and pulled the blanket over her head, which worked fine until it was yanked away.
“Good morning,” said Serafina, reciting her customary greeting. “You look awful.”
“Go away.”
She did, or at least she seemed to, but she was back in mere moments with a breakfast tray, forcing Lan to sit up and accept it. Hot coffee with cream and sugar, bread and marmalade, bangers, kippers, black puddings and a huge wedge of lemon cake—all her favorites, together on one tray. The sight of it stirred nothing but a twinge of guilt vaguely tied to the faceless, nameless cooks who were clearly trying so hard to stimulate an appetite she simply didn’t have these days.
“I’m not hungry,” she said.
“Oh, don’t be difficult!” snapped Serafina, already rummaging through the wardrobe for a suitable morning gown. She brought back several, holding them up one a time and eyeing Lan critically over the neckline. “Apricot? No. Lavender? No. Lemon? Ugh, no. Coral,” she decided, holding up a mass of heavy skirts attached to a beaded corset.
“I hate pink.”
“It isn’t pink, it’s coral, and you don’t have to like it, you just have to wear it. Stop playing with your food and eat. You have appointments.”
“Horseshit.” Lan picked up a slice of pudding and ate it with her fingers. It was all right at first bite, but left an unpleasant aftertaste and sat in her stomach like lead. “I don’t have anything to do. I don’t have to get dressed to do nothing. I don’t even have to get out of bed if I don’t want to.”
“You want to today.” Serafina draped the hated pink morning dress over her arm and continued looking through the wardrobe, now on the ‘night’ side.
“No, I really don’t.” Lan had another bite of pudding, chasing it down with coffee, but that aftertaste endured, turned cloying with the addition of cream and sugar. She put her cup down and pushed it all the way to the edge of her tray. “I don’t think I feel very well.”
“Oh, you’re always saying that, just because you’re bored.” Serafina looked back at her to roll her eyes where Lan could see it, then returned her attention to the gowns. “Instead of arguing with me, you ought to have asked why I made appointments.”
“Because you’re bored,” Lan muttered, but her curiosity had been piqued, damn it. For all her faults, and there were many, Serafina was a very good handmaiden and as such, she did not go out of her way to make more work for herself. “Okay, fine. Why?”
Serafina glanced back over her shoulder with a smug smile. “Our lord sent a messenger to say they’re on their way home. Oh, have a care, you clumsy cow!”
Lan had sat up, jostling her tray and sloshing coffee over the bedspread. She mopped it up hurriedly with her napkin, gulping down the rest of her cup to prevent further spills, and sputtered, “Today? They’re coming back today?”
“No, tomorrow afternoon at the earliest. Which gives us a much-needed chance to put you in order, to which end—” Serafina pulled Lan’s old nemesis, the black gown with the beaded corset, from the wardrobe with a flourish. “—I have made appointments! You’re welcome. Now hurry and eat.”
Lan tried a little marmalade on her black pudding in the hopes of smothering that nasty aftertaste. It did seem to help and actually tasted pretty good. She had another bite and then another and then, without any warning at all, her mouth dropped open and she yarked it all up into her lap.
Lan had just enough time to register Serafina’s look of shock and to take a short, choking breath, and then she puked again, hard, spraying coffee and bile out her nostrils in twin burning streams. She doubled over, gasping and choking, and puked a third time, making a sound like a barking dog and seeing to her horror just an amazing glut of bright red blood come honking out between her fingers to splatter over her breakfast tray.
“My God!” Serafina said and then dropped her dresses and came running over to seize and steady Lan’s shivering shoulders.
“I think I shit the bed,” said Lan in a small, stunned voice. “I’m so sorry.”
“Never mind that. Come along. Can you stand? Why didn’t you tell me you were really ill?” she demanded in a sudden furious rush, then just as suddenly turned soft and consoling, saying, “Just this way, a few more steps. I’ll clean you up and send for the doctor.”
“Don’t do that. I’m okay,” said Lan and she did feel better, although a bit pale and headachy. “I think I just ate too much too fast.”
“I don’t really care what you think. I never have and if I ever did, it certainly wouldn’t be now. I’m sending for a doctor. My God,” she said again, looking back at the bed with wide, round eyes.
“I’m begging you, don’t! Azrael will find out!”
“Whereas if I don’t and he finds out you’re ill and I did nothing, why, that can only end well!”
“But I was sick when he left!” Lan wailed. “He’ll think I’ve been sick this whole time! He’ll be all noble and concerned and won’t lay a bloody finger on me and he’s been gone forever!”
“Never mind you and your warmblood hormones. Let’s just get you cleaned up. Here, lean on this.” Serafina propped Lan against the wall and started water running in the bath, shooting her nervous glances over her shoulder every few seconds. “You would do this to me today. I swear you plan these things. Are you all right?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t look all right.”
“If you tell me how rotten I look one more time, I’m going to start crying,” Lan said crossly.
That seemed to satisfy her, but as soon as Lan was settled in the bath, Serafina was out of the room and calling down the hall for a guard. Lan was left to bathe herself, which she did just fine. Whatever fit had taken her in the bed seemed to have passed, although she was still a bit achy in places. Mostly what she felt was embarrassment.
When the doctor arrived—the dead one again, thus guaran-damn-teeing Azrael would hear about this—she was out of the bath and toweling off, and except for the taste in her mouth and a lingering burn in her throat and nostrils, she felt right as rain. He looked her over anyway, bow to stern, putting his cold hands just anywhere he felt like it and mm-hmming to himself.
“You were eating, you say?” The doctor moved over to the sheets Serafina had stripped and had a look. “What is this?”
“Coffee and pudding.”
“Pudding? For breakfast?”
“Black pudding,” Lan amplified. “You know. Blood sausage.”
“I see, I see. They make that from pork’s blood, don’t they?” Without waiting for an answer, the doctor nodded and started packing his doctory kit away. “Undercooked pork. Standard stomach complaint. One of the others was off her color after the sausages this morning as well. Must have a word with the kitchen.”
Serafina sniffed. “If you’re speaking of that horrid little child, she was caught in the wine cabinet. The only color she was off was cabernet red.”
The doctor met her sniff and raised her a haughty brow. “And was your mistress also tipping the bottle last night, madam?”
“No,” said Lan.
“So there we have it. Stomach complaint. Inform the kitchen to adjust their standards accordingly unless they want to find themselves taking the air in our lord’s garden.”
Sniffing again, Serafina picked up the soiled bedsheets and wordlessly showed the worst of it to the doctor, particularly the red patches, drying now to brown.
“Yes, I saw the blo
od. Not an uncommon occurrence in episodes of violent vomiting and…and so forth, which you would know if you were a doctor and not a dresser,” he added with a pointed glance. “I’m sure it was startling, but it isn’t serious. In fact, I dare say the most significant aspect of this episode is the timing.” Now he gave Lan the Look.
“You saying I’m codding you on?” Lan asked, more amused than offended, although she was offended.
“Not at all, although if I thought you were, I would very much advise against it. Our lord does not tolerate attention-seeking deceits, even in his favorites. So! Allow her to rest and see to it that she has plenty of tea,” he declared, because Azrael could call this the Purged Lands or the Land of the Beautiful Dead or any old thing he wanted, but it would always only ever be England. “Ginger or licorice. No peppermint, nothing too stimulating.” He paused. “Should I be writing this down?”
“Rest and tea,” Serafina said frostily. “I can remember that, little as it is.”
“Very well. Call me if there’s any change in her condition. Good day, madam.”
“What an ass,” muttered Lan as soon as the door was shut on the doctor’s self-important backside.
Serafina sniffed agreement and pointed Lan toward the wardrobe. “The coral dress, then. You know the one. Let me finish here and I’ll help you with the lacing.”
“What, I’m still going? He just said I’m supposed to rest.”
“You won’t be walking to the tailor, now will you? I’ll have a car! I’ll need one to hold all your gowns,” she added, stripping the bed.
“More gowns?” Lan groaned, but slouched over to the wardrobe and had a look at the pink dress. Ugly bloody thing. She hated pink. She put the yellow one on instead, which was possibly even uglier, but didn’t have a corset. “The ones I have are fine.”
“The ones you have no longer fit properly. I’m certain once our lord sees you, he’ll order your entire wardrobe replaced, but in the meantime, your gowns need to be taken in. You—You’re in the wrong dress,” she finished blackly.
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