Р. Смит - Land of the Beautiful Dead

“Exit the vehicle. Do not resist.”

“It would be unwise to delay me,” the ferryman said, not moving.

“You will not be delayed,” came the reply, with a strong note of contempt underscoring the words. “You will be arrested and, if you are very fortunate, executed. Traffic of the living is forbidden.”

“Is that what you think I’m doing?” the ferryman asked. It sounded as if he might be smiling. Lan felt the van rock slightly as he leaned over, opened a compartment, held something up. “Do you recognize this seal?”

A thin tinkling sound.

“The seal of Lord Solveig,” someone said stiffly. “But it is the law of Azrael I enforce.”

“Do as you must,” replied the ferryman with convincing indifference, “but do not expect to be rewarded. Do you honestly think Lord Solveig entertains himself without his father’s knowledge?”

The wind slipped over Lan’s face, down her neck, under the open collar of her loose shirt. Her nipples felt as hard as rocks. They ached.

The hand released her. The doors shut.

“A wise decision,” the ferryman said. “So wise, I’m sure I don’t even have to tell you not to speak of me or my cargo. Traffic of the living is forbidden, after all. We wouldn’t want to embarrass anyone.”

There was no reply. The van’s engine started. The ferryman rolled the window up, muting the heavy clank and groan as unseen gates were opened. They started moving again.

“Where did you get a fake seal for one of the Children?” Lan asked quietly, still lying down, still with her eyes shut tight.

“It isn’t fake.”

“And you bring him girls?”

“Girls and boys.” The van made a turn. “He’s not particular.”

He took her all the way to the palace, through another gate and past another set of guards, into the enclosing dark of a garage. The ferry slowed and turned again, angling downward, creeping deeper and deeper under the earth, until finally, away from the ever-watchful eyes of the dead, he stopped and let her out.

She’d never been underground before. She didn’t like it—that feeling of removal and enclosure. She couldn’t see the city, but its weight pressed down on her from the very low ceiling. There were lamps strung up along the walls, but they weren’t lit. If not for the headlamps on the ferry, the darkness would have been absolute, as heavy as the unseen city. Every sound echoed large. It smelled of wet brick and rats.

The ferryman waited for her to orient herself, as little as she could in this featureless grave, then pointed into the darkness. Shading her eyes from the glare of the headlamps, she could just make out the slightly lighter color of an otherwise invisible door. “It isn’t locked,” he told her. And told her and told her, as his low voice rolled away and rolled back. “The guards have orders not to watch that hall too closely, but the Children might, particularly Solveig once he hears a delivery came through the wall for him. They’re supposed to take meals with their father, but they can be…defiant.”

“Are there Revenants?” she asked, stretching the road out of her stiff limbs.

“Revenants. Pikemen. Watchers. Even the servants are his guardians at need.”

“How many are there?”

“How many are the dead?” he countered.

He took her rucksack and watched as she adjusted the fit of her knife’s holster under her shirt. He asked her no questions. He showed no interest of any kind. His eyes were as dead as only their eyes could be.

“What’s your name?” she asked. She didn’t know why, really. She just felt like she ought to say something.

The ferryman said, “He never gave me one,” and got back in the van. The engine was a roar, deafening in the close air. Above the red glow of tail-lights, Lan thought she saw the pale face of one of the women looking out, but it could have just as easily been her imagination. She’d had a vivid imagination as a child, although she’d mostly grown out of it. She could remember lying on the camp bed with her mother in the Women’s Lodge in Norwood, staring up into the night and making herself see pictures on that black canvas—ladies in tall towers, men disguised as monsters, monsters as men.

She was not a child anymore.

Lan groped her way to the wall and felt along until she found the door. It was not locked, as promised. The space on the other side was not lit, but it smelled better than the garage and she guessed that was as good a reason as any to go inside. So she did.

It had been impossible to make a plan for this part, in as much as it had been possible to make a plan for any of it, and so she simply walked until she found another unlocked door. It opened into a wide corridor, well lit and more sumptuous than any she had ever seen. The floor was made of wood planks, but polished to a dark amber glow and set so smoothly into one another that it was more like glass than any wood Lan knew. The walls might have been plaster, but there were no cracks or patches, no stains, no degradation of any kind. The smell was fresh and clean, two words Lan knew mostly by reputation. Even the lamps were all working, electric bulbs behind clean glass covers, some of them dripping crystals or set in elaborate holders. The rugs that softened the floor at regular intervals all had perfect edges, deep colors and soft fibers. Everything was decorated, even the hinges on the doors and the plates around the light switches.

Lan wandered, turning where she felt like turning, lingering at every open door to gaze at the riches of each dark, luxurious room. She was in no hurry. There were a thousand winding halls, a hundred echoing stairs, but in the king’s realm, all ways surely led to the throne. It was a pleasant walk, which was the one thing Lan had not anticipated—that she could ever feel wonder as she walked here, that she could ever feel envy. There was so much to see here, so many fine things. After a while, they all seemed to blend together, but Lan had to stop when she saw a familiar face.

A painted face. A portrait. It hung on the wall in a wide place, more a foyer than a hall. Its frame was heavily carved and brushed with gold. Its subject was a woman, her head and upper body anyway. An older woman, her hair like iron and her eyes like steel. Her mouth was smiling, even if nothing else about her was.

It was not quite the same picture that hung on the wall in the sheriff’s office in Norwood, but it was definitely the same woman. Lan had never heard her name, only that she used to be the queen, before Azrael’s ascension. “God save the queen,” Sheriff Neville would say each time he brought out a bottle of the twins’ finest for a quick nip, to which one of his deputies would invariably reply that God hadn’t, God had brought Azrael. So, “God save Azrael,” the sheriff would say and all of them would laugh. When Lan was ten or twelve, an old newssheet picture of Azrael had found its way into a frame and been hung beside the queen’s, but of course, he’d been masked. And now Lan wondered…were there any portraits of him in these halls? And why had he left this one, come to think of it? Why would he, or any conqueror, want reminders of the previous rule?

Distantly, she heard heavy footsteps and although there were numerous doors and cross-halls she might have darted down, she was not here to hide. Lan waited, her heart pounding in spite of her slow, even breaths, and soon enough, two guards marched out of one hall and into hers.

They halted, not quite in unison, and stared at her. They weren’t Revenants, or at least, they weren’t wearing the same uniform as the Revenants in pictures Lan had seen. Similar, maybe, but not the same. Not quite the bog-standard, but much plainer. Both were men and very attractive, although their features were pretty rather than soldierly. Regardless, the pikes they carried and the swords on their belts were shiny and sharp and by no means ornamental.