Р. Смит - Land of the Beautiful Dead

She was not aware that she had somehow stopped walking until Batuuli came back for her, rousing her from her fascination by snapping her fingers before Lan’s face. She startled, one hand instinctively drawing back in a fist while the other twitched back, reaching for the knife under her shirt before she remembered herself. “Sorry,” she said, but Batuuli had already turned and was walking away.

Although her thoughtless gesture was not worthy of Batuuli’s attention, it had certainly drawn other eyes. Not Azrael’s, his never left the stage, but Lord Solveig raised a hand to silence the chatter at his table and smiled at her.

She knew him at once, as she’d known Batuuli. She had seen him many times, in the pages of magazines, before folk stopped printing them. He had been at Azrael’s right hand when his army had walked out of the Channel that winter’s day and first set foot on British soil; she had seen him with his clothes hanging damp and his hair slicked and dripping, puking his lungs empty as he pulled himself from the water. She had seen him on the streets of Haven, before it was Haven, on a mountain of rubble that used to be homes, stabbing a bayonet into some dark nook where a tiny arm reached blindly out for light. She had seen him on the day Azrael took the palace, years before she was even born, and he looked just the same.

Now he sat in a high-backed chair with one leg thrown carelessly over its gilded arm, surrounded by dead men and women as beautiful as he, eating food he didn’t need and drinking wine instead of boiled water, smiling at her, but he said nothing. He looked at his father and waited.

His was one of only three tables that lined the eastern wall, larger and more elaborately appointed than those they faced, which were themselves noticeably richer than those in the southern end of the hall. Odd that his Children should be seated here and not with him at the imperial table, where there was more than enough room, but then, where would their retinue sit? There were eight at Lord Solveig’s table and twelve at Batuuli’s, which table Lan identified not only by the empty chair at its center, but by Batuuli’s handmaidens taking up position behind it, making up a backdrop of lithesome bodies and filmy white tunics.

The last of Azrael’s three Children sat alone, neither pretending to eat the food nor enjoy the music. Lady Tehya had no companions to fill the empty chairs around her, although she had handmaidens of a sort—a half-dozen dead children painted white to look like statues. Like her father, she went masked, although hers was painted to look like a fine doll’s: bone white, with dark lining around the eyes, a perfect heart of a mouth, and two startling pink circles for cheeks. She raised her head as Lan walked by, and as their eyes met, Lady Tehya reached up and removed her porcelain mask; the face beneath was painted just the same, but cracked all over. And then she realized it wasn’t paint. Tehya’s face…was broken. Her skin, smooth and white and clean, had been shattered the same as one of the mayor’s fine plates and mended again, just like a plate, with glue.

Lan was not aware of shying away until she bumped the arm of her guard. The dead man gave her a shove to put her back in line, so that she stumbled hard against her other guard, who also shoved her. Down she went on her hands and knees, but she’d hardly hit the floor before she was hauled roughly up, not quite to her feet, so that she couldn’t walk at all but had to be dragged.

Lady Batuuli reached the end of the aisle and went to her empty chair, ignoring her father, who ignored her. Lan’s guards continued on another few steps before they finally set Lan on her feet, only to knock them out from under her. One of them put a hand on the back of her neck, forcing her to bow as she knelt on her throbbing knees. Lan peeked up through her hair as best she could, trying hard not to resist, but Azrael paid her no attention. From behind the sockets of his mask, white light glowed; if that was his gaze, it remained fixed on the orchestra. The clawed finger of one hand tapped time as he listened to the music, acknowledging neither his fidgeting guards nor the living Lan between them. Now and then, he used a knife and fork to cut a bite from one of the many platters orbiting the golden-roasted pig’s head dominating the imperial table.

The musicians played on and on. Slow and plunky, not Lan’s style. The flute in particular hit on her ear like a tiny barbed hammer, although she didn’t think that was the player’s fault. She appeared quite absorbed in her playing, not at all nervous and certainly not unskilled. Lan just didn’t care for the tune. Which was fine. They weren’t performing for her.

At length, Azrael’s attention began to wander. Toward Lady Batuuli first, who ignored him, then to the pikemen flanking Lan, and finally to Lan herself. He raised one hand, palm up, and crooked a claw in silence. Four hands closed on Lan at once, pulling her up and jostling her between them in a circle so that she was fully displayed to their lord’s inspection. Azrael sipped at his wine while his unblinking gaze moved, point by point, all the way down to her shoes and all the way back up to her hair. The voice that at last rolled out was, like his hands, cracked and grey and edged in points. “Who is this?”

Freed at last to notice her, nearly every head at every table turned. The musicians played on.

The guard on Lan’s left bowed low. “The human you requested, lord.”

“Oh?” Azrael took up his golden cup and scraped a thumbclaw along the rim. “How odd that I do not recall making such a request.”

“I’ve come to—” Lan began, but had to stop there when he held up a silencing hand.

“Where did you find our guest?”

“In the west hall, my lord,” the guard answered, now distinctly nervous.

“The west hall…of the palace?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Lord Azrael,” said Lan. “I’ve come a long way to—”

“And you brought her…here?” Azrael leaned forward with a narrowed gaze and just a hint of humor about his mouth. “Have I offended you in some fashion? Are you unhappy with my rule?”

“My lord?”

Two more guardsmen were coming toward them, silent in the few shadows of this luxuriant room, stalking Lan’s escorts like hungry cats.

“I have given you the gift of this enduring life and the honor of serving me, and you have never given me cause to regret that decision, yet when you find an assassin in my home and you elect to bring her within killing distance of her target, that can only be an act of incompetence or betrayal. Which is it?”

“I’m not an assassin.”

“Be silent or be silenced,” Azrael said, never taking his eyes off her guards. “You were not raised for this duty. I understand that you may not have the aptitude for it. And that…that is my failing. But you have served me well until now. I am disposed to be lenient. What punishment, therefore, seems fitting to you?”

The two dead men, now with guards of their own at their backs, could only stand in the glow of those eyes. One of them thought to say, “Forgive us, lord,” but the other merely bent his neck and closed his eyes.

“Forgive? No. Offenses—” His eyes moved to Lady Batuuli. “—must be addressed. Would you not agree, daughter?”

“What matter my opinion?”

“Did they not come in your company?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps they came at my command, is that what you think?” Batuuli breathed out a cool laugh and tasted her wine. “I cannot walk in the arboretum without earning your rebuke, yet you think I can hire out for assassins at will?”

“I’m not—”

Azrael pointed at her without taking his eyes from his daughter. Lan shut her mouth and calmed her rising frustration with deep breaths.