Р. Смит - Land of the Beautiful Dead

He was so young, or had been when he’d died. Younger even than Lan, maybe. She looked at him and tried to see someone’s son, someone’s older brother, someone’s sweatheart gone away to war and never returned…but couldn’t. He was a Revenant now, whatever he’d been in life.

“I require a vanguard of Revenants sent to Norwood,” Azrael said, breaking Lan from her sickened fascination. “Bring back peaches.”

“At once, lord,” said the Revenant, bending his neck in a curt bow.

Lan unthinkingly lunged to intercept the Revenant as he marched away, but her way was immediately blocked by crossed pikes. She swung on Azrael next and was forced to her knees before she managed a single step. “Stop it!” she shouted, straining against the pikemen who held her so easily. “You can’t do this! You can’t kill them!”

“I assure you, I can,” said Azrael, not without humor. “Yet my Revenants do not kill without provocation. They go to offer my continued benevolence in exchange for a token showing of submission, no more than can be spared. For this, they shall be reviled and assaulted, and therefore entirely justified in the slaughter to come. Those of Norwood will earn their fates, as do all who stand against me.”

Before reason could shut her mouth, her temper surged and spat out, “Murderer!”

The dead don’t breathe, yet candles guttered all around the room as members of his court gasped, either playing at shock or genuinely gripped by long-buried living instincts. They watched her, tense and silent, all except the musicians, who merely played on. Azrael himself merely huffed out a muted sort of laugh behind his mask and favored her with a tolerant glance. “You have a strange way of seeking favors.”

She blushed, breathing hard, hating herself. After everything she’d done to get here, how could she have made such a mess of it already? In minutes only, she’d betrayed Norwood, insulted Azrael, lost everything.

But he was in no hurry to have her executed, it seemed. At his gesture, the hands at her neck and shoulders released their grip and slowly, Lan stood.

He beckoned.

She did not move.

His head cocked. He beckoned again and when she continued to stand, he let his hand fall and drummed his fingers once on the tabletop. He gazed at her a long time without moving as the rest of his court whispered among themselves and the guards lining the walls shifted and waited for his orders. At last, he said, calmly, “Do not imagine for one moment if you are fearless, if you are defiant, you will win my interest. Every man, and yes, every woman, who comes before me believes they are the first to show me insolence, that I will be somehow charmed by their rebellious spirit. That I will admire their strength and, through that newfound admiration, learn what it is to be human and show mercy.”

He leaned forward over the table, lacing his fingers together and resting his chin atop them. “Do you know the one thing I have never seen a human show me in our first meeting? Hm? Respect. Not the respect of a conquered people for their conquering god, that would be asking a great deal, I think. Merely the respect of one stranger to another, a guest in my house.”

She would not flinch. She would not drop her eyes. She would not back down and most of all, she would not bow. She was Lan of Norwood and she was not afraid.

She said, “It’s not your house.”

The people of his court murmured. Azrael did nothing. Even if he had not been wearing the mask, she doubted his expression would be much changed.

“If it were invalid to claim the lands taken through force, Men would have no homes at all. You,” he said, now seeming to lose interest in her and transfer it instead to his wine. “Where came you by your shoes?”

“What?”

“Your shoes.”

Lan looked at them foolishly, then up at him again. “I bartered for them.”

“From?”

“Posey Goode.”

“And where did she get them?”

The teeth of the trap were suddenly visible. Lan could feel her hands wanting to tighten into fists and had to force them to stay open. “From a ferryman.”

“And where,” Azrael asked calmly, “would he have found them?”

If he thought she wouldn’t answer, just because he was right…

“He got them off a dead man, I reckon,” she said and never dropped her eyes.

Neither did he. “Take them off, then. They aren’t yours.”

Lan did not move.

“So, we are agreed. Possession is law.” He resettled in his throne and took a deep swallow of wine, then smiled at her, broadly and without malice. “You are in my house, child, and I have been a gracious host to an uninvited guest, but my grace is at an end.” Signaling to the guards behind her, he turned his attention back to the musicians. “Nevertheless, your invasion here tonight was as courageous an act as it was impertinent and I have a whim to reward it. You will have an escort to Haven’s borders and safe transport beyond to the destination of your choosing. Within reason.”

The guards took impersonal hold of her arms. Lan kept her gaze fixed on Azrael. “I haven’t had my audience.”

“Neither are you owed one,” Azrael said. “You have seen me and will live to tell the tale once you are safely returned to your land. That is honor enough.”

“I’m not leaving until you’ve heard me.”

The royal guards bristled, their cool fingers digging at her with supernatural strength. Behind her, the orchestra came to the end of their song and began another. Azrael swirled the wine in his cup and said, “Mercy is not lightly offered in this court and should not be lightly spurned.”

Lan lifted her chin. “You have to hear me out.”

“I…have to.” Azrael tapped idly at the rim of his goblet, seemingly unaware of the whispers of the watching courtiers, but plainly very much aware of Lan’s trembling. At length, he stirred and waved one dismissive hand. “Leave us.”

His command had no clear intended recipient; all obeyed. The music halted mid-note as the band gathered their instruments. The waiters stopped serving, put down their platters and ewers, and returned to the kitchen. The dead court withdrew, all their colors and the rustling of their fine clothes making them seem like a flock of birds startled into flight. The door-keeper shut the doors and they were alone.

In the quiet of this empty room, the smallest noise scraped the ear. Lan’s breath, the rustling of her clothes, the pounding of her heart—Azrael heard and judged them all with the same unblinking stare.

At last, he leaned back in his throne; she could hear his body creaking as he moved, the sound of a leather glove drawn into a fist. His hand toyed briefly with his cup and then lifted. Beckoned.

Unsure, she took a step. Just one.

“To me,” he said, with what might have been a small sigh. “I want a better look at you. And you want a better look, I think, at me.”

Did she? Her feet rooted, but her heart raced even faster. Some people said he had no face, that beneath the masks, he was only a broken shell filled with fire. Others said he had the head of a snake or a jackal or a swarm of spiders. Or that he wore human faces nailed onto his own skull—a mask beneath the mask—and that beneath that, there was only darkness. And these were just the whispers in Norwood and at hostels along the road. Who knew how many other thousands of rumors there were across the world? Did she really want to know the truth? Could she know and still say what she’d come here to say?

Lan was not entirely aware just when she started walking. She only knew that somehow she was drifting toward him, pulled in as if by his will alone.

— no true eyes, only a pale glow set in deep sockets, like twin stars in an empty sky —