Land of the Beautiful Dead

“Get out, all of you. Simpering fools. Magpies. Get out! No, not you!” she snapped as the handmaidens holding Lan released her and began to bow away. “You get about your work.”

Lan was taken to a great white room, whiter than anything she’d ever seen before, whiter even than fresh snow, but it was a cold whiteness rather than a clean one. Opulent, of course, all crystals and vases and glittering edges, but strange and untouchable. Her eye could not seem to find a lighting place until she turned and unexpectedly met with a mirror hung in three panels on the wall. Real mirrors and not just shiny metal, with white and gold etching all around their edges to form a single picture in three parts of a river with trees and deer. In them, Lan saw herself so vividly that, even knowing it was a mirror, she initially thought she was looking at another person.

She saw a woman, one so much older than she was, a woman with only the most surface resemblance to herself. Dirty brown hair that would wash out to a deep honey color if it was ever washed; sunken eyes that could be green or blue depending on where she was (in this white room lit with electric lights, they were grey); a pale, fine-boned face with smudges of dirt to add unneeded depth to her high cheekbones and wind-chapped patches to give her color. It might have been a pretty face in another time and place. Here in Haven, it was the very definition of drab and Lan found her reflection’s stare too direct, too knowing, to meet for long.

She could not guess the purpose of the room, except maybe just to look pretty, which, given that this was Azrael’s palace, was not out of the question, but she must have been brought here for a better reason than just to see it. There was a deep depression in one corner, the most recognizable of the room’s features, and it was there that Lan was aimed, but it was not until one of the handmaidens started water flowing that she truly understood. She was to be bathed. Not just scrubbed off or given a basin to wash in, but bathed, and if that were not frivolous enough, this entire room had been built solely to house the bath.

“One would think I had just shown you my father’s killing garden, the way you look.” Lady Batuuli moved past her to sit on a padded bench by the wall. “Is it not exquisite? Resplendent? Inspiring? Come now, give me a superlative I’ve not heard and you shall have a biscuit.”

“It’s a waste.”

“It is indeed. Such a pragmatic mind you have to appreciate that.” Lady Batuuli put out her hand. A fluted glass of wine was placed in it. She sipped once, then opened her hand and let the glass fall, shatter, and stain the whiteness of this room with a spreading pool of blood-red wine. “I’ve come to think of it as my father’s vanity given physical dimensions,” she said as her handmaidens divided—some to continue preparing Lan and the rest to clean away the wine and broken glass. “He’s made us all his mirrors in Haven. And his masks. But it is rather a rude observation, so you shall not have a biscuit after all.”

Lan turned away to watch the bath fill.

“I suppose the more civilized flourishes are rather overwhelming to one of your upbringing, but you might at least pretend indifference, for my sake. You can’t imagine how galling it is to see you simple folk stand in surroundings such as these and gape at a hot water faucet. That’s enough,” Batuuli said with a wave. “Undress her.”

One handmaiden halted the flow of water as magically as it had started and two others stepped up immediately.

Lan backed away fast, clutching at her shirt-front with both hands. “I don’t need help!”

Batuuli sighed and said, “If she won’t remove them, cut them off.”

“You can’t cut off my clothes!”

“Your clothes?” Batuuli tipped her head in what could only be an acid imitation of her father. “I was talking about your hands.”

Lan was reasonably sure she didn’t mean that…but she let go of her shirt and let the others undress her.

Batuuli deliberately lowered her gaze and studied Lan’s naked body as it was exposed. Her lips pursed. “Truly, my father’s standards are not what they once were…and they were never all that high to begin with. What do you suppose he sees in you?”

“Sex,” Lan said through clenched jaws.

“No, no. There are far more attractive options…shall we say, open?…to him. He may not be very discriminating, but he doesn’t want for a whore when the mood falls over him. There must be dozens of them waiting on his whim here in Haven, hundreds who come begging at the wall every year. He has his pick of holes to plumb, so there must be something about yours that appeals to him. You can get rid of those,” she told the handmaiden holding Lan’s clothes.

“What am I supposed to wear then?”

“Oh, I’m apparently happy to find something appropriately prurient for you. Or rather, Ariel is. Go on,” she said, waving, and one of her handmaidens went. “You needn’t fear being forced to go naked through the halls, assuming you stay on for any length of time. My father likes to dress his dolls.”

Lan tried hard not to react to that—it was just a word, wasn’t it? Words didn’t matter—but she must have because Batuuli’s smile grew teeth.