Land of the Beautiful Dead

“So is he, if the truth be known. Oh look, I’ve shocked them,” she said as her handmaidens all glanced at her together. “That doesn’t happen very often anymore. But it’s true, you know. He raised us up to be his children only because he never thought to raise us up to be his whores. Then the war, the hungering dead, his Haven…and that woman. The bloodstains weren’t yet washed from the floors and there she was. ‘Spare me, my lord,’” Batuuli said, now in a piping, lowland voice, “‘and I’ll be yours.’ Ha. Nothing suspicious in that, is there? But he took her. He was trembling when he led her through the gate. Trembling. Can you imagine? How many thousands of years he’s lived, how many ages of the Earth, and never known a woman? God, it must have been like fucking a baboon.”

The three handmaidens withdrew and the other three came forward, each one with a different gown—one black, one blue and one deep red.

“Which one should I wear?” Lan asked.

“I hardly think it matters. You won’t be in it long. He took the first one right there in the foyer—no, not the black, it makes you look like a corpse. He has enough of those to look at—and all of us in the rooms beyond, pretending not to hear him grunting and thumping about. And of course it ended badly,” she sighed, rolling her eyes. “He was so eager to get stuck in that he never stopped to think she might have something to stick in him. Not that it did any good. He can’t be killed. In the stories, the ogre always has a weakness, the dragon that one soft scale, but not Father. She did it all for nothing.”

“Why do you hate him?” Lan asked bluntly, lifting her legs one at a time so the shoes that accompanied the dress could be fit, if they could even be called shoes. They were no more than cloth covers for her feet, glittering with golden thread and black crystals, but thin enough that she could feel the grooves between the tiles through them.

“Why should I not?”

“No, really. Look around. He—” Lan sputtered as the blue gown was dropped over her head. When she’d thrashed her arms through the sleeves and could see again, Batuuli was watching her with her beautiful, poisonous smile. “He’s given you everything,” Lan insisted, undaunted. “Do you even know what you have here? Do you have any idea what it’s like outside of Haven?”

“Whatever you think he’s taken from you, he’s taken more from me. Far more.” Batuuli smile thinned, took on edges, but her voice did not reflect them. Her words were soft, like the fabric clinging to Lan’s clean, sweetly-scented body. “I had a life once. A home. Family, friends, maybe lovers. He denied me all. He raised me without memory. He gave me the only name I know, taught me the only languages I speak. It is this creature, this thief of life, I must call father, knowing nothing of what he took from me, only that he took it. Tighter,” she told the handmaiden lacing Lan’s bodice, so that Lan’s next breath was a cough of surprise. “But I did love him once, you know,” Batuuli went on. “Do you know why?”

She was waiting, so Lan had to answer, even if it was just a wild, breathless shake of her head.

“Because I had to. Because he had made himself our whole world and we knew no better. For a time. Tell me, were you happy in Norwood?” she asked. “Were you happy tending your trees in the ruins of the world?”

Lan said nothing. The handmaidens draped her neck with delicate chains and pinned down her unruly hair with glittering combs.

Batuuli nodded as if Lan had answered. “Because you knew no better. It was only after you saw what you had lost that you thought to miss it. Why should it be different for me? Because I have this?” She waved contemptuously at the white room swallowing them. “This fine cage? These beautiful fetters? You think because I have these things, I do not deserve to grieve for what I’ve lost? Or hate him who took it?” Batuuli waited while Lan’s face was painted, then uttered a short, sharp laugh and said, “Well? Answer! Or are you like all my father’s dogs, who must be told what to think?”

“I think you only hate him because he lets you,” said Lan and Batuuli’s smile vanished. “And I think you stay because beneath all that hate, you know you used to love him and of all the things you’ve lost, that’s the thing you miss most. That’s what I think.”

Lady Batuuli’s chin lifted. Gracefully, she rose and came three light, quick steps forward, stopping close enough that they could have kissed. “You can think what you like, but you would do well to mind what you say.” Each word puffed against Lan’s lips; Batuuli’s breath was cold and tasted vaguely of wine. “Your time will come and go, warmblood. I am eternal. And I can make your suffering last years.”

“You asked,” Lan reminded her.

Batuuli’s dead eyes narrowed. A moment later, she smiled. “So I did. But it appears you are ready for my father’s bed, so we really have nothing more to talk about, do we?” Without waiting for an answer, without turning her head, she said, “Celestine.”