Land of the Beautiful Dead

She didn’t mean to. She really didn’t. But she froze.

And, after a second or two, so did he.

She felt his breath hot on her throat, made to feel even hotter by the chill radiating from his flesh. She knew she should say something, but the longer the silence lasted, the harder it was to start.

“Later, then,” he said, lifting her off his lap and setting her down—just a bit too hard—on her feet.

“Azrael, it’s not…it’s not you, I swear. It’s just…”

“I know what it is. No matter.” He unbuckled his belt, gesturing to one of the many silent servants lining the walls. “What shall we talk about next? My father? I’ve no idea who he might have been. Or what. If my mother knew, she lost her chance to tell me, so I’m at a loss as to what coin I can use to purchase the next small piece of your compliance. Truthfully, I begin to wonder why I should purchase it at all.”

Lan tugged self-consciously at her skirts as she backed away, unsure where to look as the servant went to her knees before the throne. “It’s just…I’ve never done this before. I mean, sure, this, obviously, but…” She looked up into the crystal lights and down again, taking it all in—every glint of gold and flash of reflected light, the servants, the wine, the throne where the Devil sat, being serviced in a pensive and joyless manner. “Not this.”

“You’ll have to overcome your shyness if you intend to stay,” Azrael said in an unforgiving tone.

“I’m trying.”

“By shrinking from your duties?”

“By getting to know you.”

He didn’t seem to know what to say to that. His gaze dropped, lingering on the bobbing head between his thighs, before his attention returned to his half-finished meal. “Perhaps we should talk about your mother.”

It threw her. Hard.

“Why?”

He looked up, his eyes narrowed and cold. “Is that the way of it? I lay all my secrets bare, you hoard yours? Have I not as much right to know my bedmate as you?”

“So talk about me, not her.”

“Oh.” He propped an elbow on the table and leaned into it. “Oh, but now I think I must. Do you remember her well?”

Lan’s shoulders twitched in a defensive shrug. “She only died a few months ago.”

“Suspicious timing…” Azrael tapped at his cup, then took it up and drank. “And was there some relation between her death and your departure from Norwood?”

“I had no more reason to stay.”

“Did she send you to me?” he asked curiously. “With her last breath, did she bid you leave the squalor of Norwood to seek out the protection of my glorious shadow? Is it possible I knew her?” He reached down to comb his claws once through his servant’s hair as she finished him off and began impersonally to clean him. “Intimately?”

“You killed her.”

“Intimate, indeed. Yet I must repeat, I’ve killed no one in recent years.”

“Your world killed her, your glorious shadow.”

“Ah, well, that is a slightly different matter.” Azrael dismissed his servant with a wave and bound on his loincloth again. “But then, I’ve noticed you are somewhat prone to exaggeration.”

“And you, so dismissive.”

“Modest.” His voice held a smile. “I’m modest. And, as my baser nature is presently satiated, you may as well tell me of your mother. Her terrible youth, a stranger in a dying land, alone and vulnerable. A tragic tale and well-rehearsed, I’m sure. It would be a pity never to find an ear, so eat and tell me of her. Was she pretty?”

“No.”

“You’re baiting me, I think. All children find their mothers pretty.”

“Not mine. She was hard. Scarred.”

“How uncharitable. And untrue, I should think. If you were made at all from your mother’s mold, she must have been fair enough at one time.”

The words ran through her head twice before they came together. “That’s another compliment,” she said, her rising frustration now eclipsed by puzzlement. “Why do you keep complimenting me?”

“Perhaps it amuses me to see you so unmoored by them. Do you much resemble your mother?”

“A little. I don’t know.” She looked down at her platter, trying to remember what her mother looked like enough to compare it to the painted stranger staring up at her. “Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Look like your mother.”

He managed somehow to shrug with only his eyes. “I did once, particularly about the nose and jaw, but every part of her that ever could have been found in me has gone now. And hers were not, you understand, conventionally attractive features.”

“Everyone thinks their mother is pretty,” she reminded him.

“So I did, once. And given the chance, I think I may have continued to believe so, for all her decay. I have learned to look beneath the skin for beauty.”

She snorted.

He looked at her.

“Your children are awfully pretty,” she told him.

His eyes narrowed behind the mask.

“So are your guards.”

“Hm.”

“And your musicians. And your servants. And your chamberlain. And your ferrymen, for that matter. If you brought the bloke whose job it is to unblock the toilets here, I bet you a year’s labor he’d be pretty.”