Lan pressed her lips together and said nothing.
“Both have been tried, of course.” Azrael removed the knife from his throat and studied it with amused contempt. “By greater blades than this. I have been cleaved by swords with names as fine and lineages as noble as the men who wielded them. In every bygone age, I have met with heroes who have learned to their loss—” He touched the tip of the blade to his arm and drew it slowly downward. His flesh parted; black blood welled like beads of tar, too thick to fall. “—I do not die.”
“I didn’t come here to kill you.”
“Witness all the same.” He moved the knife back to his chest, glanced at her, then pushed it in as deep as it would go. “I’ve found it saves time.” He released the hilt, gestured to it. “Twist, if you desire.”
She shook her head, her hands in fists.
“So be it.” He pulled the knife out and tossed it into her plate. The blade was smeared black, but he did not bleed. “You cannot wound me. You might open every vein, but you will never bring my life gushing out. My flesh may tear, but it does not burn and does not decay. My bones do not break. The heart you seek to pierce—”
“I do not.”
“—beats in time with this world’s own ageless pulse. It feels no love, no remorse and no mercy, and it will never stop.”
“I’m not here to kill you, damn it!”
“No. Plainly, you have come on a diplomatic mission. One for which you are uniquely unqualified.”
Lan flushed. “I just want to talk!”
“You forget I am familiar with the way humans ‘talk’.” The word was a curse in his mouth, even if he smiled as he said it. “I have been a supplicant to Men. I endured without protest every indignity they inflicted as my ‘show of faith’. I allowed them to bare my body, to fondle it and indeed, to enter it. And when they satisfied themselves that I was utterly unarmed, these men of peace brought out their weapons and emptied them into me. I survived it, as I survive all things, and gave them better deaths than they deserved, I dare say. So this was done and so I went in to the audience I had earned, allowing those men, who had surely given the killing order to their slaves, every opportunity to treat with me honestly. I made my demands—You will note I do not say I asked,” he added with an arch sidelong glance. “With the bodies of their minions strewn about the tent still choked with the smoke from their weapons and dewed with my blood, they gave me every agreement even as they made plans to invade the prison they had not yet set me in and butcher the children they had not yet given me. This is how the living ‘talk’…with smiles and lies.”
Lan shook her head and stared at the wall, clenching her jaws tight together to keep from spitting out something else she knew she’d only regret.
“Have you nothing else to say?”
“You’ve already decided not to listen.”
“One wonders how you could have expected anything else.” He gazed around the empty room, then moved past her and headed for the door. When he opened it, the hall beyond was lined with guardsmen as deep as Lan could see. Azrael gestured toward them. “If your appetite returns in my absence, by all means, stay and eat your fill, child. When you are finished, my men will see you safely to the town of your choosing. I advise you to stay well clear of Norwood.” He turned to the first of his guards. “Food and water for her journey. If she has other requests, inform me.”
“Wait!” She ran after him, but had to stop at the door, where two guards crossed their pikes before her.
Azrael did stop, although he did not turn to look at her. “You are proving an unruly guest,” he warned. “Take care lest you become unwelcome.”
“I’m not going anywhere until we talk!” Lan pushed futilely at a pike, but it was no more yielding than the dead man who held it. In frustration, she slapped at the door itself, making little noise but hurting her hand. “You have to listen!”
“You command me nothing.”
“People are dying! The war is over and you’re still killing us!”
“The war?” Now Azrael turned, head lowered like that of a bull about to charge. “I desired no war. My demands were small. There need never have been any conflict. After my age of solitude, I sought only companionship. Did I demand a tithe of virgins? Did I raid them for their favored firstborn? No! I raised up their unwanted ones, the merest handful, to reside with me in peace. I was content to be imprisoned, content to live with my Children under their watch until the end of Time itself, if that was their pleasure. No one need ever have suffered for it. No one need ever have lain eyes on them or my terrible self again. Yet they defied me. They lured me out for talk and they slaughtered my helpless Children where they stood, too innocent even to know to scream. Now you dare to come before me protesting the war they began, the war they demanded!”
“When is it going to be enough?” she countered. “How many millions of lives equal the few you lost, the few you stole from their families, stole right out of their graves?”
“Enough!” Azrael turned to his guards. “Take her to the meditation garden. Perhaps a night in chains will improve our guest’s manners.”
The guards obeyed at once, each taking one of her arms in a firm grip. Clearly, struggle was expected, but she went with them in spite of their pulling, not because of it. As she passed Azrael, standing in the hall with his arms folded across his scarred chest, she said, “I’m not giving up. I won’t leave. You’ll have to kill me to get rid of me.”
He tsked behind his expressionless mask. “I don’t doubt your conviction, child, yet a worldly traveler such as yourself ought to have been made aware that killing is not what I am known for.”
CHAPTER THREE
As promised, Lan spent the night in chains, affixed to a support in such a manner that she was forced to kneel with her hands behind her back and her head bent. It had hurt for a few hours, but she’d since acclimated some and let the support take her weight, so now she was mostly just stiff. Her legs from the knees down were numb, but although she dreaded having to move and wake them up, she was perfectly aware that her discomforts were petty ones, particularly given her present company.
It was a cold night, but the meditation garden in Azrael’s palace had high walls all around that cut most of the wind and there was a fire burning not far from Lan that kept her fairly warm even during the worst hours. The fire was a man. He had been soaked in some kind of oil before his impalement, so that he burned through the night with low greenish flames that put out columns of greasy smoke. Now, the man was little more than a charred lump with the suggestion of legs, one arm, a node of a head. Lan could hear crackling as he shifted, struggling either to free himself or come after her, but she did not watch him. The stink of burnt flesh blew into her face all night; she thought of her mother and, much as she fought not to, sometimes she cried.
The burning man was only one of three that shared the garden with her. As the sun came up in the bruised sky, she could see them better. One was a scrawny teenager with short hair and a flat chest, most likely a boy. The hands were bound behind his (for the sake of argument) back, frozen into claws. It had been a simple impalement; the spike itself was little more than an accent to the scene—hidden behind the man’s bound legs with no more than a few inches protruding through his broken teeth. It hadn’t been a quick death and it was an even worse way to come back. As an Eater, he wasn’t even aware of the spike that pinned him in place. He only knew that Lan was there, living meat bafflingly out of reach, but a hungry stare and slow writhing was all he could manage and it was easy enough to ignore him.