She didn’t believe him, but he said it with such calm intensity that she could feel her certainty shaken. Of course he’d done it. Who else could have?…but if he had, why hadn’t he done it since? Why fight as he’d done, with Revenants and Eaters, if he could just wave his hand and bring down the poison rain?
“Where did it come from, then?” she asked.
He glanced at her, frowning, then up at the window, and finally stared into his cup again. “It was the consequence of the last weapons fired against me. No doubt you would have found it inspiring, to see all the peoples of the world united in the murder of me, their conviction such that they chose to risk the poisoning of every man, woman and child who might survive the inferno rather than submit to my ascension. Ah well. Perhaps it was not deliberate. Perhaps its effects surprised even those who approved its use. Perhaps they regretted it when they saw what they had done.” His mouth twisted into another of those bitter smiles. “They regretted it enough to blame me. Yet Man survived, as Man does, and the stain that he left upon the sky is already much less than it was.” He looked at her again, still smiling. “So it is the living rumor of my power, is it? Mm. When it fades away entirely, will Men credit my mercy?”
“They might,” Lan said, trying to appear casual by spreading butter on a small loaf she didn’t even have room to eat. “If you made more merciful gestures.”
“Such as surrendering the dead to die?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Yes, you’ve kept your end of the bargain to the letter of the words by which it was struck, all the while attacking its spirit. You’ve the makings of a natural diplomat.”
“Thanks. When do I get my audience?”
“This evening, following dinner.”
“Evening?” Lan twisted in her chair to check a window. It didn’t face east, so she couldn’t see the sun, but she could tell just by the color of the overcast sky that it wasn’t even mid-morning yet. “Oh for… Can’t we just get to it?”
He had started to raise his cup to his lips. Now he paused. His fingers tightened. He set it down again without drinking. “Impatient, are we?” he said, affecting a dry tone, but it was an affectation and, hearing it, Lan’s cheeks burned.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said, picking over the food that remained on her plate. “We can keep talking.”
“Much as I enjoy your company, alas, other matters require my attention.”
“Like what?”
“Civil affairs. The minutiae of managing a city such as Haven.” He gestured vaguely at everything, nothing. “The demands upon my days are many.”
Lan frowned, her curiosity scratching through her frustration in spite of herself. “Like what?” she asked again. “Maybe I could help if I knew what the problem is.”
“Anything is possible, I suppose, but why would you?”
“Isn’t that how this works? I do for you, you do for me?”
He uttered a low laugh, then suddenly shoved his throne back and stood. Circling around the table, Azrael descended the dais with his eyes fixed and unblinking, staring her down like a predator. Her hand tightened on her knife; she put it down and watched him come. When he reached her, he put one huge, scarred hand on the back of her chair and the other on the table before her, effectively trapping her between his arms as he bent low and pinned her in the white light of his stare. In a voice as soft and as ominous as a distant roll of thunder, he said, “Do what you will, you will never have what you want of me.”
“Never is a long time,” she said. Her voice shook only a little. Her gaze never broke. She could be proud of that, at least.
“Longer than you know.” He straightened, taking away the oppressive non-weight of his body looming over her and the very real heat that had come throbbing through the sockets of his mask where his inhuman eyes burned. “You will never have what you want of me,” he said again, lightly now, “yet it remains you may still have much. Come now, what is it you truly desire? A more comfortable room? Servants? Jewels? Let us negotiate terms. I offer safety and shelter you will never find elsewhere in the world.”
“That’s why I have to keep asking. Because safety and shelter ought to be everywhere.”
“You are going to be a challenge, aren’t you? So be it. Guards!”
“Back to the garden?” she guessed, already standing.
“That should please you, but no. I haven’t the time, nor indeed the temper, to deal with you now. Perhaps a taste of the luxuries I can provide will sweeten your demeanor when we meet again.” He turned his attention to the pikemen approaching the dais. “Take her to Lady Batuuli. Inform my daughter I trust her to see to it that my guest is comfortably prepared for her audience tonight.”
“I can prepare myself.”
Azrael rolled a dismissive eye over her. “All evidence to the contrary.”
Lan brushed crumbs self-consciously from her shirt-front and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand.
“In any case, you are here on a diplomatic endeavor and as such, you are obliged to accept my hospitality. Batuuli despises me,” Azrael added, “so she may not even receive you, but I think she will. No doubt it will amuse her to meet you and so measure the declining quality of my concubines.”
“No doubt,” Lan said caustically, getting up and pretending not to see the way the pikemen immediately closed in around her. “I’ll see you tonight then.”
“I look forward to it.” He dismissed her with a wave and returned to his throne.
One of Lan’s escorts gave her a nudge, but she lingered, watching Azrael beckon a servant over to top off his wine and another to offer him a selection of pasties. “I thought you said you had stuff to do.”
He gazed at her while his servants cleared Lan’s dishes and took her uneaten food away. “Enjoy my daughter’s company, if you can,” he said at last, then shifted his eyes to his guards. Hands closed unyieldingly on her arms and they started walking, leaving Azrael to finish his meal alone.
CHAPTER FOUR
Lady Batuuli did receive her. In fact, she seemed more annoyed by the knock on her door than by the command Lan’s escorts delivered, dismissing them with an impatient nod and a snap of her fingers to summon Lan to her, although as soon as those fine doors were shut, she let out a sudden (and still beautiful) scream: “Is there no end to his pettiness?” Seizing some elegant sculpture unfortunate enough to be within reach, she smashed it against the wall and kicked the larger of its scattered pieces at what remained of one of the guards who had first brought Lan into the dining hall. Flayed, burned and still breathing, he hung impaled on a spear set in a marble pedestal and watched Batuuli exhaust her rage. “Must I now perfume his whores to prove my filial obedience?”
“I can leave if you want.”
“You can be silent!” Batuuli spat, rounding on her with her hands in beautiful claws. “Save your tongue for my father!”
“Did I hear someone mention whores?”
Lady Batuuli straightened at once, raising one eyebrow but not bothering to turn around as the door to an adjoining room opened and her brother came through it. He paid the devastation to Batuuli’s odds and ends an inquisitive glance before his gaze lit on Lan.
“Ah,” he said, and in that one word was whole volumes of smirking, pornographic prose.
Lan did not back away as he came for her. It was a mistake. Not content merely to loom over her, he unexpectedly seized her in his arms and swung her around, loudly and melodiously humming. There was nothing to catch herself on, nothing to anchor herself to but the dead man who had swept her into this unwanted dance. Stumbling and whirling, she struggled to free herself as he twirled with her too fast and too wild, until he came to a sudden, disorienting stop and pulled her right up close to his mouth.