Never mind. It didn’t matter. She had a job to do and she could do it naked or dressed or anywhere in between. Keep focus, that was the important thing. Eat dinner with Azrael (she was hungry), dolly up with him after (remember not to kiss him), and do it right this time (maybe he’d let her sleep in his nice, dry bed).
The servant was waiting for her on the landing with a light, which he held up so that he could look her over and make sure she saw his disapproval before he headed downstairs. He did not speak to her again or even glance back to see if she was following. The guards posted outside the dining hall uncrossed their pikes at her approach, but Azrael’s steward seemed surprised to see her.
“At my lord’s request,” Lan’s escort said in response to the steward’s obvious uncertainty, and after a tense moment more, the steward nodded and the doors were opened.
Dinner was well underway and the noise of the dead court’s pretended revelry was tremendous, but not for long. As soon as Lan entered the hall, those at the lesser tables saw her and stopped talking, prompting those seated further north to look around and also stop talking. In this way, the quiet rippled outward until the entire hall was watchful and silent. Lan’s escort left her frozen at the center of their stares and continued on up the aisle to take his place with the rest of Lord Solveig’s valets, of which he was clearly one, now that she could see them all together. And it was Solveig who started the applause, but that got picked up too, so that Lan soon stood alone and foolish at one end of a long tunnel of deafening handclapping, staring up at the empty imperial table where Azrael was nowhere in evidence.
“My dear rumpled dove!” Solveig called, coming to collect her. “My delightful little disaster, how good of you to join me! We missed you so at breakfast! Father can be such a bore about keeping his toys to himself.”
She wasn’t supposed to be here. Lan backed up a step, then turned around and tried to leave, only to see the doors shut against her.
“There now, don’t be shy,” Solveig said, taking her arm. “Father won’t mind. No, he likes it when his Children and his warmbloods get on. And how pretty you look in that frock! Well…relatively. Do you like it?”
“Where’s Azrael?”
“To be honest, you look awful,” Solveig said, ignoring the question as he led her up the aisle. “Father can be a brute, can’t he? But I’m sure some of it can be smoothed over. Come now, sit at my table. Fido will give you his seat, there’s a good dog.”
One of his courtiers got up and stood aside, holding his chair and even pushing it in for her as she sat down. Solveig plucked the sparkly combs from another courtier’s hair and used them to bind Lan’s up. In another moment, they were all around her, offering their jewels or adjusting her dress or even rubbing their make-up off with their fingers and smearing it on her.
It was too much. She tried to sit still for it and couldn’t, but saying no brought on laughter and when she squirmed, they just held her down. Their hands were everywhere—on her face, in her hair, down the front of her dress to fluff her breasts like pillows, up her skirts to massage perfume into her thighs—and their smiling, sneering, beautiful faces shrieking gleefully in her ears, until suddenly, they weren’t.
“That’s better,” said Solveig, taking his chair as Lan sprang out of hers. “But whatever is the matter, dear? You ought to be used to a little rough handling by now. And if you’re not, well, you’d better learn.”
“Where’s Azrael?”
“Sit down. Eat something.” Solveig waved a servant over to clear away the dishes in front of the now-empty chair and bring a clean setting. “Father will want to see you fed when it pleases him to drop by.”
“Where is he?” Lan asked loudly.
“Stop teasing her, brother,” Batuuli said and leaned out over the table so she could point past Lan to another empty table, the one where Lady Tehya should be sitting. “My sister had a small accident at breakfast.”
“Yes,” Solveig drawled. “She accidentally peeled her face off with a paring knife and threw it on Father’s plate. He’ll be all night persuading her to let him mend it, so if you had an appointment with him later, you ought to consider it postponed.”
“Peeled her face off?” Lan echoed dumbly, looking from one to the other of them, searching in vain for some sign that they were having her on.
“He made a comment about her mask and, well, she’s a bit high-spirited,” Solveig explained and gestured again at the many, many platters before her. “If you don’t see anything you like, by all means, place an order with the kitchen. The peaches are especially sweet, I hear.”
Lan looked at him sharply.
He smiled.
“Sit with me, then,” Batuuli ordered. “If my brother is determined not to behave, he shan’t have the pleasure of your company.”
“I think I should go.”
Batuuli flapped a hand at her and picked through a bowl of fruit for just the right grape to taste. “Then go. I’ll just tell Father you refused our hospitality, shall I?”
Lan looked once more at the doors at the end of the hall, then at Azrael’s empty throne, and finally sighed and went over to sit with Batuuli. She took a piece of bread and grimly ate it, aware of smirks and whispers all around her, trying not to startle every time someone laughed too shrilly or too close.
“While we wait,” Batuuli said brightly, “I’ve arranged some entertainment in our guest’s honor.”
Apprehension was an immediate cold knot in Lan’s belly. “Me?”
Batuuli smiled at her and clapped her hands twice.
Azrael’s steward went out into the hall and came back shortly with a whole company of dead men and women dressed for the stage. Some were in costumes—women made to look like deer or rabbits, men like stags or foxes—while others wore form-fitting onesies and masks and carried bits of scenery painted up with trees. Seeing them, Lan felt a twinge of interest in spite of herself. Performers came to Norwood once in a while, staging plays and magic acts and singing foreign songs, but it cost a half’slip to see them and Lan’s mother rarely had it to ‘throw away on nonsense.’ And there was no comparison as far as quality, she was sure. The deer and stags leaped about in synchronized steps while the rabbits and foxes tumbled, and as much dread as Lan still felt, she was transfixed and soon forgot even the company she was in to join with their laughter and applause.
Then, by some predetermined signal, the ‘animals’ all froze, looked up, and gracefully scattered. The dining hall doors opened wide and in stumbled a woman. A living woman.
She looked as Lan herself must have looked—dressed in torn layers of ill-fitting clothes, her hair in straggled knots, muddy boots and dirty face. She stared around, seeing the hall as Lan must have seen it—oversized, overbright, overfed. She saw Azrael’s court, a hundred dead, smirking faces, and the empty throne. She saw the lights and the flowers and the food. She saw Lan.
The masked performers were stealthily circling as the woman stood staring at Lan staring at her. She only noticed them when they began to press forward, herding her with painted trees into the middle of the hall.
“What is this?” Lan asked. Her voice seemed very small, easily swallowed by the dead laughter that followed. “What are you doing?”