The handmaidens descended on her again and in another minute, her hair was brushed and artfully piled atop her head, her face was painted and there were sandals tied to her feet.
“The difference really is dramatic,” Batuuli remarked, inspecting the end result. “Even if it isn’t quite successful.”
Lan plucked self-consciously at a fold of her gown. The handmaiden Serafina slapped her hand and readjusted the draping.
“Well, let’s not keep Father waiting.” Batuuli took her arm and led her back to her receiving room. Azrael had seated himself at the center of the table, forcing Lan to sit next to one of the mutilated pikemen. So close, the smell was inescapable—not rot and only faintly of char, but just the stink of open wounds. Her stomach clenched as her plate was filled with pasties and fruit; she picked one up, but put it down again when the pikeman beside her groaned.
“Hush,” said Azrael, holding out his plate so a servant could drizzle a sliced pear with honey.
The pikeman quieted.
Coffee was presented, along with cream, sugar, cinnamon and chocolate, but although Lan mixed herself her favorite concoction, she only sat there stirring it. Azrael’s appetite seemed undiminished by his surroundings or the tension in the air, which was such that every scrape of Azrael’s fork seemed to fall directly on Lan’s ear.
Batuuli sat watching them and sipping tea. At length, she sighed. “Father, you’re being terribly rude.”
Azrael cut into a hot pastry and did not respond.
“I understand why you might not wish to run through the usual boring pleasantries with me, but what of our guest? Surely she deserves at least a token acknowledgement.”
Lan glanced at him. He continued to give his breakfast his full attention, eating mechanically and without enjoyment.
“She chose the dress herself,” Batuuli said, smiling into her cup.
Azrael’s eyes shifted in the sockets of his mask, staining the white fabric of Lan’s dress briefly whiter, making it almost seem to glow. Still he said nothing.
“You know, I never had the chance to ask, between one thing and another yesterday.” Batuuli waved at the air, fanning away all the unpleasantness of the previous day’s events like a fart. “But how did you enjoy your new pet? I confess I didn’t think it much of an honor when you sent her to me to be prepared, but I did take some pride in my work. The least you could do is tell me how I did. Was she pleasing? Were her cheeks like pale roses just blushed with dawn’s color? Her lips like sweet berries? Her eyes like…What color are your eyes?” she asked, leaning over the table to peer at Lan’s face. “Her eyes like puddles of rainwater on a filthy road. Did her face please you, Father? Did her scrawny body twine about you in new and exciting ways? Did she charm you? Win you? Fascinate your senses and stimulate your passions? Did she get your cock hard?”
“Mind your tongue.”
“Father never divulges bedroom secrets,” Batuuli told Lan. “Which is amusing, because he’s been happy enough to plow his cum-pockets in front of us in the past.”
Azrael’s cup slammed down, making Lan jump and Batuuli raise an eyebrow in polite inquiry.
“Did I say cum-pockets?” she asked with elaborate surprise. “How embarrassing. I meant courtesans. Do forgive me, although I daresay our guest has been called worse in her time.” She turned to Lan. “Haven’t you?”
“I have, as a matter of fact.”
“You see? All friends here. So.” She poured herself a fresh cup of tea and tossed the pot to the floor. It burst in a billow of shards and steam. Her handmaidens came running while Batuuli added a spoonful of sugar and stirred, smiling over at Lan. “How was he?”
Lan rolled her eyes and poked at the filling of her pastry. It was some kind of red jam. She didn’t feel like tasting it to find out what kind.
“I’m told you were out of his chambers less than an hour after entering. Much less. One wonders if perhaps the anticipation got the best of him. It’s happened before.”
Azrael tipped his head, regarding his daughter with the cold curiosity of a man watching the behavior of a bug. “You were told, were you? By whom?”
“Well, that’s the thing about the dead,” said Batuuli, buttering a scone. “Unless their glorious lord gives them a specific order to the contrary, they tend to be rather stupid about indelicate matters. And I am one of your Children, after all. Why shouldn’t they answer? So when I asked how long you rode your pretty pony—”
“That is enough.”
Batuuli looked up, her brows arched in feigned surprise. “Shall I not call her that either? My, you are feeling particular this morning. What would you prefer? Your pleasure dove? Your sister of mercy? Or, what was the word you used?” she asked Lan.
“Dolly,” said Lan.
Azrael’s eyes sparked in the sockets of his mask.
“No, not that. The other one.” Batuuli tapped at the corner of her mouth, pretending to think, then snapped her fingers and said, “Your dirty whore!”
Lan’s face warmed. She put her fork down and folded her hands tightly in her lap.
“Now she’s shy,” said Batuuli with a careless shrug. “But she was bold enough when you sent her to me. She stood right where you’re sitting now and shouted it. It might have been an act, I suppose. Or perhaps she’s acting for us now. How easy it is to hide one’s true heart in a world where even God goes masked.” She turned her smile on Azrael again. “But you unmasked for her, or so I was told. And she fled in tears.”
“I did not!” Lan snapped.
“You needn’t be embarrassed. Many of his concubines have hysterics the first time.”
“I didn’t have hysterics and I wasn’t crying!”
“But you did flee.”
“He threw me out!”
The instant she said it, she regretted it, but there was no calling it back.
Batuuli’s smile spread like honey, golden and slow. “Oh, that’s interesting.”
Lan looked to Azrael for any kind of clue as to how to cut her way free of this mess, but he only continued to watch his daughter’s performance with detached indifference.
“Was he impotent?” Batuuli purred. “Tell me, could he not be a man in his own bed?”
Lan knew any answer was the wrong one, but silence seemed so damning. “He was plenty potent,” she mumbled.
“Hardly an enthusiastic testimonial.”
“He was fine.”
“One wonders what constitutes ‘fine’ in the wilds of Norwood.” Batuuli picked up her tea, considering her. “But if so, then you must have done something. Oh, he’s had plenty of playthings run from him, but Father has never, ever hurled one out into the hall. I’m not sure whether you ought to be ashamed of that or proud, but it’s worth mentioning. What did you do?”
“Nothing,” said Lan, and felt her stomach clench, as if in echo of that cold/hot moment when he’d been inside her and she’d been…somewhere and someone else.
“I’m told the gown was beyond repair,” Batuuli was saying. “At the time, I assumed it was due to Father’s usual exuberance, but did he actually attack you? Did you scream when you saw his true face bearing down on you?”
“No.”
Batuuli laughed at first, the sort of mocking laughter that meant she thought she’d caught Lan in an inventive lie, but then looked at her father, then at Lan again. “You know, I think I believe you,” she said, sounding mildly surprised, not by Lan’s statement as much as by her own acceptance of it. “In fact, one could almost imagine you wanted to see his face, that it was you who insisted he unmask.” She looked at Azrael. “Did she?”