“And does it make you happy?” Azrael asked, holding out his own cup to be filled. He paid the pikeman in his agony no more attention than he paid the handmaiden who poured his wine. “I have only ever desired my Children to be happy.”
“The only happiness I feel comes from knowing you will always remember how much I hated you.”
“How unfortunate for you.”
“Unfortunate only that I didn’t always, as your new toy was good enough to remind me, but if I must suffer the knowledge that you will always remember that once I looked on you with innocent love, at least I have the satisfaction of knowing you also saw it die.” Batuuli tried to smile. “When was that, Father? Tell me. I want to know the day, the hour, that I knew you for what you were.”
“What am I?”
“You are a jackal. You are the lord of carrion and a thief of bones.”
“And you are my daughter.”
“Your daughter?” She laughed—a sound as sharp and venomous as a snake-bite. “I would not be your child if I were given any choice.”
“What child chooses to be born?”
“I was not born. I died. And you, you jackal, you dug me up and dragged me to your den and expected me to love you for it. ”
“And you did,” he said. “If only briefly.”
“I hope that memory warms you, Father.” Batuuli paused, then laughed and relaxed into the high back of her chair. “It fact, it should be all but burning in you by now. Do you feel it yet?”
Confused, Lan looked at Azrael, but he did not look back at her. He continued to gaze, silent, impassive, at his daughter as seconds stretched out, measured only by the pikeman’s groans and weakening struggles. When he moved at last, it was merely to set down his cup and stand.
“Yes, you should be going,” Batuuli said, manufacturing a frown even as her eyes danced with pleasure. “You’ll want privacy for what’s about to happen. It wouldn’t do to have your fawning subjects see their glorious lord purge himself in public.”
“Lan,” said Azrael. “Get out.”
She got up so fast, she bumped the impaled pikeman; he groaned, fresh blood and clear drops of juice drooling from a dozen wounds. Stammering apologies, Lan fled for the door.
“It is a pity you didn’t eat anything,” Batuuli called after her. “It’s all poisoned.”
Lan swung around.
Batuuli shrugged one round shoulder, indifferent to her gape or Azrael’s burning stare. “I thought it would be amusing to watch you die. And then, of course, to see you come back. I’m quite sure he’d raise you up, even though you are rather plain…but then you’d only hate him for it with such an honest hate that he might actually let you die.” Batuuli drank, smiling around her glass. “And that would be amusing, too.”
Azrael turned his back on her and headed for the door, taking Lan’s arm as she stood, frozen, in his path.
“It’s been a lovely visit, Father.” Batuuli waved them off and tossed her half-empty glass to shatter on the floor. “I’ll see you at dinner, then?”
He did not answer, but pulled Lan with him, taking such long, swift strides that she was forced to run to keep pace, hiking her long skirts up around her knees. As soon as he was through Batuuli’s doors, he swung her around and demanded, “Did you eat anything?”
“No, but…but she didn’t really poison it, did she?”
“You!”
A lone servant polishing the long tiled corridor paused and looked up. “My lord?”
Azrael pushed Lan forward. “Take her to the library and summon Deimos to my chamber.”
The servant left her cleaning and got up at once, taking Lan’s right arm as Azrael released the left.
“She didn’t, did she?” Lan insisted, alarmed. “I mean, it was all for you! She wouldn’t poison you! You’re her only family!”
He looked at her, his eyes blazing through the sockets of his mask. Then he pushed past her and continued up the hall alone. He staggered, turned a corner and was gone.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A ‘library’ turned out to be a room where books were read. The fact that people used to have so many books that they needed a whole separate room just to store them, much less a word for the room, said everything Lan guessed she needed to know about the way the world used to be. In Norwood, loose pictures and salvaged magazines were locked up like other valuables. The mayor had a few books, including the town ledger where Lan’s own name had been written on the day of her birth and presumably crossed out along with her mother’s the day she’d left, but all of them together could have fit on one shelf. Here was a room the size of the dining hall, two stories tall and lined in bookshelves, with ladders on runners along every wall so that no shelf was out of reach. These were books that could not be measured in hundreds or even thousands, but in some greater number that had no name.
If only she knew how to read.
Lan wandered through the stacks for a while, pulling out books at random and turning pages. She found some with pictures, but even the ones with just words were worth looking at, if only because someone somewhere wrote them once.
Hours passed, each one a little slower than the last. Overwhelmed by books, Lan looked at the windows instead, which were made from shards of colored glass put together to make pictures of things like trees and peacocks and even people. She investigated desk drawers. She rode the ladders. At length, she went over and opened the door.
The Revenant standing on the other side looked at her. Not a pikeman, a Revenant.
She closed the door. Stood there. Slowly, she opened it again.
He looked at her with no more curiosity, but just a hint of annoyance.
“Can I go to my room?” Lan asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
He didn’t answer, just stared at her with that faintly impatient expression.
“What if I need the toilet?”
“Do you?”
“I will eventually.”
His lips thinned. He closed the door and locked it.
Some time later, as Lan was looking at pictures in a book that didn’t have nearly enough of them, the door opened again. The Revenant directed a short line of servants inside—one carrying a covered tray, the other holding a pitcher, the last with a chamberpot and a pail of ashes.
Lan lifted the cover on the tray, releasing a fragrant puff of steam. A bowl of soup and a split loaf of buttered bread with honey. “Where did this come from?” she asked.
“It’s been tasted,” the Revenant replied.
“That’s not what I asked.”
“You didn’t really want to know what you asked. You wanted to know what I told you.” He stood aside as the servants withdrew, then shut the door and locked it.
Lan picked up the bowl and sniffed. Onions, herbs and some kind of fish. Her mouth watered, but she put it back untasted. There was water in the pitcher, flavored with chunks of fruit and mint leaves, chilled with ice. Actual ice. She didn’t taste that either. She was hungry and a lifetime of never knowing when or what the next meal might be made even this simple fare look like a feast, but the word poison still muttered itself in the back of her mind. She didn’t doubt the Revenant’s word, but not every poison acted fast. Better to go hungry and stay safe.