Land of the Beautiful Dead (12 page)

She could not guess the purpose of the room, except maybe just to look pretty, which, given that this was Azrael’s palace, was not out of the question, but she must have been brought here for a better reason than just to see it. There was a deep depression in one corner, the most recognizable of the room’s features, and it was there that Lan was aimed, but it was not until one of the handmaidens started water flowing that she truly understood. She was to be bathed. Not just scrubbed off or given a basin to wash in, but
bathed
, and if that were not frivolous enough, this entire room had been built solely to house the bath.

“One would think I had just shown you my father’s killing garden, the way you look.” Lady Batuuli moved past her to sit on a padded bench by the wall. “Is it not exquisite? Resplendent? Inspiring? Come now, give me a superlative I’ve not heard and you shall have a biscuit.”

“It’s a waste.”

“It is indeed. Such a pragmatic mind you have to appreciate that.” Lady Batuuli put out her hand. A fluted glass of wine was placed in it. She sipped once, then opened her hand and let the glass fall, shatter, and stain the whiteness of this room with a spreading pool of blood-red wine. “I’ve come to think of it as my father’s vanity given physical dimensions,” she said as her handmaidens divided—some to continue preparing Lan and the rest to clean away the wine and broken glass. “He’s made us all his mirrors in Haven. And his masks. But it is rather a rude observation, so you shall not have a biscuit after all.”

Lan turned away to watch the bath fill.

“I suppose the more civilized flourishes are rather overwhelming to one of your upbringing, but you might at least pretend indifference, for my sake. You can’t imagine how galling it is to see you simple folk stand in surroundings such as these and gape at a hot water faucet. That’s enough,” Batuuli said with a wave. “Undress her.”

One handmaiden halted the flow of water as magically as it had started and two others stepped up immediately.

Lan backed away fast, clutching at her shirt-front with both hands. “I don’t need help!”

Batuuli sighed and said, “If she won’t remove them, cut them off.”

“You can’t cut off my clothes!”

“Your clothes?” Batuuli tipped her head in what could only be an acid imitation of her father. “I was talking about your hands.”

Lan was reasonably sure she didn’t mean that…but she let go of her shirt and let the others undress her.

Batuuli deliberately lowered her gaze and studied Lan’s naked body as it was exposed. Her lips pursed. “Truly, my father’s standards are not what they once were…and they were never all that high to begin with. What do you suppose he sees in you?”

“Sex,” Lan said through clenched jaws.

“No, no. There are far more attractive options…shall we say, open?…to him. He may not be very discriminating, but he doesn’t want for a whore when the mood falls over him. There must be dozens of them waiting on his whim here in Haven, hundreds who come begging at the wall every year. He has his pick of holes to plumb, so there must be something about yours that appeals to him. You can get rid of those,” she told the handmaiden holding Lan’s clothes.

“What am I supposed to wear then?”

“Oh, I’m apparently happy to find something appropriately prurient for you. Or rather, Ariel is. Go on,” she said, waving, and one of her handmaidens went. “You needn’t fear being forced to go naked through the halls, assuming you stay on for any length of time. My father likes to dress his dolls.”

Lan tried hard not to react to that—it was just a word, wasn’t it? Words didn’t matter—but she must have because Batuuli’s smile grew teeth.

“And we all indulge my father’s preferences, even if we don’t always dare to look directly at them. Not that I’m an expert on his more libidinous fancies. I dare say you’ll be able to inform me on that subject soon enough, but for now, it is enough for both of us to know only that he would like you clean.” She gestured invitingly at the bath.

Lan looked at it. It was more clean water than she’d ever seen in one place, enough to buy all the peaches in Norwood…and all its people besides.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Batuuli signal her handmaidens, but she didn’t wait for them to force her into the bath. She walked in on her own. It was warm, uncomfortably so. That was okay. It should hurt a little. It should burn. Lan stood and watched her skin turn a scalded pink with a feeling that was almost pride, at least until the handmaidens stepped down into the bath with her. Also naked but impervious to the heat, they scooped up water in pitchers that probably were only ever used for this purpose and poured it out again over her head, her back, her breasts. ‘No one will ever drink this water now,’ she thought, watching the water discolor around her, and then, even more unsettled, thought, ‘This water was never for drinking.’

“You’re not enjoying this,” Lady Batuuli observed.

“I’m not used to it.”

“They’re never used to it, the warmbloods he favors, however briefly, although they always try to pretend otherwise. I’ve seen hundreds of them by now, in all their paints and costumes, laughing along with those who laugh at them. You’re the first I’ve seen who looks as if she knows she’s being mocked,” she added in a musing way. “But then, you’re the first I’ve ever had to prepare for him. Perhaps they’ve all shown their doubts when they’re naked and vulnerable.”

Now sponges were brought, lightly rubbed along Lan’s limbs, and where they passed, they left an unpleasant slick of soft, fragrant foam. Soap? Maybe, but nothing like the cakes of soap in Norwood, made from wood ashes and rendered fat, that left the skin it abraded chapped and tender…and not very clean, either.

“Why did he send you to me?” Lady Batuuli asked. “Did he tell you?”

“Only that he thought it would amuse you.”

“Amuse me? What does he imagine I’ll do with you? Surely he would have sent you to my brother if he thought you needed training.”

“I don’t.”

“You’re hardly the best judge. Serafina there—” One of the handmaidens dipped an uncertain bow in answer to Lady Batuuli’s impatient wave. “—thinks she has a clever tongue for woman’s pleasures, but even at her best, she’s tedious and distracting…and I am rarely so fortunate as to have her best.”

The handmaiden said nothing, but her hands clenched as she scrubbed Lan’s thigh.

“You may think me a jade, like my dear brother, but I’m not. I’m practically an ascetic.” Lady Batuuli lay down on the bench, lacing her hands over her flat belly and studying the ceiling. “I can prove it, if you like.”

“That you’re an ascetic?”

“That Serafina licks quim rather less well than a donkey might. And after all, you should be washed everywhere.”

“No. Thank you.”

“Thank you,” Batuuli mimicked. “Such manners. ‘Lord Azrael,’ you called him. Please and thank you and all the while demanding redress to your mortal outrage.” She turned her head to look at Lan, smirking. “You don’t really think he’ll give in, do you?”

“He hasn’t thrown me out.”

“And you think that means what, exactly?” Batuuli looked back at the ceiling. “He will never give you what you want. Never. But he will let you think you can convince him for as long as you can bear his weight upon your back. And afterwards, why, you’ll always have a place in Haven. He throws none of his toys away while there’s still some fun to be had from them. And he’s not a jade either.” She was quiet for a while, then said, softly, “He savors his amusements.”

The handmaidens drained the bath, but kept her standing in its center so they could cover her body with sticky paper and rip it off again in strips, beginning at her ankles and working their way up. They took away more than just the paper, Lan saw, leaving her legs as hairless and smooth as a child’s. They didn’t stop at her thighs, either, but positioned her with her legs wide apart to get at her pubis also, then her underarms and finally even her forearms, which was embarrassingly unnecessary in Lan’s opinion, since the few hairs there were not at all obvious to the eye. She thought it was over when they put the papers and sticky-pot away, but they only ran a fresh bath. This time, Lan was forced to sit, submerged to her neck, while her hair was carefully cleaned and combed. Lan kept it sensibly short and wouldn’t have thought it needed more than a pull or two on each side, but it still took two handmaidens and a ritual procession of soaps, cremes and oils, each of which had to be worked in just so before being rinsed entirely away. All this long while, Lady Batuuli lay motionless, like a corpse laid out for burial, back when people still did that sort of thing. The quiet, the whiteness and the water all combined to gnaw at Lan until she just had to say something, even something stupid, just to end it.

“Would he grant you a request, if you made one?”

All six handmaidens stopped for a moment to stare at her, but Lady Batuuli merely said, “Perhaps,” in that same low, unmoving way. “But take no hope from that, for I will not ask him anything. Not even my own favors and never yours.”

“Why not?”

“I have nothing of my own in this life. Not my home, my family, not even my name…only my hate. And if that is to be my only possession, he can have it, as I am his possession. He can have it all and I hope he chokes on every swallow. Tell me…” Batuuli rolled onto her side, reaching down to trail her hand along the bath’s lip, testing the warmth of the water. “Does he know I hate him?”

“Yes.”

“How fearless you must be,” Batuuli remarked. “Not a quality I imagine would attract him. So he knows I hate him…and still he keeps me. Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“You answer like one of my servants now. Not so fearless.”

“He loves his Children.”

“Ha! A thousand lies there are in those four words! Do you believe it? Truly?”

“Yes.”

Batuuli’s twisted smile faded into a frown. She sat up, her fingers curled around the edge of her bench until the knuckles paled. “Then you are a fool. He loves nothing. It was only his whim that raised us back to this…this thing that is not life…and if I understood what it was that made him choose me, I would change it, destroy it, force him to send me back into the darkness from which he stole me.”

Lan opened her mouth, but one of the handmaidens chose that moment to pour water over her head and by the time she’d finished spitting it out and clearing her eyes, she knew better than to say what she’d been thinking.

Batuuli was watching. Her eyes were half-closed, which made them seem as if they had no whites at all, were only empty sockets. “You were about to mention my looks, I think,” she murmured. “That he chose me for my beauty. I believe I saw the word
obviously
hovering about your head.”

Lan shrugged and admitted it with a nod.

“Am I very beautiful then?”

Her handmaidens murmured appreciative affirmation, but Lan only said, puzzled, “You know you are.”

“Yes. I do. And I know that I could mar this face until I was forced to go, as he does, masked. But to what possible end? I could make myself a grotesque, a gargoyle…and he would only mend me and go on…as if I had done nothing.”

“What do you mean, mend you?”

“Just what I say. Dead flesh is no more than clay in Father’s hands. With a touch, he can take away even the worst of wounds.” Batuuli rolled her gaze toward Lan and smiled. “So why, you wonder, does he choose to wear his own in so dramatic a fashion? But he is not dead. I don’t know what he is, but he’s not dead. He has no choice but to live with his scars. It upsets him,” she added with bitter pleasure. “Sometimes I think I should cut myself, just to see what it would do to him. Do you know Tehya?”

“I saw her.”

“And there is a difference, isn’t there? If it comes to that, I don’t suppose anyone knows Tehya. Anyway, she mutilates herself now and then,” Batuuli said with a wave to dismiss her other words. “But he mends her. And she knows he will, so I don’t know why she does it. It isn’t for pleasure and it isn’t out of loathing. It’s almost…almost a kind of speech with her. As if she’s saying something only he can hear, except she does it with knives instead of words.”

“Is she mad?” Lan asked, thinking of the woman she’d seen alone at her table in the dining hall, her eerie stillness and piercing stare.

“Oh, we’re all mad here.” Batuuli smiled, glancing over at her, then sighed and shook her head. “Wasted. You can’t even read, can you?”

She said it like it was an accusation, like that was something just anyone should be able to do. “What does that matter?” Lan asked defensively.

“Not a bit, to me. It’s Father who will become bored with you.”

The handmaidens finished with Lan’s hair and stood her up. The bath was drained. A final pitcher water was poured over her, this one shockingly cold, but she was wrapped so quickly in soft cloth afterwards that she didn’t even have time to shiver. She stood and dripped as the handmaidens dried her, her arms out like a scarecrow’s so as not to impede their work. One last pass of a hooked knife took away any errant hair the waxing had missed and then there was lotion to soothe her raw skin. Three pairs of hands moved over her, invading every secret while Batuuli watched.

“Do I look any better?” Lan asked, when the silence and that stare grew too heavy.

Batuuli roused, seemingly sincerely confused. “Than what?”