Land of the Beautiful Dead by R. Lee Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

sit. Anywhere you please.”
    She told herself she didn’t have a choice, that refusing him again would only get her thrown out. Maybe it was even true, but in the end, it was not the reason Lan fumbled her way to a chair and sat, realizing only after she’d done so that she’d taken Lady Batuuli’s place for her own. Platters of food surrounded her, swallowed her in an orgy of spices: towers of roasted apples studded with cloves and cinnamon spears, fish crusted with pepper, vegetables baked in herbed butter. Choice cuts of boar meat floated in a pool of that dark, glossy sauce, so smooth that she could see the candles reflected there, not only their glowing flames, but their golden holders. She could see her own face staring down, watching, waiting to see if she would eat the Devil’s food just because he sat her at his table.
    “So. You enter my home without invitation. You bring no tribute. Now you refuse my hospitality.” Azrael leaned back in his throne, lacing his hands together over his scarred stomach. The silver rings holding his wound mostly closed jingled softly. “Which of these did you imagine would earn you the audience you say you came seeking?”
    “I came to talk to you. To ask—”
    “Demand.”
    Lan stammered to a stop, but he said no more, only continued to watch her. Hesitantly, she began again. “I came to ask—”
    “Demand. One who asks does not invade the home of him before whom she supplicates herself. One who asks receives his will with respect and goes meekly upon dismissal. No,” he concluded, sweeping his arm through the air as though her reasons for being here were no more than insects he could brush away. “You have not come here to ask, so make your demands and go.”
    Frustration and nerves once more broke her. Before she could stop, she’d snapped, “I won’t talk to you until you listen.”
    “Go, then.”
    “I’m not leaving until you let me talk.”
    “Aha, a conundrum. How to solve it…?” He pretended to consider while she pretended the smell of pork and roasted apples was not clawing up her guts. Suddenly, he snapped his fingers, making her jump. “At the first meeting I had with Men upon my ascension, their minions informed me that a show of faith was necessary to achieve any audience with their leaders. So. Remove your weapon,” he ordered. “Set it here, before me.”
    “I’m not armed.”
    “I warn you again that I do not tolerate lies in my presence,” he said impatiently, rising from his throne. “Speak another and your time here is ended. Remove your weapon. Set it down.”
    Blushing, Lan reached back beneath her shirt to the little knife she kept strapped there. “It’s for defense,” she insisted as he descended the dais. “I’ve had to travel a long way.” He was still coming; she shoved her chair back and jumped up, even though there was nowhere to go, no way she could outrun him. “I wasn’t going to use it on you!”
    “No? But by all means, child.” He opened his arms. “You might save the world with one good blow.”
    She looked in disbelief at the knife, at a blade no longer and no wider than her forefinger, and at him, this god with ten thousand bloodless scars. “No,” she said. It hardly needed saying, but she said it anyway.
    “I insist.”
    “No!”
    “To ease your mind.” He closed the last distance between them to tower over her. Up close, she could see the twist of his smile through his mask’s mouth-slit. “To prove a point.”
    “The only point you want to prove is that none of us are trustworthy!” She threw the knife down on the table. It clattered unimportantly, like a spoon, like a pencil. “That’s not why I’m here! You can’t make it be that way! You can’t use me to prove it!”
    “Do not presume to know my mind.” He picked up the knife, tested the ridiculous toy of its edge against his thumb, then touched the point to his breast. “How would you have it, little hero? Here?” The knife