The Beautiful Dead (22 page)

“Winter,
hello,” the Mayor says, smiling shyly. “We checked first your home, and in
finding you not there, have since checked your neighbors for your whereabouts.
Linus and Lenora next door say hello and welcome you back from your—ah—vacation.
Thought it polite to pass that on. You wouldn’t mind to accompany mine men and
I please to mine office? That would be most nice.”

“Sure,” I say,
barely audible. Passing Jasmine, she seems to give me a deep and knowing look.

I wish I had
an idea what was going on.

“Come this
way. Don’t let the men alarm you,” says the Mayor with a cheery snicker as we
leave.

My mind
wrestles with doubts. Permanent exile, did she say? Trenton Law? For what? Is
this the price I pay for having potentially lost the lives of the Judge’s men?
The possibly lost allegiance of my new days-old Raise?

I want to ask
so many questions, but the trek to the Town Hall turns out to be a silent,
wordless one. As though I’d been plucked from class and now am walking in shame
to the principal’s office, we pass through streets where, when people see us,
they only watch. No one waves any longer. I note the Mayor pays no mind to my
exposed arm, nor mentions anything of the reason why he’s summoned me forth. I
can already suspect several.

“In here,
please,” the Mayor says, ushering me down an alley behind the Town Hall where,
at its end, waits a narrow doorway. I enter it and descend endless steps that
terminate in a small holding room of sorts with many tall doors and another
hallway leading even deeper into the facility. “Second one to the right,
please,” he directs me. Wordlessly I enter the second door and, to my
near-amusement, find a bare room in the exact likeness of the one the Judge had
interrogated me in so long ago, complete with a sad little chair in its center.

“I’d once been
speared by steel in a room like this,” I say good-humoredly, but neither the
Mayor nor his men laugh. Just as well. I approach the chair and, with a
careless wave of my hand, ask, “Is this where I sit?”

“Please,” says
the Mayor with a shy little nod. I lower myself into the creaky seat.
“Normally,” the Mayor begins after the two men have left, shutting us in this
room by ourselves, “the Judge is the one to conduct these such things. But
seeing as she is giving her account of the Deathless to the Council, I’m afraid
I must do this mine-self.” He lifts a pair of glasses up to the bridge of his
nose, then pulls out a folded sheet of paper from his coat. We both know he can
see perfectly well without the glasses, but apparently upholding the charade is
more important to him than the actual functioning of an eyepiece.

So I play along.
“Those lens look quite nice on you.”

“It’s a
habit,” he admits with a soft chuckle. “They serve no purpose. Just a habit
from mine Old Life, of course. Now, here say,” he states, lifting the paper to
read better from it, I assume, “I’ve some unfortunate things with which I must
press upon you, sadly. First of course, the issue of your unsuccessful
Raising.”

“I’m sorry,” I
say in as straight a voice as I can manage, “but I have some information about
that, actually. Grimsky, in the Necropolis, he told me he—”

“Oh, we won’t
speak of that here, my dear. All in time, the town will accept a truth we draft
on the matter. Which brings us to our next point.” I try to mask my look of
utter bafflement. “The loss and revival of your misses, Marigold of the Nether
and our Judge, Enea of the Ninth. Both are returned of sound mind and fully
unblemishéd. Still mislaid and unrevived are the lives of Drecklor, Carnesaid,
and your Reaper, Helena of the Fourth. All presumed surrendered to the
Deathless men, whether in Final Death or otherwise, to be verified or acquitted
outright in due time.”

I cast my gaze
to the floor. Guilt would flood my eyes at the mention of Helena’s name, were
they so capable.

“The soul called
Grimsky, I’m afraid, is one whose current condition, I suspect as you may
endorse, is a permanent adjournment at the Deathless Capital, having admitted
forthright his allegiance to the Deathless and their King’s cause?”

Eyes still
averted, I realize he’s expecting a response to that one, so I just nod.

“A pity,” he
says, adjusting the paper in his hand. “And now there’s a concern for
your—ah—refusal of Upkeep.”

“Oh, this?” I
murmur, lifting my little harmless arm.

“Your refusal
to accept completion of your Upkeep is, well, a concern of mine. If our Judge
were present, she’d perform the necessary tests to—Well, it’s very possible the
Deathless might’ve compromised you, needless—”

“Tests? … Like
pulling another sword through me?”

The Mayor
smiles shortly, then kneels in front of me as though he were addressing a child.
“Needless to say, your soul is one we most value. Winter, you cannot take the
Deathless so blithely. Your encounter with them, it could compromise our way of
life here in Trenton. We are a simple life here. We begrudge nothing of the
lives we had, or the lives we led. We judge you not for who you were, but for
who you are meant to be.”

“You act as if
you knew who I was,” I say, surprised a bit by the bitterness in my own words,
then turn my gaze slowly on him. “Even I’m not so lucky to know.”

His face
shrinks, lips drawn in as though tasting something sour. He seems to want to say
something, but then after a moment, only mutters, “Yet.”

I watch him
cross the room, taken by his odd reaction to my remark. When he reaches the
door, he turns and says, “If you do not cover your bones—”

“It’s just a
stupid forearm,” I bite back, annoyed. “It’s just bone … We all have them. It’s
an … an expression.”

“It’s a
Deathless ideal. Haven’t you realized what it is, exactly, you are expressing?”

“I’m
expressing the fact that I’m
dead,
” I assert, my emotions getting the
better, picking a fight. “And for that, you will exile me?—permanently? Exile
me from the only place I’ve known to be home?”

“You’ve had
other homes,” he says, his voice quaking.

He turns the
door handle.

“What does
that mean??” I ask, frustrated. “Other homes? What other homes?”

But he’s gone,
and no answer finds me. For two short moments, I’m left alone with the words
he’s uttered echoing in my ears. I have no idea what’s in store for me. My
entire existence here, my purpose, just as in the air as it was when I occupied
a cell in the Deathless city.

“I have no
home,” I tell no one in particular.

Then the burly
men reenter the room and, with short gestures, beckon me forth. Deciding it
best to cooperate, I rise from my creaky chair and go with them. We move from
the holding area down another hall leading deeper into the facility. Eventually,
we pass through a hall of prison cells, only a tiny barred window in each door.

“These cells
aren’t for you,” the Mayor explains, waiting for me at the other end of the
hall, “in case you were wondering. We’re just passing through.”

Had I known
the mental bane that awaited me here, I might’ve preferred staying lost and
broken in the woods. “Yes, of course,” I say, managing a nod. “Not for me.”

With the
Mayor’s lackeys behind me, I just keep moving in silence, passing window after
window of little chambers, all of them empty except for—

I stop, take a
step back and stare.

“Winter, is
there—is there a problem, dear?” patiently calls the Mayor from the end of the
hall.

The men come
to a halt at my back. Now everyone waits patiently for me to explain my strange
reaction, stopping in my tracks to stare through the porthole of a prison cell
… one particular prison cell.

“That,” I
whisper, locking eyes with the occupant of said cell, “is a Human.”

“Oh, y-yes, of
course, silly me!” The Mayor slaps his own forehead. “So caught up in the
politics, I completely failed to mention the Living we found in your house.”

C H A P T E R – F I F T E E N

John, right
there in the cell, staring back at me. His eyes hard, his jaw tight, his hands gripping
his thighs like vices. He stares at me like a statue, not even the sound of
breath escaping his flared nostrils.

My stomach’s
dropped straight through the floor at the sight of him.

“Don’t worry,”
the Mayor calls out. “He brought no harm to your kind abode. He merely was
inhabiting it in your absence, collecting food there as well. A bit of a thief,
if you mark him so. Might’ve the intention to kill you if you’d returned!—Oh,
the thought. It’s a good thing we caught him before your return … Might’ve
given you quite the fright had you found him yourself.”

No expression
crosses John’s hard-as-stone face. He just stares into my eyes with the
intensity of suns. Something inside me burns in reaction … I cannot show it on
my face, but I so seethe at the idea of John being held in a dungeon cell. Just
as I was in the Necropolis. And I can’t even fathom for how long he’s been in
there … How long it’s been since the last time he’s eaten …

How are we any
different than the Deathless, to imprison innocent people like this against
their will? I’m so angry, so hurt, so mortified, and can express absolutely
none of it. I’ve no idea the consequences of such actions.

Eyes still
locked on John, I ask the Mayor, “Why is it necessary to … to keep him like
this?”

“It’s best we
keep the Livings out of sight. It only disturbs our peace here in Trenton, the
presence of them. We do not need the reminder here, you understand?”

“What’s …
going to happen to him?”

The Mayor is
at my side now, having come back down the length of hall, and with a hand on my
shoulder he murmurs, “I’ve worked very, very hard to create peace in this town,
and I will do what it takes to keep it.”

I turn my gaze
on the Mayor. Like nothing at all, he pulls out a handkerchief and, fastening
it to my forearm to cover my so-called blemish, he says, “Best to cover your
arm, dear. We wouldn’t want two executions today.”

Then he ushers
me down the long hall, away from the Human, from
my
Human, the two men
marching behind. When we emerge from the dungeons and empty into the main lobby
of the Town Hall, I ask the Mayor, “You mean to … to
execute
him?”

“Nothing to
worry on.” He doesn’t quite face me when he adds, “He’s not a danger to you
anymore.”

“But really, was
he ever a danger to begin with?”

He answers: “All
Livings are.”

“But we cannot
die.” I try to sound as uninformed and innocent as possible, despite the
terrible things I’ve seen. “What danger can anything pose to us when we can
have limbs lopped off and still survive? Organs that don’t function and still survive?
Decapitated, still alive? What could that Human possibly do to me?”

“The worst
kind of death.” The Mayor turns to me, his eyes sharp. “He will remind you of
what you’ll never have, what you’ll never be again, what you’ll forever regret
losing in the first place. It is the reason we go Mad when the Waking Dream is
too much to bear. Having a Human around is like having a walking, talking
Waking Dream and that, my little dear, is not a curse I wish on the sweet and
caring populace of Trenton. Understood? Good.” And with that curt finishing, he
continues on his way, the men ensuring I follow him utterly.

I glare at his
back, deeming it unnecessary and pointless to argue his logic. What I felt
while sharing a house with John was not sadness or loss or regret.

On the
contrary—

“Here we are,”
sings the Mayor. The four of us turn into a very minimalist office with a desk,
one tiny cabinet in the corner, and a metal chair where my Raise—who I’d
forgotten entirely about until now—sits silently. Standing before her is one sour-faced
Judge who looks up at us with great annoyance upon our quiet entry.

“Judge, I have
informed Winter of her crimes, both little and grievous,” the Mayor announces.
“I think she is quite ready for your judgment.”

“You’re
interrupting,” replies the Judge, and the shine of a long blade in her grasp
catches my eye.

My Raise makes
a groaning sound, squirming slightly. I notice belatedly that she’s bound to
the chair by what appears to be twine.

“Perhaps
Winter’s presence can, if anything, help.” The Mayor smiles. “She was there
after all, and will have her own experiences to recount. Have you made any
progress on the Raiséd girl?”

“I am
attempting to twist Deathless intel from her. It is necessary she tells us all
she knows.”

“What if she
knows nothing?” I point out. “She couldn’t have been there for more than a day
or two. What ‘secret Deathless intel’ might she actually have?”

“And then
there’s the curious case of you, Winter of the Second.” Her eyes narrow. “I’ve
an entirely different interrogation tack planned for you.”

I roll my
eyes. It’s useless talking to someone so stubborn and awful of heart. The
Judge’s nasty demeanor makes Helena look like a downright sweetie pie.

Helena. “I
do
have information,” I realize. “I was kept in a cage alongside my Reaper Helena,
and a Human girl named Megan briefly, and an Undead teenager named Benjamin
whose legs were taken from him after trying to escape, and—”

“Helena?” The
Judge narrows her eyes. “You haven’t until now confirmed her existence.”

“Well, that’s
the thing. She’s—She’s no longer.” I look down at my feet, unable to meet her
harsh eyes. “When I was taken to see the Deathless King, she was there. And
then … then the King destroyed her in front of me.”

It feels awful
to lie, but considering how the Judge and Mayor have treated me so far, the
actual truth would not paint any better a picture of me as they already have.
The truth being that it was not the King who destroyed her, but I. The King may
have forced me to do it, but I hardly think either of the people in this room would
point out the difference.

“So she was
destroyed before you,” the Judge says. “That … fits the profile. All Undead who
are captured with their makers are made to witness their makers’ demise as a
means of symbolic unbinding.”

No, of course
there wouldn’t be a moment to respect Helena’s demise. Not even an offer of
compassion.

“Yes,” I agree
anyway, noting something Benjamin said. “One of the prisoners—the teenage
boy—he had mentioned his First Hand being grinded to dust in front of him.
First Hand,” I repeat with a little smile. “That’s what they call their Reapers
instead, wherever he’s from.”

“Did the
Deathless King mention a way of action with you?” asks the Judge. “His
intentions with you? His plan? Tell me everything.”

“He only meant
to sway me,” I tell her. “My feelings. He tried to make me doubt our way of
life here. He called us the Pretenders. He … was a she. A woman, a queen.”

The Mayor
makes a vocal shudder behind me, which I almost mistake for a laugh. “Sorry,”
he mutters. “Go on.”

After a moment
to collect my thoughts, I continue to recount some of the things the King-Queen
said, repeating it all to the best of my memory. I tell all.

Almost all.
“And after he destroyed Helena, I escaped by jumping from the top of the tower.
I was amazed at how I didn’t shatter when I hit the ground, though clearly my
left leg and arm took the most of my weight. I hurried away.”

“And you
managed to flee the city?—Just like that?”

“No. I … I met
with a band of people who were fleeing too. That included the old man we
brought back with us. And together we fled, with but one obstacle standing in
our way. Well, two.”

“Grimsky and
the minion,” the Judge finishes for me, I guess having gathered the rest of the
story from another source—my Raise, Marigold, who knows. “Yes, I think we’re
nearly caught up. And how, exactly, did you pass this final obstacle?”

“Grimsky. He
was given an instruction to shatter me, and instead he stabbed the—minion—so
that we could flee.” I shake my head. “And so we did.” The Judge nods, her eyes
meeting the Mayor’s behind me. “So, is there anything else you must know?”

“Only if there
is more to tell,” she responds curtly.

Considering
the fact that there are many things from my account that I chose not to
mention—Helena’s real demise at my hand, the fact that I aided in freeing a
dozen or so Humans, my bond with that sweet Human girl Megan … Is there
anything else I’ve omitted?

“Helena did
mention one thing,” I remember, forcing my mind back to the apex of that Black
Tower, “just before her … decapitation. She wanted me to tell the Mayor
something.” I face him. “She wanted me to tell you that the Deathless King
was—something. She didn’t have a chance to say the final word.”

The Mayor
himself looks perplexed. After a moment he simply says, “I haven’t an idea what
she could’ve said.”

“That’s it?”
asks the Judge, and I nod.

The two of
them seem to stare intently at one another, as if trying to discern Helena’s
last words between them by way of telepathy. As if that were a viable thing to
do and I should just sit here waiting for the mystery to unravel in their
minds.

“You may go,”
the Judge grunts finally, her eyes flicking back to me. “In fact, I prefer it.
I have business to attend to with your little Raise here, and I don’t need the
distraction of you. What did you name her?”

“Helen.”

“Oh. How
charming.”

“It wasn’t
meant to be.”

Suddenly her
expression changes. “What’s that?”

She takes a
few steps toward me. I can’t help but back away, startled. “What’s what?”

“That—That
odor.” Her eyes narrow onto my lips.

“Odor? You’re
going to pretend like I have an odor, now? You know as well as I do we cannot
smell.”

After a long
and awkward moment of the Judge staring at me as though I were hiding some
great secret, she finally spreads her thin, puckered lips to say, “Go.”

“Gladly,” I
spit back, annoyed at her behavior, and slip past the Mayor on my way out.

Taking a quick
sniff of myself as I’m marching my way down the hall, I push unpleasant
thoughts of the fate of my Raise and the Judge’s attitude to the side, because
there’s a much more pressing matter I need to attend to.

I turn a few
corners and cross the main lobby. I notice the receptionist is busy chatting to
one of the guards about a man in the Square who sells necklaces and how she
thinks he makes them with stolen teeth from a cemetery—Oh, the things you
overhear in this world—so I take the opportunity and pass unnoticed through the
side door that leads down to the Town Hall basements. Or as I should probably
call it: The Town Hall dungeon.

I hurriedly
race past thirteen empty cells and arrive at the only occupied one. To my
relief, he’s still here.

He looks up at
me.

“John,” I
breathe in half a whisper. “I’m so sorry about this. I’m so, so sorry. I’m
getting you out of here.”

He doesn’t
respond, curled up in the corner of the cell with his knees pulled up against
him. Only his intense eyes connect with mine, and I can’t tell if they’re sad,
or weak, or furiously angry.

I press my
face against the bars of the tiny porthole in the door. “John, how long has it
been since you’ve eaten anything?” Again, no response. “John, talk to me.”

Obviously he’s
not in a talking mood. I reach down to fiddle with the door handle. Of course
it wouldn’t be so easy to just open it; the thing is bound with a giant metal
padlock that will require a key. No amount of strength or cunning can slip it,
I’m sure. Unless …

I totally
forgot about Jasmine’s bag, still hanging from my shoulder. I swing it around
my waist and unbuckle it, if for any reason but to learn what exactly I’m
carrying around with me. Hopefully a powerful picklock. Or a key. Fumbling with
the buckle as it clicks and falls away, I stretch open the bag and stare into
its contents.

How did she—?

“John, come here.
Come up to the door.” I hold the bag up to the bars of the window, open,
showing John its contents. “Look, John!—This is for you!”

Instantly,
John scrambles to his feet and puts his hand through the bars, pulling a small,
bruised apple from the bag. He chomps into it with the force of a machine,
biting with such aggression, I nearly drop my jaw in reaction.

The beautiful
symphony of John’s eating fills the dungeon with his song of succulent
survival. The crunch, chew, bite, and swallow. For just a moment, I shut my
eyes and vicariously enjoy the apple with him.

Just a moment
of feeding him revives us both, it seems. The magic in this exchange, nothing
compares.

Seeing as the
first apple is nearly consumed to its core already, I let him pull two more
from the bag. He eats with such intensity, I worry he’ll even eat the stems
intact.