Death and the Emperor

Book 1 Chapter XVIII: Malish

Threats, promises and good intentions don't amount to action. -- Alice: Madness Returns

It was just as well, Kilan thought, that he had finally managed to get the guards to stop following him around. There would certainly have been questions raised if the Emperor left his room only minutes after entering it, fetched a blanket from a supply cupboard, and gone to an empty room further down the hallway.

The room he had chosen was kept for his younger brother's use, and so was well-aired and regularly dusted.

He had just settled down on the bed and pulled his blanket around him when a voice spoke in his ear.

"Emperor Tinuviel sleeping in a spare room? The High Council would have a fit!"

Kilan's startled yelp was embarrassingly loud in the silence of the room.

"What do you want?" he snapped, glaring at Death. "What are you doing here, anyway?"

"I looked for you in your bedroom," Death said, lying down beside him and folding her arms behind her head, "but all I found was an astonishing number of suitcases. So I came here."

"How did you know I was here?" Kilan asked, curious now the shock had worn off.

"If I concentrate on any living soul, I can tell where it is."

That was quite unnerving. But then, what about Death wasn't?

"So you decided to come and scare years off my life."

She shrugged. This was harder than it should have been, because her head was resting on her arms, and so it became more of a lurch than a shrug. "I thought you might like to talk to someone before your holiday."

"It's no holiday. Do they really eat stewed sheep's eyes in Malish?"

Death raised her head to give him a bewildered look. "Sheep's eyes?"

"The Council have been telling me what to do if I'm served some." The very thought made Kilan feel ill.

"I have never paid much attention to the culinary eccentricities of mortals," Death said after a pause. "I imagine that if the Council thought it important enough to warn you about it, then you must be likely to encounter it."

Kilan closed his eyes with a muffled groan. "Should I write my will tomorrow?"

"Don't worry." There was a hint of laughter in Death's voice. "You won't die for any day soon."

Left unsaid was the inevitable fact that he would die eventually. It would simply be some time in the future.

"That is not comforting," Kilan pointed out.

"I'm Death." There was now much more than merely a hint of laughter in her voice. "If you want to hear something comforting, you shouldn't be speaking to me at all. Now, are you sure you remember everything the Council told you?"

Kilan shuddered and buried his face in the pillow. "I don't remember a quarter of it! One of them would be telling me about how to speak to the Iqui while at the same time another one was listing the names of all the Iqui's sons -- he has about thirty of them, believe it or not -- and the proper way to speak to each of them."

"Then list all the names you can remember, and I'll tell you if you've got them right."

His eyes flew open and he sat bolt upright. "What? Go through all that again? In the middle of the night? Over my dead body!"

Too late, he realised the implications that saying could have when said to the embodiment of Death. Fortunately for him, she didn't take him up on the unintentional offer.