Cobweb Empire (12 page)

Chapter
6

T
he undead soldiers
were left behind at the campsite, tied up and attached to each
other in a great bundle of frozen human limbs, so that they were
unable to cause any more harm for the moment. As the black knight’s
men-at-arms moved about the beaten-down snow of the clearing,
hurriedly packing up their gear and readying the horses, the dead
watched them with their unblinking glassy eyes.

Percy, still weakened from her actions and
lightheaded, sat in the cart, drinking a mug of leftover tea that
she’d poured from a cooling pot that remarkably had not been
overturned during the skirmish. She was trying not to look around
her, not at anyone . . . and especially not at
the restrained prisoners and their roiling sea of death-shadows
that massed and billowed about them like grey smoke stacks,
invisible to all but herself.

It was as if they were
calling
to
her.

With a strange sixth sense—an altogether new
sense that she had only recently acknowledged and was beginning to
understand—she could
feel
them from all the way across the
clearing.

Lizabette, Niosta and Marie quietly cowered
in the back of the cart next to their travel bundles, and sometimes
glanced at Percy sideways. The Chidair soldiers walking about the
campsite also stared briefly at her as they passed.

It was as if everyone’s eyes were upon her,
constantly. Percy was so unused to such attention that the
sensation was stifling and overpowering.

Meanwhile, Claere Liguon lingered a few
steps away, and there was a lost expression on her usually placid
face.

“I am glad you have decided not to die,”
Vlau Fiomarre said quietly, approaching her.

Claere turned, woodenly adjusted her cloak
about her pale white flesh. She spoke without looking at him. “It
is only for the moment, Marquis. I know now that I cannot quit this
life just yet, not after seeing how it is—how it is done. I have no
strength to die like that, and yet I have no will or means to live.
So—a conundrum. Things were so much easier when I thought I had no
choice in the matter. But, I suppose I must gather myself for
something, some purpose yet.”

Fiomarre’s steady unreadable gaze did not
waver as he watched her. “You heard the dead man. There is a war
brewing. And you are—” here he whispered—“you are Liguon.”

“I am nothing . . . a
mockery . . . a shadow.”

In that moment, the black knight took the
opportunity to approach them. He and Fiomarre exchanged a pointed
glance, slate-blue eyes clashing with midnight black. And then
Beltain nodded to him, and inclined his head deeper before the
Infanta.

“Your Imperial Highness,” said the knight,
casting his baritone very softly so that his men nearby would hear
nothing of substance. “Apologies for the interruption, and for the
incident we just had. But—I trust that this
thing
that you
had mentioned earlier—your so-called wish that you expressed to the
girl
back when we were on the road—is now no longer your
desire.” As he spoke the word “girl,” he glanced at Percy who had
just finished drinking and put down her mug, and in the same moment
looked in their direction. She caught his eyes, then quickly looked
away and started to rummage through the basket in the cart behind
her.

“No indeed, Lord Beltain,” the Infanta said.
“It is indeed no longer my intention to die just yet. I thank you
for your continued allegiance. We will proceed as we had originally
planned. Onward, south.” And then she added: “I also would thank
you, knowing that, had I chosen otherwise, you would have delivered
my lifeless body to my father. If something were to happen—I can
count on your honor to do it.”

Beltain’s grave expression did not change,
as he inclined his head again, and said, “Yes, always.”

“Then, let us proceed,” Claere finished,
turning away, and made her way to the cart with slow careful
movements of her fragile dead limbs. Fiomarre, after another
dagger-sharp glance at the knight, followed her and assisted her
inside, while Percy and the other girls made room. Lizabette
fussed, whispering “Your Imperial Highness” with every breath and
tried to make a proper pillow for the Infanta’s back out of some
plumped-up satchel and blankets.

While they were rearranging the cart,
Beltain came up to Percy and spoke in the same quiet manner he had
spoken to the Infanta and Vlau earlier. “You and I need to talk,”
he said, putting his hand, bare of gauntlet, lightly on Percy’s
shoulder.

She had her back to him and was removing
Betsy’s feedbag. At his touch she started lightly, then turned
around. He caught her momentarily frightened expression, ephemeral
like a fleeing bird, and then she fixed her countenance into an
impassive mask. “My Lord.”

“Come,” he said. And letting go of Betsy she
followed him, in some confusion.

They walked several paces in the packed
snow, past a few Chidair soldiers, and past the huddled group of
dead prisoners—
no, do not look at them, ignore their many
death-shadows, ignore, ignore!
—and neared the spot close to the
brush and hedges where the three truly dead corpses of men lay
motionless on the ground.

Beltain stopped and looked down at the
bodies pensively, then looked at Percy. “You did this?” he said
softly. “Is it true? I want to be absolutely sure.”

She met his gaze, and the winter sun shone
bleakly at them in that moment, breaking through the overcast, so
that Beltain’s dark brown hair started to glimmer with a nimbus of
gilded light at the edges, and the pallor of his face was
emphasized.

He in turn saw her own extremely pale
rounded face with its own brand of exhaustion, and the new
weariness in her eyes.

“Yes,” she said. “I did it, My Lord.”

“I will not ask you how. But—can you do it
again?”

She stared at him coldly. “What do you
mean?”

His eyes observed her oh-so-closely. “I
mean, if we are attacked again, how quickly can you react, and if
needed, put more of the dead to rest?”

She signed, then took a big breath, then
frowned, thinking.

“Well?”

“I am not completely
sure . . . but, in a while, I can probably do it
again.”

“Good. How many do you think you can take
out?”

“I—I don’t know. What kind of a question is
that?”

“Don’t be offended, girl, it is a solid
question. I need to gauge your range and strength, and whether you
need to stand up-close to—”

“What am I, a musket?”

It was possibly the first time that she had
seen him laugh. Not a smirk, not even a chuckle, but a
full-throated handsome baritone laugh, a sound that rang through to
her bones, and sent a strange shiver down her spine.

“Forgive me,” he said then, quieting, and
his manner was relaxed and unexpectedly open. “I am used to
managing weapons and armor, not metaphysical forces such as yours.
I mean no insult to you; only want to understand what it is that we
have here. What it is that you
wield
.”

I wield darkness and the
abyss. . . .

But she only said, “I am not sure how or
what it is I do, but apparently when the dead come near, I
feel
them, and I feel the pull to set them aright.”

He watched her speaking, never taking his
eyes off her, not for a moment, seeing the minute shadows in the
hollows of her rounded cheeks and the new circles under her eyes,
her stringy wisps of hair coming loose from the folds of her shawl
near her temples, the vapor of her breath curling in the icy
air.

“I also must thank you,” he said, “for
stepping forward before the prisoners with your brave words. What
you said helped convince them to talk.”

“I don’t know what came over me. It was
mostly an empty threat,” she replied, having no strength for
anything but honesty also. “I was tired, so tired
afterwards . . . I don’t think I could have ended a
fly, much less another one of them.”

“What matters,” he said, “was that they
thought otherwise. You are recovered now, I hope?”

“Yes. . . .”

“Good. Now, let us get back on the road. Oh,
and do me a favor—the next time Her Imperial Highness decides she
wants to die, please let me know before you do anything. Fair
enough?”

“I will.” Percy looked away, her gaze
returning to the three lifeless bodies of the attackers lying in
the snow. “Should we maybe—bury them?”

Beltain had started to turn away, and now
his gaze returned upon her, like a thing tangible. “No,” he said,
and his manner had grown hard. “I leave them here for anyone to
see. Let the dead prisoners observe and remember, and let anyone
who might come upon this also know. Let them know that Death has a
Champion.”

T
hey were on the
road once again and by late afternoon had arrived at the outskirts
of Letheburg. There had been little traffic on the thoroughfare in
either direction; a few carts, occasional riders, and solitary
dejected girls walking north in the opposite direction, likely to
be Cobweb Brides. Everyone steered clear of the black knight and
his soldiers, and similarly bypassed the creaking cart and the
slow-moving cream-colored draft horse. The scenery had been the
same white snow-blanketed fields and occasional brush, and not a
trace of forestland. And now, houses and roadside establishments
showed up more frequently, the closer they got to the main city
gates.

“It really is strange! I insist, there was a
small forest here before,” Lizabette said, several times, as the
shapes of the sprawling city grew in the haze before them. “Yes, I
distinctly remember passing a stretch of trees, not too far beyond
Letheburg. Sparse, to be sure, and not particularly good trees, but
enough to make a wood.”

“Either you misremember, or the forest
uprooted itself and marched somewhere else on little knobby rooty
feet,” said Percy at last in frustration.

“It heard you were coming!” Marie giggled,
then stilled fearfully as Lizabette gave her a schoolmarm
frown.

“For once, I think ye’re right, ’Bette,”
said Niosta from the back. “I remember the forest. Without it, this
road seems much shorter!”

“It’s
Lizabette
, not ’Bette,” the
other girl said with dignity. “And, thank you.”

“Once we get to Letheburg, where do we go?”
Percy mused out loud, to no one in particular. “I have directions
to get to Grial’s house, but that’s about all I know. I expect she
will want the cart back at last, and Betsy too. And then we have to
take Her—
Claere
wherever—”

“We will be heading directly to the Winter
Palace.” It was the black knight who spoke. He had once again
demonstrated an infernal ability to listen in to everything, and
had fallen back to ride next to the cart.

“All right. . . .” Percy held
Betsy’s reins, not feeling particularly confident.

“No,” said Claere, her voice as always
emerging as a peculiar mechanical thing. “We will go to see Grial
first. I too want to thank her for the use of this conveyance. And
I think I would very much like to meet her, from all that I’ve
heard.”

The knight paused only momentarily before
inclining his head in faultless courtesy. “So be it.”

A quarter of an hour later, they were at the
gates of Letheburg.

The city wall was the biggest structure that
Percy had ever seen—greater even than Death’s Keep that had been
wrought of sky-flung twilight shadows. Massive slabs of pale
mauve-hued granite piled on top of each other stretched in both
directions without end, and rose upward for at least fifty feet in
height. And beyond the crenellated tops there were small slim
turrets with pennants flying, regularly spaced along the perimeter.
The decoratively framed iron gates of at least two stories in
height stood wide open, and the city guard barely acknowledged the
Chidair knight and his men with a curt salute as they entered the
city square and passed by Carriage Row with its many conveyances
and drivers for hire. There was everything here, from impoverished
hackneys to high-end sedan chairs and luxury carriages of polished
carved wood trim and gold.

“Look!” said Niosta, pointing, “There’s the
Royal Winter Palace, you can just see it! All them glass
windows!”

“Lordy, Lord, I see it! Must be dozens upon
dozens of them!” Marie exclaimed.

Percy stared in the direction and could just
make out, over the nearest red shingle rooftops dusted with snow,
in the distance, a tall impressive structure with indeed a great
number of windows, glittering in the bleak setting sun.

The black knight ahead of them drew up his
great horse, and the Chidair men spread out to flank the cart on
all sides, because the noise and foot traffic here increased
considerably. Interspersed with normal passerby were also peculiar
sorry-looking shapes, including elderly men, women, and a few
children, who huddled in pitiful lumps near the edges of the
square, and once or twice came underfoot, moving with slow stiff
motion of long-frozen creaking limbs. They raised their white faces
up at the riders, revealing glassy-eyed stares with little human
recognition left beyond apathy, and stretched their palms out by
habit, asking, by their gestures alone, for alms.

Percy did not need to see the upright
sentinel shadows at their sides to know they were dead. Apparently
not all the dead had abandoned their places to head north and join
the massing ranks of their kind, nor were they interested in a war
with the living. . . .

“Where to?” Beltain paused again next to
Percy, bending slightly in his saddle to speak and be heard above
the street noise.

Percy was honestly overwhelmed. She did not
even know where to begin, and only muttered, “We need to find
Burdon Street, and then, I think, Marriage Street, and then Rollins
Way. . . .”