Cobweb Forest (Cobweb Bride Trilogy) (9 page)

“I want to take it, naturally!” Duke Hoarfrost exclaimed.

“But why?” said Claere. “It is not yours to take.”

From below came more laughter.

“And neither is it
his
to keep! Letheburg falls to me now, little girl, because I will
have
it. And no living man or dead one shall stand before me! Tell that to the King who hides from me! Tell him, I will come for him and drag him by the beard through the streets of his city! I suggest you open your gates now, and spare yourself the trouble of the long and ugly siege! How much longer can you last? Your fuel will come to an end, your fires will go out, long before your measly food runs out, and then, what will you do? Because I promise you, by the time I am done with you, you will wish for a much quicker death!”

Claere pulled in a deep breath and replied. “I am dead already, Duke. And you are a villain, forsworn to your Liege Lord.”

There was a brief pause.

“Dead, you say? So, you are dead too, little Princess?” he said. “Ah, I see how it is! In that case, my sympathies to you on your own untimely demise. But it is not so bad now, is it? No more pain, no more needs, no troubles of any sort, eh? Come now, admit it, girl! We are better off this way, you and I!”

“If there are no more needs,” Claere said, “then why do you need Letheburg?”

“Ha-ha-ha! I like you, clever little Princess! Little Imperial whelp who would do your Emperor Papa proud! I see why old Lethe sent you here to talk, why you’re a sharp one, aren’t you! But clever words will not be enough!”

“Duke Hoarfrost, you have not answered my question.”

In reply, he suddenly roared. The peculiar mercurial change in his manner was terrifying. “Answer you?
Answer you?
Why should I do anything now? I am
dead!
A goddamned dead man, and so are all these poor bastards around me, and so are
you!
What answer needs there be but that we’re all dead, and death is everywhere and nowhere, and we are all rotting in our meat carcasses, biding our time—this extra impossible time given us—and I’ll be damned if I don’t take each precious fool moment and use it to the fullest! Now what say you to this, Your
Imperial
Highness?”

And suddenly several arrow shafts zipped through the air, one of them moving right past Claere’s head, a hairsbreadth away.

But the Infanta did not even flinch. The arrows clattered on the top of the battlements, and only Vlau’s startled exclamation a few steps behind her quickly cut short was any indication of their acknowledgement.

“No, no, damn you, don’t shoot!” exclaimed Hoarfrost, waving angrily at the archers in his ranks. “Don’t shoot just yet, boys, for the girlie and I are not done talking! Don’t want to make a pincushion out of her just yet—that can come later when we sack the city—”

“Your words are overconfident,” said Claere, looking in his general direction, looking down blindly into the fire and darkness below, because the rising pitch and black smoke were causing the film of ice on the surface of her frozen eyes to melt and cloud over, so that suddenly she could barely see anything. “Why are you so sure you will take Letheburg?”

“Ah, because I know something you don’t!” He cackled suddenly.

A strange cold sense came to her, moving inside, entering her past her thickness of cotton, past the layers of distance formed from the fabric of her dead flesh. Claere felt a strange pang, a moment of true fear.

“And what is it that you know?” she said, her measured voice ringing out brightly against the constant crackle of flames.

“I know that even now
someone
comes who will make sure that the gates of Letheburg fall open. . . . And once they do, the city is mine. It has been promised to me.”

“Who is it that comes?”

“Ah, but it is a surprise! You must wait and see, girlie!”

“I must do nothing of the sort,” Claere said. “You are bluffing. And even if you have reinforcements, so does the King of Lethe. My Father, the Emperor of the Realm is on his way here even now, and he will put down your rabble army—”

“And who is bluffing now, Your Imperial Highness? You know very well no one is coming—no one will rescue you. Your Emperor father has enough to occupy him, and soon, he too will fall! Death! Death will come to all of you, all of the others still breathing within these walls!”

“Why must there be death? Why must you persist in this evil? What happened to your oath and your honorable word given to serve the Realm?” Claere was speaking, but she knew with every word it was a lost cause.

“My
oath?
” the Duke roared. “My oath of allegiance to any mortal man has died alongside me! Enough blathering now, girl! Begone from your walls before I change my mind and rain some pretty fire of my own in your direction! Now, run to your coward King and tell him to expect guests very soon—the whole lot of us! Tell him to prepare a Great Feast!”

But she was no longer listening. Her hollow eyes dark with despair, Claere turned away from the edge of the parapets. She moved with awkward motions—her face glistening with the sheen of melting rime from the hot smoke that had been bathing her, but the joints of her body frozen stiff in those long moments she had been standing still—and she walked directly toward Vlau Fiomarre.

He stepped forward, reaching for her arm automatically, and his gaze was aflame. “Your Imperial Highness—you did all you could. . . .”

“Aye, that she did indeed,” said the captain who had brought them here. He had been silent all this while, together with the other soldier guards and the trumpeters. But now he gifted Claere with a look of honest approval.

“Yes,” said the Infanta. “I am done speaking with him. Take me back now.”

And the captain complied.

B
ack inside the Winter Palace, with the evening fully upon them, Claere and Vlau were delivered to the Infanta’s own quarters, and then the King returned briefly to hear what had happened between her and Hoarfrost. Claere spoke evenly, telling what had come to pass in as neutral a language as possible.

“Unbelievable! What a madman! He is a blackguard and villain indeed to have insulted Your Imperial Highness and the Imperial Crown so damnedly!” King Roland muttered. Shaking his graying head, he paced the room before her, helpless and impotent in his complex union of terror and rage.

“He is not going to relent, I am sorry, Your Majesty,” Claere said gently.

“No, he is not; yes, yes indeed, we see that now.” The King stopped pacing, rubbed his forehead. “As for the
surprise
he is referring to, it is of course the war with the Domain. We have received some terrible news this morning, carried by Imperial birds, news that the Silver Court has shut its gates and fortified its own walls, and that the Sovereign of the Domain has invaded the Realm. Morphaea is razed and they have entered Lethe.”

“War? What—what is happening, then? What does that mean for Letheburg?” Claere’s attention focused for the first time.

The King glanced up at her with a gaze that did not fully meet her eyes. “I am afraid, my dear child, that Your Imperial Father may now be delayed and preoccupied at home, and Heaven only knows when any assistance from him can be expected. Unless Goraque comes to our aid, we are on our own.”

“I—see.” Claere uttered.

“Well, yes, then, and so it goes. Meanwhile, you have done well, Your Imperial Highness, as well as can be expected, out there. If any more news is forthcoming, you will naturally be informed.” The King ended the conversation, and then left them in a chamber having grown dark with evening, and not a single candle lit.

As soon as the last guard and footman exited, taking the candlelight with them, and the door was closed, Claere paused in the twilight and then again approached the window. There, the lights of Letheburg were a sprinkling of golden dots in the distance, and the sky was still not fully black but an interim shade between heliotrope and deep indigo.

Vlau stood silently, watching her slim silhouette.

“Marquis
 . . . it is late, and you should have something to eat,” she said suddenly, without turning to look at him.

“I—” he said, his voice cracking, for her words reminded him that he was indeed hungry and parched—or at least that he
should
have been, for he genuinely did not remember the last time he ate or drank at all. “I am not—”

“No,” she said. “You
are
.” And then, with one brief glance in his direction—and he saw only the glass reflection of her eyes while all else was silhouette—she moved to the side-table near the wall and rang the bell to summon a servant.

When a maid arrived a few moments later, somewhat startled by the summons, for in the last few days the servants had grown accustomed to the Infanta never seeming to require
anything
of them, Claere requested candles and a proper fire to be lit in the fireplace, and then a hot supper service “for the gentleman only.”

The servant hurried to carry out Her Imperial Highness’s orders, and soon the room was properly illuminated and warmed for the first time in days.

“Why are you doing this?” Vlau whispered out of hearing range of the servants.

Claere, who had placed herself stiffly in a tall-backed chair near the window, now regarded him with her great sunken eyes. “Because you spend more time in here than in your own chamber, Marquis. It is only right that the room is made comfortable for one such as yourself—with human
living
needs.”

“Then I am sorry! I should go—” Angry inexplicable color flooded his cheeks and he started to rise.

“No, stay,” she said in a commanding voice.

And he obeyed her.

“I am rather glad you are here,” she said evenly. “But if you are to continue, you must eat and drink and rest. It benefits no one if you languish and starve.”

“What does it matter if I eat?” he said. “When more deserving others could use the dwindling food that will be wasted on me.”

“It matters to me,” she replied.

He watched her with his dark unblinking gaze.

The servants arrived in that moment with his supper tray. There was a large platter of blue veined and aged cheeses, fresh baguettes of bread, a steaming-hot salted ham roll baked in flaky pastry, pears poached in port sauce topped with sweet cream, and apple tartlets in honey. Another servant carried a decanter of deep red wine to be imbibed with the blue cheese.

Vlau watched them arrange the serving table, set out the delicacies, pour the wine, and then make their bows and depart, after Vlau nodded to the footman server that he did not require his presence during the meal.

“Please, eat,” the Infanta said. Her hands were folded in her lap and she looked at him in expectation.

The sight of her gentle smoke-colored eyes in their hollowed sockets, trained upon him, evoked a painful spasm in his chest, which then continued downward, twisting his gut. Indeed, eating was the last thing he wanted to be doing. And yet, he was dried on the inside, hollowed out himself, empty, parched, dead
 . . . he had forgotten what it was like to taste and swallow. Only his mind was fevered, hot, burning, fertile with the moisture of life, like a river. . . .

Vlau picked up the goblet of wine and brought it to his lips—while she continued looking at him and he at her, their faces illuminated by warm candlelight. And for some reason neither one of them could make the supreme effort to break the bond of their gaze.

Vlau swallowed, and the cool bittersweet liquid was a vibrant shock. The wine filled his mouth with living force, and he knew sudden wild thirst—his body remembered it, the sensation of needing to drink. He then started to swallow the liquid in gulps, and it went down inside him in a torrent that for some reason did not seem to fill him, was not quite enough to satiate the bottomless need of his desiccated innards.

What is wine but the blood of death?
The fevered nonsense words sounded in his mind.
What is blood but the wine of life?

He drank the entire goblet and put it down, momentarily breaking the connection of their gaze. He breathed deeply while the wine coursed inside him, warming his blood.

“Now, eat,” she reminded him and continued watching his every move.

Vlau nodded and forced himself to pick up the knife and cut into the flesh of the pastry and the cheese. His lips parted and he ate, his motions once more mechanical and senseless at the beginning. But then his body took over—it recollected the burst of flavor, the virile juices filling his mouth, the sudden ravenous hunger.
 . . .

The fireplace and the candlelight together had warmed the room entirely by the time he was done eating, and the large tray with its dishes was mostly empty. Meanwhile, outside the great glass window, the sky stood pitch-black over Letheburg, while the stars emerged like sugar sprinkles, and the street lanterns were a sea of glowing spilled droplets of candied amber. So easy to forget that just a bit further off in the panorama of the city, outside the scope of the window, the distant walls stood up silhouetted against an orange inferno, and the relentless enemy continued to storm the parapets.
 . . .