Cobweb Empire

  “The boat.”

  “The what?” Amaryllis felt the need to take a seat on her cot. “I think,” she said, “you need to start from the beginning. Now, explain—and do it quickly, before someone else comes and finds you here.”

  “Oh, all right, I guess I must.” Catrine got down in a crouch and placed the candle in its rusty metal holder on the stone floor. She then sat down on the floor herself, crossing her legs underneath her ragged skirts.

  “There’s only one way to escape from Chidair Keep,” she said, switching again to a whisper. “You have to go directly down. And I mean, down. Around here, they say—they say it’s down into the Underworld.”

  Chapter 6

  The 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.”

  They 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. . . .”

  “You!” Beltain turned to the nearest stopped equipage driver a few steps away. “Do you know which way to Burdon Street?”

  “Burdon?” The man creased his brow. “Not sure, Lordship. I think it was back there.” And he pointed toward the heart of the city. And then he added, “But I wouldn’t bother if I were you. It ain’t there now.”

  “What?”

  The driver shrugged, wiped his red-nosed weathered face with the back of his gloved hand. “Streets ’ave been disappearing lately.”

  “What do you mean?” Percy asked, stunned, and thus forgetting her place and not bothering to let Lord Beltain Chidair handle the discussion.

  But the other driver did not seem to notice or care whom he was talking with. Apparently things such as rank were much more mixed up in a big city such as Letheburg. “Just as I said, Missy,” he replied, nodding to her. “Streets are going missing. As in, gone completely. No longer where they have been.”

  “But how?” Percy continued, while the knight looked on, equally puzzled.

  The carriage driver let out a long breath, rubbed his chin and then the bridge of his nose, while his bushy brows went up and down, as if assisting in his thought process.

  “Well, speak on, man, explain. Because it makes no sense, what you say.” Beltain’s voice cut in.

  “Aye, it makes no Godly sense, agreed, Lordship,” said the man at last, this time raising his hat a bit in apologetic courtesy. “But it started about the same time as the other ungodly thing, which is, as you know, death stopping. Folks around town couldn’t find their own home streets, an’ at first it was assumed, what with all the woe and despair, the poor bastards—beggin’ all pardon—had downed a few cups too many. Well, when other decent folk, including fine teetotaler women who wouldn’t touch a drop, came running in tears, after looking for their homes for hours, you can be sure we all took notice.”

  “I still don’t understand what exactly you mean,” Beltain said. “Streets disappearing?”

  “Aye, at first d
isappearing an’ then coming back, usually late in the day.”

  “You’re sure you haven’t had a few cups too many yourself?”

  “Oh, no, Your Lordship! I don’t touch the stuff, haven’t had a drop of spirits since three winters ago, not even on holidays! Got to drive this carriage properly. . . . No, what happens is—it goes like this: you gets yourself out of your house in the morning and take a walk somewhere, minding your own business. You comes back, sometimes after a long day’s work, tired, and just wanting to get a bite to eat and your own bed to fall into and, well, your whole neighborhood looks different. Whole blocks missing! Not just houses, but whole sections of streets, even entire streets themselves. Sometimes as much as a mile disappears! So you run around looking for it, and you call the constables an’ the night watch, and ask the neighbors, and usually no one can remember anything about when it happened, when things disappeared, that exact moment. It’s like pouf, some kind of unholy magic!”

  “This is madness.”

  “Well, sure it is! Imagine, Lordship, if it were you that just lost your whole residence! Now, the good news for a while was, if folks wandered around for a bit, and came back, sometimes—mind you, only sometimes—things returned back the way they had been, as if nothing happened. And the people who’d been in those missing places, those missing houses and blocks, claimed that they were there all along and nothing had been amiss all day. Unfortunately, in a day or so, those same places and people inside ’em, disappeared again, and this time, for the most part, they didn’t come back.”

  “So you’re saying that this Burdon Street has disappeared?”

  “Aye, Lordship, just two nights ago. Together with two adjacent alleys and a portion of Bailey Square.”

  “What about Marriage Street?” Percy said.

  “Marriage Street, Marriage Street . . . let me think now. Ah, yes, it’s gone too. Same block as Admiralty and Harlows. All gone.”

  Percy felt a cold creeping sense of dread. “What about Rollins Way?” she tried.