Cobweb Bride (13 page)

And then, as the guards moved in to execute him on the spot, she stopped them with a sudden strange pronouncement. “No.”

Do not yet kill this man as he had tried to kill me. I must know why he did this thing, why he hates me so. He must live until I know
, she had said. And then she had faltered.

And she still
lived
.

Had his blow missed its sure and easy target, her heart, somehow? Or was she merely on her last breath, and was about to expire on the next?

And yet, others heard the enduring quality of her voice too. And the reaction of the court followed. He could no longer see any of it, forced down on his knees, then flat on the floor, cruelly pressed against the parquet by several booted feet, with his arms nearly wrenched out of their sockets from the back. But he could hear. And what he heard was a gradual terrible silence coming to the Hall, as waves and murmurs of voices faded, even the sobbing and moans of grief.

There was another moment of sudden activity, as physicians had come in full force, and through it all, yes, she still
lived
.

Then he heard a splatter of liquid hitting the floor.

A lot of liquid.

There was more sound, more silence, barely hushed exclamations of unrepressed shock.

And then he heard her voice again, living, clear, resonant in grand echoes through the Silver Hall—if such a thing were possible, a voice stronger now, more confident than it had been before—even though it was no louder than a stage whisper.

“I will see the Birthday Gifts now.”

And after that he remembered nothing more, only the smooth impersonal chill of the floor, ringing footsteps of Palace guards, the vertigo of being dragged for a long time, and then cold darkness.

That was last night.
 . . .

And now, here he was, wrenched out of the non-life of the prison, and brought before her, facing her once more.

And she was still alive.

Impossibly unbelievably
alive
.

Or was she?

There was something undefinable, peculiar about the way the Infanta sat, half in shadow, half-silhouetted by the dim light of the winter day outside. Like a collapsed puppet. A doll propped up by an invisible something from the back.

And then she slowly turned her face to him.

“Leave him,” she said to the two guards on both sides of him. Her intonation had the strange manner of rusty machinery.

And when the guards hesitated, she repeated, “Leave him here, with me. There is nothing more he can do to me now. No more
 . . . harm. Now, leave us.”

The guards bowed, then retreated in grim silence, closing the chamber doors behind them. There was no one else indeed in the room with them. Only the killer and his victim.

Fiomarre stared at her. He stood, swaying slightly, lightheaded from his injuries, from the hunger and the cold. And he felt stupid somehow. Insane thoughts slipped in, taunted him. What impossible luck was his once again! The fools left him alone with the Liguon! He should make another attempt at her life, he should do something, something. . . .

Instead he asked in a hoarse voice, “What does that mean, ‘no more harm?’”

“I am dead,” she replied simply. “You killed me.”

He continued to stare, stupidly, but now he was also freezing ice-cold. His head—it was cold, and the cold rose in him, squeezing at his temples.

“I . . . don’t understand,” he said.

“Neither do I.”

“My dagger struck you in the heart!”

Her smoky sorrowful eyes watched him. “Yes. And my heart no longer beats. Your aim was true.”

The look of horror on his face was unspeakable. If his hands had been free, he would have made a sign of the cross to ward himself.

After a long pause, he muttered, “Then it’s true, the Liguon are indeed unholy spawn of the devil.
 . . . What are you? If you cannot die, what abomination makes you linger?”

But the Infanta continued to look at him. Her gaze, so glassy, yet intensely focused. As though she could use her will only to control one aspect of her body at a time.

“Why?” she said suddenly, repeating the same question that he had never answered. “Why do you hate us so? What has the Imperial Crown done to you . . . and yours? Tell me . . . please.”

Her words were gentle.

And it was the gentleness that suddenly touched him as nothing else had. A horrible impossible moment of remorse flickered on the surface of his thoughts. Here was the only daughter of his enemy—he had rid the world of the Imperial line, he was sure—and she was no different from her father whose hatred had destroyed Fiomarre. . . .

And yet.
 . . .

And for a moment only, watching her, seeing an undeniable shadow of innocence, his own chest constricted with a sensation of grave error, an error of judgment.

But he willed himself past it, past the pathetic weakness of remorse—for he knew he was merely a man, not a murderer, and it was but the natural revulsion at the act of killing in cold blood, no matter how well justified, that now haunted him.

Something haunted him.

And so, to deny this weakness, he snarled at her, his words like a multitude of daggers hurled to riddle her chest with more intangible wounds. “Why not ask your Imperial Father,
Your Imperial Highness?
” His sarcastic emphasis on her title was deliberate, venomous.

But she did not react to his tone. “Why not tell me yourself?” she said mildly. “After what you did to me, do you not owe me at least a reason why?”

“I owe you nothing, Liguon bitch!”

For the first time her eyelids flickered in almost living reflex, as though attempting to blink away his epithet as something tangible that struck her.

“If you are—or had been until your traitorous act of last night—a Peer of the Realm, then you owe me the allegiance of loyalty,
Marquis
Fiomarre.” As she spoke, her peculiar stilted breathing—akin to furnace bellows, it occurred to him in that moment—managed to enhance her voice so that it rose and echoed in the chamber. “And if I or the Imperial Crown have done something to no longer warrant your loyalty, then it is your duty to speak the truth, to explain yourself—if not before man then before God!”

Her words ended as abruptly as they began, and her chest and lungs stopped moving, returning into their neutral suspended state. But their shocking power still resounded in silent waves through him.

“You know my name?” he said. A stupid thing to say, stupid. . . .

“I know it now. Would you not make the effort to find out the name of someone who hates you to the point of death?”

He frowned, his mind in a tumult.

“Well, then,” she continued. “Marquis, you will speak now. Enough righteous posturing. Tell me what has brought you to this hatred. For you and I are both in a situation of impossibility, and yet we may consider it an act of providence, an impossible fortunate opportunity to go beyond the limits of life and death.”

Despite the Infanta’s stilled face the expression of her eyes was
alive
, was burning.

And prompted by the nature of her expression, by the impossibility indeed of their situation, Fiomarre told her.

“M
y Lord, Father!” Beltain said in a loud voice that was at the same time carefully controlled and devoid of emotion.

He entered the Duke’s chambers in a brisk walk, holding himself well and with an upright military bearing. He had no doubt he had successfully concealed the severe pain and the pulling stiffness of his muscles, still sore and aching all over. Yet the effort cost him, for his face remained a fixed mask, with hollows that sank deeper than usual between his elegant cheekbones and angular jaw.

“Forgive me for entering unannounced, Father, but I have news. Important news and an explanation at last—an explanation of what is happening!”

“And what is happening, boy?” said Hoarfrost. He was seated at a large mahogany table with a well-worn polished surface on which were spread out armies of miniature painted soldiers in formation. With one hand he was arranging several tiny figures in a double marching line, two abreast. His face was averted, so that Beltain could only see the back of his head, the terrifying matted tangle of hair, bits of lake weed, and clotted old blood.
 . . . He was never going to change out of that filthy torn blue surcoat, damaged hauberk, and undershirt of his, nor clean himself up. . . . What was the point?

The reek in the room had not increased, because of the one partially broken window, the missing glass of which allowed wintry air to enter and vent the worst of the stench. It also allowed small flurries of snow to pile near the windowpane and swirl in eddies deeper into the room.

It was infernally cold here. Not a living man’s proper quarters.

Yet Beltain preferred this biting late afternoon cold to the stench of death.

Taking a deep breath of cold, he related the news of the Royal Decree that the King’s Herald had proclaimed in town. A copy of the same Decree was now in his hand, crisp rolled parchment, with the seal of the Kingdom of Lethe, meant for the Duke’s own eyes.

Beltain offered the parchment to his father.

Hoarfrost had listened to the explanation with a blank face, and an occasional shifting of his stance in the chair, moving his upright back for better balance. He did not blink, hearing of Death halting all acts of dying in the world until a Cobweb Bride is found. But when he heard of the Royal urging—nay, order and command—to all maidens of marriageable age, at least one per family, to make way to the Northern Forests in search of Death’s Keep, then Hoarfrost reacted.

“So! A missing Cobweb Bride is the reason I’m still here in this mortal coil, eh?” he said, with a whistling hiss-intake and exhalation of air in his pierced chest.

And as Beltain watched him, the parchment still held in a proffered hand, Hoarfrost began to laugh.

Duke Ian Chidair shook like a great hollowed log, gasping spurts of air in chuckles, then followed up with a deep roar.

“A Cobweb Bride!” he bellowed. “He wants his Cobweb Bride! Well, damn him to hell and back again, but he will not have her!”

Beltain stilled to the point of holding his breath.

“And who’s this Cobweb Bride anyway?” Hoarfrost continued, wheezing with chuckles. “Is she a fine bit of skirt, a young lusty woman of flesh and blood, with a solid pair of tits a man can hold on to, and a healthy rump to fondle? Or is she a monstrosity like myself, dead but not quite? And in either case, what does Death, that cold bastard, intend to do with her? Wed and bed her? Beget little dead whelps, eh? What kind of bloody idiocy is this?”

“She
 . . . could be anyone,” Beltain said, holding back his facial muscles from moving into a frown. “The Royal Decree urges all marriageable women who might possibly fit the position to—”

“Enough! I got the gist the first time you said it. I might be dead but I’m not deaf, boy! Now, let me see that.” And Hoarfrost grabbed the parchment out of his son’s hand.

Beltain watched as his father’s large, bloodless-grey hands with stiff thick fingers, torn fingernails and clotted dirt worked slowly to unroll the Decree. Another time he would have offered to assist, since Ian Chidair was ever clumsy with implements of the scribe’s art, loath to hold quill-pen and paper. But now he stayed back, letting the Duke do it himself.

Hoarfrost perused the Decree, then made a spitting noise, and crumpled the parchment with one great meaty fist. “What does Lethe think I will do, comply with this idiocy, this drivel? Osenni is daft if he thinks I’ll give up this miracle of immortality and invincibility, this divine grace that has befallen me! Or, he’s a cow himself if he believes that I’d order my women and their girls to go to their deaths or on some wild goose chase, just so that the rest of the poor murdered fools and myself would get to croak. Hah!” And he banged the table so that some of the miniature soldiers scattered like colorful chips of wood.

“But—” said Beltain. “I don’t think I understand, Father. Wouldn’t it be the right thing to do, to humor Death’s request?”

Hoarfrost’s dark eyes seemed to move into a sharp focus, and he trained the heavy gaze of them on his son. “What? You want me to
die
, boy? Are you, my own son, my flesh and blood, telling me you want me dead and gone?”

“Not gone, never that! But I want—whatever is right. This is not natural, my Lord. It should be the way things had been
 . . . before.”

“Natural be damned!” Hoarfrost’s petrified face was full of unrelieved anger like a rattle filled with sand that would not look any different on the surface no matter how much you shook it. “What’s natural for a man in his prime to be sent to kingdom come from a cowardly strike in the back? I should’ve lived! I killed him first, in fair combat facing him squarely, and he was down. And then he came at me! What’s right about that, eh? If Death hadn’t decided suddenly he had an itch in his damned cold prick for a Bride, I’d still be alive now, a real man with warm blood in me! So then, I demand my time given back to me! And I will not give up what is mine, not ever again!”