Cobweb Empire Read Free

were not piloting her own body, but someone
else— someone else was pulling Betsy’s reins, and maneuvering
the cart, and then coming to a full stop near the barn where the
soldiers had already started to make camp.
    Someone else got down from the
driver’s seat; someone else adjusted her listless hair falling
around her bare forehead, where in moments sweat had turned to
ice. . . . Where was that woolen shawl now?
    Oh, it was back in the house. She had come
in through the front door and had taken it off carefully and
proudly, and handed it back to her mother. Then, she—no, someone
else—went to her grandmother’s bedside, and did something—
    No!
    Percy shuddered, coming “awake” inside her
own head, slammed into the present reality, the hardness of the
moment. And here she was, drained of all life, drained dry and made
empty like a hollow cornhusk.
    She took a big breath, and it all came back
momentarily, full force—the fullness of power, the cathedral
ringing in her mind. It was an overflowing sound of deep bells, and
she had been tolling on the inside with the rich darkness,
even long moments after it was all over—after she had touched
death’s shadow at the foot of her grandmother’s bed, held
their hands and pulled the two together—death and the old
woman.
    To do it, she had reached deep into herself
where a tiny bit of death’s heart was lodged like a splinter. It
was she, and not someone else.
    She did it.
    Gran was dead.
    She knew it. And she had named herself.
    Death’s Champion.
    “Percy!”
    Someone had spoken behind her. Percy
recognized the voice of the only man in the cart, and turned around
to look. Vlau Fiomarre, the young dark-haired Marquis, was asking
her something, his voice barely raised above a whisper. He was
dressed as a shabby servant, nondescript. His once-handsome face
was bruised. And his eyes were dark as midnight and almost lifeless
with many days of exhaustion.
    Percy was immediately reminded of who was in
the cart right beside him.
    The dead girl.
    Claere Liguon, the very Royal and very dead
Infanta of the Realm, Grand Princess and daughter of the Emperor,
sat on the other side of Vlau Fiomarre. She was like a neatly
folded, weightless thing of snow, drained of all blood, brittle and
delicate and frozen like spun sugar, covered with the poor disguise
of a cheap woolen cloak once belonging to a palace servant. No one
but her closest travel companions knew her identity, not even the
ordinary ranking soldiers in the knight’s retinue.
    “Percy,” repeated Vlau, his eyes glittering
in the near dark. “Remember, it is as we had discussed earlier. You
will not speak anything of her. We will downplay her presence as
much as possible. Please, not a word to your family.”
    “Yes, I know.”
    And then he added. “What—what has happened
in there? Is it but mistaken nonsense, or did you really somehow
cause your grandmother to pass on? ”
    “I—” Percy began.
    “ How did you do it?” the Grand
Princess herself uttered the question, in a laboring voice that was
like soft mechanical bellows, whistling slightly, as the breath
escaped her dead, frost-filled lungs.
    They were all watching her, the other girls
in the cart, Emilie, Marie, Niosta, Lizabette, breaths held, all
staring.
    But before another word was said, there was
the sound of quick footsteps from the direction of the house, and
another familiar intrusion saved Percy from having to explain the
impossible.
    “Percy, are you there?” Her eldest sister,
Belle, had come hurrying from the front porch, past her stunned
parents, stepping right into the deep snow. She was carrying their
fine shawl, the one that Niobea had dropped.
    Belle, lovely and thin, and shivering in her
rough-spun housedress, stood at the side of the cart, ignoring
everyone else there, and thrust the length of quality vintage wool
into her sister’s hands. “Take this, Percy. It is yours now, by all
right. If mother wants you never to enter