Cobweb Empire Read Free Page B

softly, looking
up at her. And his slate-blue eyes, their liquid gaze now intent
upon her, reflected the radiance of the campfire. “Who are you, what are you really, Percy? Or should I now call you
‘Persephone,’ as you call me ‘My Lord?’”
    “No need,” she replied. “I am not really
able to—speak of what has happened, nor do I understand it, but I
can tell you I am mostly the same. Not entirely, but mostly .
Call me what you will.”
    She looked at him, expectant, agitated and
yet somehow frozen on the outside, forgetting to draw breath, and
for once not avoiding his direct gaze. And his gaze was relentless
upon her, in silence.
    There was a long peculiar pause.
    And then at last he took a deep weary breath
of his own and said: “Why don’t you bring the sick girl into the
barn. What is her name, Emilie? There is room enough here for a few
more bodies, next to me. . . .”
    “That is kind of you, Sir Kni—My Lord.”
    He watched her steadily, and—it occurred to
her—seeing only her dark silhouette against the glow outside.
    “What of—the other girl?” Percy said,
to avoid the continuation of the strained silence, but not daring
to mention the Infanta outright.
    “No,” he said. “Leave her be where she
is. . . . Less apparent, that way. Besides, she is
rather well guarded.”
    Percy knew he was thinking of the Marquis
Vlau Fiomarre, the man ever present at the Infanta’s side. Indeed,
why not? Let them both stay in the cart, and call less attention to
themselves, instead of being singled out.
    Percy nodded then drew away from him at
last. She moved past Riquar who was still arranging pieces of
armor, past the many horses—including Jack, the knight’s great
black warhorse, and Betsy—and slipped outside. She walked in her
familiar backyard, made surreal by the presence of camped out
soldiers. The once-pristine covering of white snow was now trampled
by many feet of men and horses, churned and beaten down into
brownish sludge that had frozen into the earth. A fire pit was dug
among the snowdrifts where in the spring would have been a long
vegetable patch and herb garden.
    The remaining girls who had gone to be
Cobweb Brides with her, and were now returning home, had found
spots for themselves in the yard, to eat and drink tea. She noticed
how they lost most of their caution of the knight’s men-at-arms.
Little dark-skinned foreigner Marie and street-smart urchin Niosta
were both seated near the fire, their threadbare coats pulled tight
about them, talking to an older soldier, and there was soft,
subdued laughter, and not a few crude snorts from Niosta. Nearby,
Lizabette Crowlé, with her somewhat superior big-town airs, was
snapping open a burlap blanket, and biting her lip disdainfully in
the direction of the giggling sounds. Emilie Bordon, a simple
swineherd’s daughter, still rather ill and occasionally coughing,
sat deep in the cart with her feet pulled up, a steaming mug in one
hand, and a blanket over her head.
    However, at the sight of Percy, everyone
seemed to glance at her momentarily. Or did she imagine it? The
conversations certainly did not cease. But—had they started to look
at her strangely, differently, after what had happened with
Gran?
    Percy tried not to think, and instead
touched Emilie’s shoulder gently, saying, “In the barn you go, it’s
warm there.” She then helped the girl down from the cart, past the
two remaining shapes of the marquis and the Infanta, lying
perfectly still next to each other.
    One dead, one guarding the dead ,
thought Percy.
    After Emilie was situated in the barn near
the already fast-asleep knight and a couple of his men, Percy
emerged again, and stood momentarily. She lingered, looking at the
scene before her, a scene of superimposed worlds—at these people
who had become her strange travel companions, who were about to
spend the night in her family’s backyard next to their house, while
her parents hid within, and the empty husk