Cobweb Bride (15 page)

This Fiomarre was a striking sight to behold, tall and proud of bearing despite his prison-mauled clothing, the bruises on his serious, once-handsome face lending an enhanced air of nobility to his deep fierce tone of voice. He might have been misguided but appeared earnest and somehow wild.

And his eyes—they were dark and horrible.

Although the Infanta felt nothing in actuality—saw the world as though the light and all things contained in it came to her from a hazy distance of thick layers of cotton—she could still experience a twinge of
something
, a last vestige of living curiosity that surfaced past the thick dullness of apathy.

He had killed her.

As she watched his eyes, she remembered over and over that terrible focused moment of sensory awakening, for there could be no other words for it, an awakening before oblivion.

That night, as she had sat on her silver chair in the center of the great Hall, trembling with her usual anemic malaise and exhaustion, listening in all effort of politeness to the endless drone of congratulations, growing dizzy with the visual and auditory assault, she felt herself beginning to disappear.
 . . . There had been snatches of color, bejeweled fabric, powder glittering on wigs, the stifling weight of her own wig and the Crown, voices raised, smiling faces of nobility as they bowed before her, knelt, leaned, nodded, lips moving like flapping marionettes. . . . And suddenly, there
he
was. He stood out from the rest of the carousel in her vision by the nature of his stillness. For he was motionless, next in the greeting line after some fluttering satin figure of a retreating countess.

He just stood there. He never bowed. Even before he had taken out the knife, she remembered a strangely invigorating second of sight—the sight of his intense, impossible dark eyes.

And then he moved forward, and there was an elongated shape of steel in his graceful hands—which for a moment she thought would turn out to be some kind of impromptu gift, which in a sense, it had—and he neared her closer than anyone had ever done, any stranger, and there was fast movement, then a shock of sharp indescribable pain. . . .

Then, silence.

A silence during which the winter wind outside stopped, and the Silver Hall and all in it winked out of existence into
nothing
.

She was
nothing
.

And then, strangely, everything came back. The turmoil, the tumult, brilliant candlelight in the chandeliers, his screaming contorted face, the guards, the madness.

Only—it was all different. For, she no longer
felt
it. The thickness of distance was upon her.

No more pain. The knife in her heart sat as though it was in its proper sheath. Her heart itself was silent. Her blood gushing forth, leaving her, was like someone else’s rain beating upon an indifferent shuttered window. She was now an observer of her own self, not a participant.

And amid the thickness, the apathy, the suspension of being and non-being, there was one thing left to her.

The need to
know
why.

Why this stranger did what he did. Why-what-who was he?

For, his act of intensity had forged a strange bond.

Whatever happened in the several long hours following, in the endless-seeming bowels of hell that was that night, the ministrations and the shock, the frightened weeping and condolences, the interminable weight of time itself—she thought of this need for
why
.

She had to know. While she was still here, while she still could.
 . . .

And so, she said to him who stood now before her, “Proceed. Tell me how your family was wronged by mine.”

For several long moments he stared at her as though uncomprehending, his loosely shackled hands lowered powerlessly, hanging before him in their chains. And then suddenly, with a guttural cry, he raised his arms, his face contorted, and he made a futile effort to pull the chains apart—all the while staring at her with pure black hatred.

“Filthy Liguon
 . . .” he whispered through gritted teeth.

“Yes, I’ve heard this already,” she said. “You’re becoming repetitious, Marquis. Have you nothing else to tell me but this feeble outpouring of black bile?”

His expression then was not bile but black fire.

“Oh, I have so much to tell, so much
 . . . where to begin? Well then, if it amuses you—or rather,
despite
your pleasure. Ten years ago is when it started. One summer day when my father, the honorable and generous, the faultless Marquis Micul Fiomarre was sitting in his green garden in our sprawling estate, enjoying the sun-drenched afternoon, with his wife, my mother, the Marquise Eloise, and his children. I remember it now like yesterday, branded in my mind, even though I was but a green youth—the dappled spots of sun and shade on the grass, the perfect breeze stirring soft leaves, the cool juice of sweet peaches and cherries in an iced glass. I remember my father laughing at something, his olive skin, his whiteness of teeth, the funny thick black mustache we used to tease him about, his white shirt stained with garden dirt. My mother was laughing too, and myself and my brothers and my one sister, rolling on the grass. It was a moment of heaven.

“And then the men came. They were a company of armed guards dressed in the Imperial uniform. They marched past the protesting household servants, past the steward and our own house guards, filling the garden. Suddenly everything went cold. My father—I can see his face now, it changed from friendly, open, warm, to a perfect blank. Expression locked down into nothing. My father was already gone before they even took him away.

“They took him away?” the Infanta said softly. “Why? What was said? What reason given?”

“Nothing! The hell began in that moment when my father questioned them and their captain announced a charge of Grand Treason against the Crown, and that he was commanded to come with them and obey without any other recourse. My father asked what did they mean, what had he done? His face was in shock, his eyes confused, completely innocent—anyone could see. My mother had stood up also, and questioned them, in tears. My brothers and I—there were no words, we froze, became stone. Our little sister Oleandre, who was half my age, began to bawl.

“But they did not give an answer. Instead, they threw my father down on the ground, and there was a table upturned, I remember, and all our glasses went crashing, and the juices spilled orange-red on the grass. Then they bound him, and they half-dragged, half-carried him away, even though he did not even struggle and would have walked. That was the last time I ever saw my father. I remember the back of his dark head, his wavy locks of hair that would often stick out funny. . . .”

Fiomarre began to pace, back and forth a few steps, for his feet also bore chains and he could not walk properly.

The Infanta listened.

“Soon after my father had been taken,” he continued, “we received an Imperial Sealed Letter of Condolence to the family, and within it we learned of his
 . . . execution. We still did not know why. What had he done? What, in the name of God? At least the Fiomarre were not stripped of noble rank for whatever it is my father had ‘done.’ The Letter of Condolence to my mother was a small useless Imperial gesture of recompense for the death of her beloved husband and our cherished father. We inquired formally, first in Charonne, at the Royal court of Styx, but the Ixion King—the elder, since back then it was King Claudeis and his sickly Queen Rea, while their son Augustus was only a tiny babe—the Ixion King did not know, or did not care to know, and we were referred higher up, to the Emperor.

“A month had passed during which my mother had become very ill. She remained thus, weak and ailing for nearly a year. We were also shunned by the neighbors, for rumor of the Fiomarre disgrace had spread like wild creeping ivy though the countryside, and indeed, all of Styx. No one wanted to have anything to do with us, the noble Peers in the city of Charonne had closed their doors, and even in our own neighborhood there were no longer any friendly visits, none from our distant cousins, and not even from the most solicitous kindly old widows who had been friends with my mother.

“As for my brothers and sister and myself, we were also shunned and mocked in the village—our own village that we owned! Even our tenants, those whose landlord my father had been, they too looked askance at us. The priest would not come to perform Mass in the traitor’s family chapel, and my mother took us to the back of the village church every Sunday where we sat alone in the pew. Even some of the servants left our employ.”

“I am sorry
 . . . for you, the children, and your mother, and yes, for him, your father . . .” the Infanta said.

But he glared at her.

“Your belated remorse doesn’t bring back the lives. Not only my father. Let me continue, and you listen, Liguon! This went on for almost five years. We grew, and my eldest brother, Ebrai, who was now the new Marquis, was of an age to be received at Court. Ebrai was passionate, the most passionate of us all, and he had carried the burden of half a decade of loss and pain and humiliation. When he left for your accursed Silver Court, it was with the intent to confront the Emperor and ask for justice and recompense, and an explanation for his father’s fate. Even though my mother wept and begged him on her knees not to do anything rash that would put him into peril or offense of the Crown, Ebrai was not to be moved.

“He departed for Court, and was gone. And we heard nothing, for a very long, nigh interminable two months. And then, an Imperial messenger came—a baron whose name I don’t recall, for I only recall his careful pitying expression as he talked very quietly with my mother. He explained that my brother—my foolish passionate Ebrai—had spoken out against the Crown, fought a duel with another high ranking nobleman, killed him, and had been detained. He was imprisoned in the Palace, waiting for Imperial judgment for both treason and murder.”

“I had not known any of this at all,” the Infanta said. “I do not recall ever hearing of your brother or your father’s names and their crimes. . . .”

“Ah, the ignominy of the despised few.
 . . . It doesn’t surprise me,” he replied with a twisted smirk. “The Emperor’s only pampered whelp would not be informed of the dark things that take place in reality, under your nose, in the bowels of this accursed Palace.”

“But—” the Infanta said. “This is very strange and I simply do not see why my father—who is a very mild-mannered man if you only get to know him, despite the layers of rank that he must always wear—why he would order a death and an imprisonment where there was no just underlying cause. The late Marquis, your father and then your brother must have done
something
to provoke such treatment. There is the murder, as you say—”

“No!” His voice was again a fierce, mad, snarling thing. “Nothing! Nothing! They had done nothing! Listen to me, I am not done! Listen, you damned.
 . . .”

Fiomarre started to pace once again, periodically striking himself in the chest with his fists as he spoke, like a denizen of a mental asylum.

“My brother, who had supposedly fought and killed a Duke’s son or some other damned popinjay of fine blood, did
nothing
of the sort. The name of this supposed victim has been withheld from us. And when my mother arrived in grief and madness to see the Emperor the following month, to beg for her son’s life, she was received very coldly and briefly, and told by the Liguon to return home, with an absolute refusal to explain what actually happened. Furthermore, as my mother spent a few days in the Palace, she heard some gossip that the victim of my brother was in fact alive, merely wounded, and recuperating nicely at his own ancestral estate. So, there had been no murder committed, and none to be punished for!”

“Isn’t dueling illegal under the Crown?”

“Illegal, but not a mortal offense!”

A pause.

And then he continued. “My mother suffered a relapse of her illness, and at first could not even find it in herself to move from her Palace guest bed, much less travel. She attempted one more time to have an Imperial Audience, to see the Empress this time, to crawl on her knees and beg for mercy for her foolish son. But the Empress, your Imperial mother, was too busy apparently and would not see her. And so, my own poor mother had to return home to the Fiomarre estate, with nothing, and even less than nothing—no news of my brother’s fate.”

“What
 . . . happened then?” Claere Liguon said very softly. In the act of sympathetic listening she had grown even more still, if such a thing were possible for a dead woman.

“What happened was another death. Another Imperial Letter had come to us, hand-delivered by a different noble flunky of the Emperor—this one’s face—I don’t even have a memory of him at all. And this time there was no Condolence, not even the semblance of sympathy from the Crown. Only a cold announcement of my brother’s execution, coupled with a warning that Fiomarre will be stripped of their rank and lands if they transgressed against the Crown ever again.

“My mother was confined to bed. She remained there for the next two years, slowly fading. Meanwhile I was the new Marquis. I had suddenly become an Heir where I had no interest or expectation of this dubious honor, ever. My brother’s death was an unthinkable. No, not Ebrai. He was going to live forever. . . .”