Cobweb Empire by Vera Nazarian

him, a
voluptuous well-dressed lady in a sage green dress, with a tiny
cinched waist, with an abundance of auburn hair that was presently
confined and pinned up into an artful sculptured hairdo, followed
quietly in his footsteps, just a length of corridor out of sight,
waiting for the best opportunity to approach him.
    The Duke raged his way up another flight of
well-worn circling stairs into a turret of old crumbling stone in
the oldest portion of the Keep. And the lady followed, always
keeping to one flight below, stepping lightly and soundlessly, and
glancing with distaste at the crumbling antique ruin around her
that was not merely this sorry wing but indeed could have been said
of the majority of Chidair Keep. At some point, as she carefully
stepped over a torn length of ancestral tapestry that possibly cost
a fortune and had just been ripped off its hanger—the venerable
antique depicting faded stars, fleur-de-lis, and curling vines on a
verdigris and night sky background—she felt the icy gusts of winter
wind above her. And thus she knew the Duke had reached the top.
    She emerged behind him carefully but
relentlessly, and stepped into deep virgin snow. The battlements
here were deserted, and she saw only a few deep footprints sunken
in the snowdrifts, before her gaze encountered the great shape of
Hoarfrost. He stood just a few steps away, near the crenellated
parapet wall, leaning into the wind that was whipping his hair and
the tatters of his damaged surcoat.
    Ignacia looked up, shivering, pulling her
skirts closer about her, and regretted not bringing a shawl. But
then, it would have covered the splendid cleavage that she had
meant to use to its fullest advantage—all that cream-and-lilies
rosy flesh bursting from the courtly neckline of her velvet
dress. . . .
    Overhead was a white winter sky with a faint
blue haze, a scrolling dream. A faint mass of darker clouds rode
low on the horizon to one side—she was unsure if she was facing
north or east—and the bleak sun was just past zenith. Beyond the
walls were short thatched snow-laden roofs of an impoverished town,
scattered haphazardly, and farther yet, among the whiteness, the
dark trees of the northern forest, surrounding them on all sides,
all along the haze of the horizon.
    Where Hoarfrost stood, just a few paces
away, the wall rose even higher, and there was a spot where a pole
was fashioned, and upon it rode an old weathered banner, snapping
in the gusts and rimed with snow. It had once been pale blue, with
the heraldic symbol of Chidair and an Imperial strip of black and
silver, with a gold and red fringe of Allegiance to the Realm. Now
the colors had faded into whiteness, and only the shape of the
embroidery remained to mark the insignias, sprinkled by snow. The
Imperial fringe too was no longer true gilt and red but a washed
out yellow and rust, while the black and silver strip had faded to
muddled grey. No one had bothered to replace it, not in decades,
for the remotely situated Chidair with their crude warring ways and
their godforsaken wilderness were indeed little better than
savages. . . .
    Lady Igancia took another step in the snow,
placing her tiny foot in the already existing massive footprint
made by the giant man before her. She straightened and called out
to the Duke.
    “Your Grace! May I join you?”
    Hoarfrost turned around slowly, swiveling
his barrel torso. And his tangle-haired, dirty, dead face was a
garish mask of horrors, starting with the round glassy eyes,
permanently open wide in a glare. “What the devil?” he hissed in
unrepressed fury, then immediately stilled. “Oh it’s you, little
ladybird. . . . Come to watch the damned father
curse his thrice-damned whelp of a son, are you? What the hell do
you want now?” He ended on a far calmer note however, and his fixed
eye-marbles were trained upon her, taking in the sight of her.
    Ignacia smiled and gave him a deep lingering
curtsy, leaning forward intentionally far