The Grass King’s Concubine

by Kari Sperring

  He said, “There’s nothing here.”

  She looked back at him. Her right foot was already on the lowest tread of the staircase that led to the door. She said, “We don’t know that for certain.”

  “They would have seen us.” But the windows were covered with woven screens. “They’d have heard us at the gate.” But the wind curved creaking through the walls. He put up his chin. “There can’t be anyone. What would they live on?”

  She made no answer. Instead, she climbed the steps. He hesitated, hanging on to the three sets of reins. He wanted to stop her. He did not think he could. He said, “Be careful,” and felt the wind dance the words away.

  She laid her hand on the door and pushed. It opened. She said, “They left it open. But they locked the gate.” She turned to look at him. “I don’t want to go in alone.”

  “Wait.” He looped the ponies’ reins about the nearest of the house’s stumpy legs. If they were to stay here for long, he would have to rummage out the picket ropes from the bundles tied on the pack pony. He did not want to stay here longer. This frail building was no shelter from the weight of the sky. He wanted to turn back. He climbed the steps two at a time, making himself breathe deep and slow. The cold air rasped his throat. Aude stood before the partly opened door; as he joined her, she placed a hand on his arm. Through her layers, her hand trembled. His irritation with her faded. She was so very young, so sheltered. And she trusted him. He dropped a muffled kiss on the top of her head and asked, “Shall we?”

  “Jehan…” Her fingers tightened in his sleeve.

  He patted her fingers. “Your house, Madame.”

  Inside, it was dim. Gray dust coated every surface. Two or three tall earthenware jars stood open: over them was a long shelf littered with bowls and cooking tools. A wide-bellied jug stood on the floor. Under one window was a semicircular construction of mud brick, the top layer baked black. An iron skillet sat on its top, surface gritty with neglect. There was no table, but two stools were tucked beneath a bare section of shelf. Opposite the stove, another door led into the rest of the house. Overhead, the roof sloped, foul-smelling and ragged. Its lowest part easily brushed the top of Jehan’s head. Wind shivered at the walls, keeping the dust restless.

  Leaving Aude in the doorway, he circled the room cautiously. One of the jars was empty, one was perhaps a quarter filled with dirty rice. In the bottom of the third were a few inches of water. He bent to sniff it: stale. He had hoped for better. Even so, they would need it. He pulled his scarf loose and tugged off the double glove from his right hand. Aude asked, “What are you doing?”

  “I want to check this water.”

  “Oh.”

  He took a bowl down from the shelf and blew out the dust. He had to reach down almost to the top of his arm to dip it in those precious dregs of water. For a smaller person, the reach would have been too far. When he lifted the bowl back into the light, the water within was dusty, but fairly clear. He smelled it again. Not too bad. Boiled, it would probably do. He had drunk as bad on campaign and in the alleyways of the Brass City. His shoulders dropped.

  “Did you hear that?” Aude asked.

  “The wind?”

  “No. Something else.”

  “The ponies, then.”

  “It was a shuffling.”

  “It must be the wind. Maybe one of the wind covers is loose.” He dipped a careful finger into the water and touched its tip to his tongue. He could taste nothing odd. Not that that proved anything. If it was poisoned or polluted, he would no doubt turn blue and drop dead. He spat, then rubbed his tongue vigorously with his scarf.

  She said, “What are you doing?”

  “Wondering why sometimes I’m stupid.”

  She giggled. He added, “Though if I do die messily, you’ll know not to feed this stuff to the ponies.”

  “Silly.”

  He shrugged. “My eldest brother always said so.” Bumpkin had been the preferred word. But he did not want to tell her that. He had given her more than enough grounds to reach that conclusion unaided. He pushed the thought away. If they were to stay here overnight, he’d need a fire to boil the water. And some heavy stones, to hold down the oilcloth when he set it out. And the ponies needed grain to supplement the grass…

  “Jehan…”

  “Umm?” The bowl forgotten in his left hand, he turned back to her. She was not looking at him. Puzzled, he followed her gaze.

  There was someone moving toward the inner door. A skinny figure, uncertain in the gloom. It moved with a strange dragging gait. Jehan’s right hand went to his hip, where his sword should be. His fingers closed on air: the sword was outside, strapped to his saddle, along with his carbine. Burn it. With the same hand, he groped for the shelf, seeking some kind of knife. Nothing but dust. He did not want to turn; he needed to watch that form. Of course, there was no reason to consider it hostile…

  There was no reason not to. Something in that struggling advance troubled him. Something was not as it should be.

  Aude said, “Good day?” Her voice was thin.

  The figure reached the doorway. A man. Once, a man. His skin had retracted to wrap bone and sinew in a dirty film. Beneath his cheekbones, muscle shreds showed. On one side, a rib poked through his rags of clothing. Twists of tissues dragged behind him, ripped from his soles by the floor. His eyes were hard and unblinking and gray as dust.

  Not someone. Something. Jehan swallowed and let his exploring hand fall. Whoever this had been, it was no one now. It was dead.

  And he had no idea how to fight the dead.

  It was slow. That was something. Easy, then, to put himself between it and his wife. All the layers of quilted jacket and warm robes were going to impede him considerably. He reached for strategy, thoughts somehow held to the creature’s slow measure. Think, Jehan. He realized he had crossed to stand in the center of the room. Of course, perhaps this…this thing would prove harmless. Perhaps the whole thing was a mirage, a construct of wind and dust and cold. And perhaps Jehan was the lost heir to the Seven White Keys of the Ice Palace.

  He said, “Aude. Go fetch my sword.” He did not hear her move. He said “Now, Aude,” in his army voice, and he heard her steps move away.

  The thing was looking at him, if stone eyes could see. It advanced, step by dragging step. It lifted a brown, knotted hand. Powdered flesh sifted floorward. Jehan stepped back, realized he was still clutching the bowl. The creature pressed forward. He could taste must and mold, the gritty scent of rotting wood. He swallowed, took another step backward. Wind shook the woven walls, stirring up more dust and desiccated tissue. Another step. He held a distance of perhaps three paces between himself and the thing. Perhaps if he halted, it would pass him by. He had been too long a soldier. Perhaps he should stop.

  He did not want to. Repulsion gripped him, requiring flight. He could easily outrun the thing. He did not want to turn his back to it. He did not know enough about it. The flaking fingers reached out for him, yellow bone peeking through. Another step. His heel came up short. The wall. His path backward must have curved. Where was Aude? She would have had to strip off gloves and fight tightly knotted bindings to free the sword. And surely she had not been gone more than a handful of moments. He was still thinking in slow time. At his back, the wall shuddered: no comfort there. Dry talons snagged in his sleeve; stone eyes fixed him from the center of the crumbling face. He could count the teeth, black and foul. Two missing from the lower front, more gone at the sides. How did it know he was here? He could not bear to have it any closer. Shoulders to the wall, he shoved the thing one-handed. Water slopped and splashed from the bowl. The fingers clawed at it, dull and slow. A black tongue protruded. Jehan held his breath.

  Noise cracked; dust exploded about him, choking. Water sloshed over his hand. He coughed, blinked hard. A sour taste coated his mouth. The air had turned ocher. Through streaming eyes, he could see the far wall of the room, veiled in a cloud of broken flakes. He could not see the creature. He tu
rned, and there was Aude in the door, his carbine in her hands.

  She said, “It just flew apart.” Her voice shook.

  She was a lousy shot. She might easily have hit him. He had told her to bring the sword. None of that mattered. He began to inhale, stopped. The air was full of dry death. Chunks of body littered the floor. Two talons still gripped the shards of the bowl, turning dark with the water. A thick layer of tissue debris covered Jehan’s outer garments. He shook himself violently. He needed to breathe. Dust swirled as he bolted for the door. The wind hit him like a benediction, scouring away the decay with its icy fists. He inhaled deep, freezing lungfuls.

  Aude said, “Are you all right?”

  He had forgotten how good air could taste. He did not want to lose concentration by speaking. By thinking through what she had asked. He was alive. His flesh was plump with moisture, curved warm and comforting about him. He shut his eyes, to feel it better.

  She said, “It wanted something, that…that whatever-it-was. It wanted the water.”

  6

  Warriors in the Wind

  ALL AROUND THE STONE HOUSE, the land lay cracked and dulled. No grass had grown there for five times ten handfuls of years or more. The ground was too hard, compacted by drought and cold to the texture of rock. It had been even more handfuls of years since any human had set foot here. Any human, or, for that matter, anyone else. The twins had rather abandoned outside. “It tastes bad,” said Julana, spitting.

  “It hurts our paws,” said Yelena.

  The door to the Stone House stood shut, its foot buried in a drift of dust. Tidemarks of soil bespattered it, as high as a man’s shoulder. The windows had turned sepia. They let in sour underground light. Not that the twins cared; their bright beady eyes were adapted to dim light. “Hunting light,” said Julana, whiskers twitching.

  “Best for us,” agreed Yelena.

  When the wind increased, at first they paid it no heed. Like the earth and the sky, the wind just was. It was not in their nature to ponder such things. The wind chased the clouds and scrubbed the ground; it thumped the windows and poked chill fronds into the walls. Curled together, the twins slept soundly. Draughts tried to tease them: They fluffed up their fur or twitched sideways. They were, and it was, and that was that.

  On the big wood table, the book sat waiting. They liked to curve about it, to sleep on its covers. The edges of its binding told the tale of their love in piecrust toothmarks. “But nobody comes,” mourned Julana.

  “They will,” Yelena said. “Marcellan said so. Words are forever.”

  “Forever and unchanging.”

  “Like us.”

  “Like us. But…” and Julana stiffened, “we move; we do things. We bite things. Will the words move, too?”

  Yelena did not know. She eyed the book, tense with suspicion. The pages sat stolid. She said, “Marcellan didn’t say so.”

  “He said…” Memory was oblique to the twins. Their life was a fable, secured by retelling. Julana twitched her whiskers in distress. “Tell me what he said. I don’t know it.”

  “He said,” said Yelena, and her tail bushed, triumphant, “he said words hold things down. Like a stone on cloth.”

  “Like a stone.” Julana bounced. “Stone words in a Stone House.”

  “Stone words.”

  They did not note the slow retreat of the waters from the rice paddies and the irrigation channels and the river. They did not note the lessening of the rains. Wet season or dry, flood or drought, all were outside their concerns. They kept their door as bidden, and they watched their book, and they chased one another through the dark corridors and chill rooms. They groomed and they slept, and they barely knew that they were waiting.

  On a day with ice in the air, the wind changed its nature. At first, the twins did not notice that, either. The change began softly, a faint twist in direction, a haze on a horizon already clouded by distance. Not a whisker stirred as the haze grew stronger. The dominant blast shuddered, struggled to hold its place and was forced aside by a steady blow from the southwest. Stroked by its fingers, the dry earth seemed blacker, rising up feather-shaped to tumble back like chippings. Pressed about the book, one twin stirred, then the other. Small nostrils widened; ears rose. “Old trees,” said Julana, lifting her head.

  “Damp,” said Yelena. “I can taste it.”

  “We played in the leaves,” Julana said. “The trees dropped them everywhere. They crunched when we caught them.”

  “They broke.”

  “Bits in our whiskers.”

  “Small things lived in the roots and the branches.”

  “Dormice. Squirrels. Rabbits.”

  “We like rabbits.”

  Sharp teeth gleamed in the low light. Then they were afoot and scrambling, tumbling from the tabletop to dash helter-skelter across the stone floor. Julana’s teeth snipped at her sister’s tail. Hooping in midair, Yelena twisted. Her claws snatched in Julana’s fur as she landed, and they rolled, locked about each other, over and over, tails lashing and teeth locked, until they came to a halt against a wall. Using her sister as her springboard, Julana leaped for a windowsill. Her front feet snagged its edge to hang in sudden slow time. Yelena jumped for her tail, and Julana dug in her claws. One effort of shoulders, and she was up, out of reach.

  Her nose bumped the window. Wind blew, shaking the frame. The dust shifted, and she stopped. Her fur bristled. Her tail stiffened.

  “Bannermen,” she said. The bannermen guarded the palace and realm of the Grass King, watching the gates and walls and all those weak places where his lands touched on those of other powers and beings. They were bodyguards and warriors and upholders of the law rolled into one.

  Yelena scrambled up beside her. “We haven’t done anything.”

  “Anything new.”

  The new wind blew rich with shadows. It tracked toward the Stone House; within it, shapes wove, on the fringe of visibility. “Perhaps it’s just a dust storm,” Yelena said, but her voice was doubtful. The twins knew about weather. They knew, too, what did not belong. This dark wind was one such thing.

  Outside the Stone House, the shadows grew stronger, stepping in to land. Dust devils slowed, steadied, shook out into human shape. They wore calf-length robes of spring green over loose trousers of brown, and soft boots. Their heads were swathed in scarves against the dust, hiding all features save the eyes. Each bore a short sword, sheathed in leather, hanging from a belt. Two carried recurve bows, slung over a shoulder and accompanied by cornets of arrows. One had a bandeau of knives. Another held a second, longer, sword. At wrist and throat, their robes were embroidered in bronze, ears of corn mingled with leaves.

  “Not just bannermen,” Yelena said. “Cadre.” The bannermen were divided into five sections, each headed by a senior, always the most skilled and deadly among them, known as the Cadre. If the twins were wary of bannermen, they feared the Cadre, whose abilities were considerable and whose tempers were often short.

  “How many?” The twins were not good at counting. “Some? All?”

  Yelena’s whiskers bristled in concentration. “As many as my feet, but not with yours as well.” She looked at her sister. “Is that all of them?”

  Julana considered, listing the Cadre in her head. Her fur puffed out: The twins did not like to think about the Cadre. One never knew if it might draw their attention. She said, doubtfully, “Maybe…”

  Outside, the warriors had grouped, backs to each other. Two watched the Stone House, two the land around it. If they spoke, their scarves hid it. They did not blink in the dust, nor did the wind disturb their robes. “What do they want?” Julana said.

  “Not the book,” said Yelena. “They can’t have the book.” She bared her teeth. “We won’t let them take it. We didn’t let them take Marcellan. Not for ages.”

  “We guarded him then. We’ll guard his book now.”

  “We’ll scratch and we’ll tear.”

  “We’ll claw and we’ll bite.”


  “We’re very sharp.”

  “And anyway,” and Julana brightened, “they can’t come in.”

  “The Grass King said so. Said we would stay here all alone. No one to join us or watch us. No courtiers. No bannermen. No Cadre.”

  “Just us, by ourselves.”

  “We make it ours.”

  “And no one can come in unless we let them.”

  One of the warriors stooped and scraped up a handful of dirt. It sieved through the gloved fingers. The veiled faces tilted together, then one, the largest, shook its head. Another went to the corner of the Stone House, out of the twins’ sight. After a few moments, it returned, also with a shake of the head. The smallest gestured toward the Stone House. Julana, startled, spat.

  Yelena repeated, “They can’t come in.”

  “We won’t let them.”

  The largest one gestured, and the small one shrugged and turned away. The southwest wind began to increase; at last, the robes of the warriors shifted, beginning to loose definition.

  “There,” said Yelena, “they’re leaving.”

  “We made them leave,” Julana said. She hesitated. “Did we make them leave?”

  “The Stone House is ours,” said Yelena. “They knew that.”

  7

  Jehan and the Wind

  HIS SKIN ITCHED. Nothing Jehan did could shift the memory of that cloud of decay and desiccation enveloping him. His feet stumbled him from the kitchen, out through the sagging main door, and down the steps to the compound. He had left his outer gloves on the shelf where he had found the jar. His fingers fumbled over the fastenings of his coat, snagged in the thick outer scarf as he tore them open and let them drop. It was all over him, the flakes and fragments of death, caught in fabric, clinging to his face, filling—oh, gods—filling his mouth and throat. He spat, rubbed his mouth with the sleeve of his undercoat, spat again. It was inside him, and he would never be free of it.