The Grass King’s Concubine

by Kari Sperring

  Human Shape

  LIYAN DID NOT COME BACK FOR FOUR DAYS. Marcellan spent the time wandering the palace gardens with Shirai, pausing to talk to gardeners and help them at their work or chatting with the women who wove and embroidered for the courtiers in their bright workrooms. The twins relaxed. They liked Shirai—he was kind and tolerant and sometimes gave them scraps from his plate. With him, Marcellan planted soft fruit and flowers, helped weave bright patterns, sat in the warm light drinking tea and listening to stories of the Grass King’s feasts and dances. There was nothing in that that anyone could object too, not even Sujien. Nothing questionable, nothing that threatened to mix the separate needs of WorldAbove and WorldBelow. In the evenings, he dined in his courtyard, watching the pale stars overhead, or worked at his own small loom, weaving his fabric of bird wings. The twins lolled at his feet, bellies exposed, content and well fed, delighted with themselves and him.

  And then Liyan returned. He reeked of metal and fire; his hands and tunic were black-smudged. He came into Marcellan’s bedroom without knocking and stood just inside the doorway, thin and sharp. His eyes on Marcellan, he said, “Come.”

  Marcellan brought the shuttle to the end of the row and flattened it down with the shed stick. Placing the shuttle carefully to the side, he rose. “Where to?” he asked.

  Under the chest, the twins sprang to their feet, backs arched, fur bushed out. Danger prickled through them. Liyan smelled of hot anticipation and mischief. That was never good; it led all too often to troubles and problems, to holes in walls and fires on rooftops and outraged, scolding officials. It would not do for Marcellan to be caught up in such things. Julana said, “Not safe. Not good. Man mustn’t go.”

  But, “Wait,” Yelena said. “What if it’s the Grass King?” It was possible. The Grass King approved of some of Liyan’s schemes and experiments, laughed at others despite his ministers’ quiet despair. But other times he raged and upbraided and sent the Fire Banner out for long seasons guarding the chill mountain heights or the crunching uncanny shores of the moss sea. If this was such a time, if Liyan had broken something and implicated Marcellan with him…

  “Bite him,” Julana said, and stopped. Her whiskers sagged. That was not possible. That was not allowed. She wasn’t sure if she was even allowed to think it. The Grass King simply might not be bitten. She looked across at her sister, said, slowly, “Ask him?”

  Yelena evaded her eyes. “The Grass King is the law. What he wants must be.”

  Julana drooped.

  Yelena said, comfortingly, “We could bite Liyan.”

  Julana looked at Liyan dubiously. “Won’t taste nice.”

  “Hot,” Yelena agreed. They both peered back into the room.

  Liyan said, “There’s something I want to show you.” Something in his tone was odd, flat and wary. “Come.”

  Creeping to the nearest edge of the chest, Yelena sniffed. “Smells anxious.” She straightened. “Not the Grass King. Something else.”

  Something else was better. Something else avoided the pitfalls of law and loyalty. Something else left plenty of room for plots and bites and mayhem.

  Marcellan folded his arms into his sleeves and stepped past Liyan to the open door. “Lead me, then.”

  “This way.”

  Outside, the corridor was quiet. The guards, both members of the Fire Banner, studied their feet as Liyan and Marcellan passed. Hugging the base of the walls, skittering into shadows and cavities and gaps, the twins followed, fur alert for the slightest change. All around them the palace spread, its light breezes bringing the familiar scents of orange flowers and baking, silk weaving and ink grinding, laundry and stables, and warm dust. Liyan led them down back ways, the narrow passages used by guards and servants and courtiers sneaking off to assignations. Voices laughed and chattered in the rooms that lined them and rose from behind the pierced walls of courtyards and gardens, but those few denizens they passed kept their eyes downcast and their garments tucked tight to their bodies. Liyan striding, Liyan frowning, was seldom safe to notice or distract. The twins scurried and pattered in his wake, drawn on past alluring smells and delightful sounds by the need to protect the man. Their man. Marcellan.

  By the time they reached the outside of the pastry kitchens, they had a strong sense of where they were headed. When they entered the sloping corridor behind the drill hall, they were certain: Liyan’s workshop and the sour, seared courtyard outside it. Two noses twitched; two sets of paws grew flighty. The twins did not like to come here; ash and acrid metal scents clogged their nostrils and dimmed their sense of taste, the pounding of hammers hurt their ears, and smoke and soot stung their eyes and weighted their whiskers. Metal shavings and chips of stone cut paws and snagged in fur. It was a bad place, a loud, painful, sour place.

  It was no place for Marcellan—they would lose him there, in the smoke and noise. There was nothing they could do to stop him. Fur upright with disapproval, the twins stalked their possession, making long, low leaps to keep up with longer human-shaped strides.

  They came to a sudden halt, tumbling into the back of Marcellan’s boots. He had stopped in an archway at the edge of the yard. They crouched against him, huddling against the fabric of his wide trousers. If Liyan saw them, he gave no sign. Marcellan said, “You’ve been busy.”

  “Yes.”

  The courtyard was full of wooden frames hung with great sheets of yellowish paper, blowing in a light wind. They were smeared with marks, great dark lines and dots, reeking of gall. Marcellan said, “Those are quite…large.”

  “Early attempts.” Liyan was dismissive. “I’ve moved on. Come and see.” He strode across the yard, brushing papers aside with his shoulders.

  Marcellan followed him. The twins, caught in the open, made a dash for the dark space under the steps. They did not like to enter the workshop. Even more than the yard, it wasn’t safe. Sparks caught in their fur and singed it, threatened to shorten their whiskers. If the Fire Bannermen suspected the twins’ presence, they were all too likely to poke corners with hot iron bars, to shine lamps under benches, and to aim lumps of coke or kicks. Under the steps they were safe from burns and blows. Under the steps they could not know what dangers might await Marcellan. The low breeze brought them split bamboo and hot metal and something else, something dry and unfamiliar, out of place. The workshop was, for once, silent: no hammers, no bellows, no snaggle-toothed saws, only the soft, dry flapping of the papers. Yelena inched to the edge of the steps and put out her whiskers. Marcellan, warm and comforting. Nothing else human-shaped, no trace of the massed rank of acrid, hot Fire Bannermen. Only the sharp spike of Liyan himself. There was a secret here. Two sets of footsteps climbed the stairs above them. Yelena looked back at her twin. “Quick. Hurry.” The twins slid out of their hiding place and scrambled up the steps.

  The workshop was dim and wide and quiet, its forge banked, its benches pushed back to the walls. A jumble of chests and boxes, buckets and tubs had been piled under them, providing plenty of cover, plenty of places from which to observe and ambush. But neither twin moved, stopped as Marcellan also stopped at the top of the stairs, staring.

  The center of the workshop was occupied by a contraption of wood and iron, vast and weighty and foul smelling. Its legs were squat and short and reinforced with crossbars; its body was a solid dark slab of stone, sprouting limbs of wood and metal outward and sideways and upward. Dirty water snaked away from it into the drain beneath a workbench. From several of the rafters further swaths of paper hung, these stamped with much smaller, regular dark marks. To one side, the top of the nearest bench was littered with wooden frames and square lumps of cast metal, small enough to pat and chase and tumble. Julana’s nose twitched, paws itching to pounce. Yelena nipped her.

  Marcellan said, “A printing press. You built one.”

  “The design was interesting,” Liyan said, “but I still don’t grasp the purpose.”

  Marcellan went over to the press, ran a hand along its outer
frame. He said, “What did you print?”

  “That’s the thing. The…the subject matter.” Reaching up, Liyan pulled one of the paper flags down, waved it at Marcellan. “A jumble of letters, smudges, nothing more. They don’t talk, they don’t tell things. I see no improvement over writing. You said it made things easier, but here…it doesn’t fit.”

  Marcellan went to the bench and picked up a piece of movable type. He said, “Maybe not, here. But in my world…There are very many of us, far more than a court full of scribes can service. It would take many lifetimes to write out every book by hand enough times that everyone who needed it could have a copy. And all the while people would be writing more books.”

  Liyan shrugged. “Human concerns.” He came to join Marcellan by the bench. The twins exchanged glances, then followed, crouching behind one of the great legs of the printing press.

  Marcellan said, “We talked about knowledge, about sharing it. About how the press helps with that.”

  “Yes. But I don’t see its purpose here.” Liyan picked up a block from the bench and turned it over in his fingers. “What do we print? Inventories? They aren’t interesting.”

  “Some people probably think they are,” Marcellan said. He turned to face Liyan, and his face was thoughtful. “You could have told me this in my room. You didn’t need to bring me here.”

  Liyan looked down. About his feet, the dust shimmered, began to heat up. The twins stiffened, ready to run. He was angry, or anxious. He said, “It wouldn’t work here. I want to see it work, to see how it’s supposed to work, this sharing, this learning.” Hot metal dripped from his fingers as the block began to melt. The twins edged away. He looked up again at Marcellan and said, “I need words, useful words. I need you to write them for me.”

  Marcellan was silent for long, long moments. He said, “Useful to whom?”

  “It doesn’t matter, as long as they’re worth printing.” Liyan gestured to the machine. “It hungers. It needs work. It needs worth.”

  “Just printing something isn’t enough,” Marcellan said. “You have to make sure that the words reach people. You have to distribute what you print, to make the whole system work.”

  “Then my banner will do so.” Liyan closed his hand about the molten metal. “That’s easy. The words are hard.” He opened his hand again and the block lay in his palm, once again whole. “Give me words.”

  Marcellan bowed. “As you wish.”

  It was bad: worse than Sujien’s regular irritation, than the tutting of certain courtiers. Even the twins could sense that this went too far. It was not Liyan’s place to create words that lasted. And he had asked Marcellan, who did not know, could not know that this was wrong, that this lay outside all the habits and patterns and proprieties of the Rice Palace. He would make knowledge, turn it hard and changeless. The words would pass from the press to the blank pages, and their shadows—their dregs—would run away, drop by drop, through the drains, into the water than ran through the palace. Tsai’s waters, controlled by her and her Water Banner, the most favored in the eyes of the Grass King. If the words set, if the pages set, bound by ink, would Tsai set also? The twins did not know. But if Tsai changed, the Grass King would be angry. And then, Liyan had spoken of letting the words out of the press and the palace, out into the worlds. That was not his place. The Grass King would not approve it. And Marcellan’s danger would be all the greater.

  He had to be protected. Warned. But how? “Tell someone. The Grass King?”

  Julana wondered, as the twins huddled together in the safest, softest of their nests, a stolen blanket in the corner under a cupboard in one of the empty rooms in the Court of the Fallows.

  “The Grass King might be angry. Might harm him.” Yelena said.

  Julana drooped. Yelena licked her ear. After a moment, Julana said, “Tell Shirai. Shirai likes us. He feeds us.”

  Yelena considered that. Shirai was often kind. And the other Cadre listened to him. “Maybe.” Then she, too, sagged. “But then the Grass King might find out. Shirai tells him things. The Grass King knows what he knows.” That was Shirai’s nature; of all the Cadre, he was closest to the Grass King.

  “Then can we warn Marcellan? Teach him?” Julana said.

  “How?” The twins did not know anything of teaching. Yelena chewed at her foot. “He doesn’t belong here. Humans don’t belong here. He can’t understand us. We can’t speak to him.”

  But they had to. Neither twin bothered to say it. It was heavy between them. “The Grass King talked to him,” Julana said.

  “The Grass King is the Grass King. This is his place. He can do as he wishes.”

  “Cadre talk to him. Shirai. Liyan.”

  “Cadre are human shape.”

  They looked at one another. “Human shape talks,” Julana said, slowly.

  “That is its nature.”

  “If we…” Julana stopped, scared by the scale of the idea. “We couldn’t. Could we?”

  “Could we?” Yelena echoed. Both shivered. Yelena said, “Human shape can be learned. Cadre learned it. Earth and fire and water and air to human shape.”

  “We aren’t Cadre.”

  “No. But…” Yelena crouched close to her twin. “We are of this place. Stone-born. Shaped to reflect. We can shape again. Reflect the man.”

  “We like this shape.” Julana was frightened.

  There was a long silence. Then, slowly, softly, Yelena said, “We don’t need to lose this shape. Cadre don’t. They’re man-shaped. They’re other-shaped. As they choose.”

  “As they choose,” Julana said. “And we could choose?”

  “I don’t know,” Yelena said, “but I think we could try to.”

  Where to begin? The twins remembered themselves always and only in ferret form: teeth and claws, lithe bodies, lively whiskers, all twitch and bounce, wriggle and pounce. Man shape was so much bigger, so much clumsier. They could not think their way into it. “So much space to fill,” said Julana, watching the palace servants at work. “No senses. Everything so flat for them.”

  Man shape did not see the world in scent, did not fit through cracks, under chests, behind curtains. Man shape blundered, blunt and slow and hapless, barely registering the full spectrum of the world. Man shape slept through the soft rustlings of mice in the arras, failed to distinguish all the colored layers of smell, used dead steel tools to take its prey. “Man shape is no fun,” mourned Yelena.

  “Perhaps we could teach man our shape,” Julana said. “That would be better. Better for him.”

  “Better,” Yelena agreed. Then her whiskers drooped. “But he couldn’t learn. Humans don’t do that.”

  They must change. The idea had taken root, burrowed its way into their deepest selves to remain, unshakable and awkward. They crept away from their vigil, afraid to practice where Marcellan might see and be alarmed. At the back of a half-empty granary, they struggled to stretch their bodies larger, to shake skin free of fur. All about them, the ground grew scorched, cracked with effort. Rice softened, began to decay, so that the granary masters cursed and muttered. In the Court of the Fallows, Marcellan wrote out page after page in his square script, all for Liyan and his word-hungry new machine. In Liyan’s workshop, the printing press thumped and rattled and churned out printed page after printed page.

  “Man shape is man shape,” said Yelena. “Once we know it for this, we know it forever. Think.”

  Julana could not think of a use for that. “Bad at hunting. Bad at hiding.”

  “But we can talk to the man every day. Always.”

  They had less time for Marcellan, preoccupied as they were. Each night, they slept deep, tucked behind his knees or under his chin. But they no longer followed him around the palace. “At least you still come for this,” he said to them one morning.

  “He misses us,” said Julana.

  “Man is ours.”

  They sneaked into the Courtyard of the Cadre, through the many feet of bannermen, eluding Sujien’s traps. T
he Cadre changed as they would between man shape and domain, all save Qiaqia, who wore her nature inwardly. Pressed flat and breathing softly, the twins watched as Sujien stretched himself into the air, let limb and flesh dissolve into wind. They studied Liyan’s hands as they blended into flame to manipulate metals or sear rock. They stared and stared, seeking to penetrate the secret that allowed Shirai to go so readily from stone to flesh, flesh to stone. In her separate quarters in the Courtyard of the Concubine, the twins loitered under divans to observe Tsai as she drifted and dissolved into her waters.

  It availed them not at all. Their bodies remained solid and muscular and small. They were made by the Grass King to be ferrets, his fitches, indulged and petted and upbraided as he saw fit. They had access to all parts of his palace, they might steal and gnaw and play as they chose. But they could not change. That had not been described in the hour of their making. “We can’t,” said Julana, at last, flopping exhausted and disconsolate in the cool grass of the Walled Western Orchard Garden.

  “There has to be a way.” But Yelena’s tone was equally bleak. They knew hunting and theft, games and escape, biting and running and writhing. They did not know learning. They had never tried it before.

  Julana said, “We could ask the Grass King to change us.”

  “He’d want to know why.”

  “Might not.” Julana was not sure about that. “He might think it was a game.”

  “We never wanted that game before.”

  They could not tell the Grass King their real reason. Both were certain about that. Somehow, it felt wrong, felt dangerous. Julana said, slowly, “Perhaps man can teach us.”

  “Man has only one shape.”

  “He taught Liyan. About…about machines.”

  “He used writing.” But Yelena was thinking. Her whiskers came forward. “We could study the man. His scent, his taste. Learn him from himself.” She rose, body quivering. “Hunt his shape through him.”

  Hunting they knew. Side by side, they raced from the garden, shooting between the legs of clerks and maids, courtiers and bannerman, leaving in their wake a trail of dropped scrolls and spilled pitchers, bruised shins and smeared floors. They tumbled through the door of Marcellan’s room and came to a halt in a tumble at his feet. He laughed. “Is something chasing you, little ones?”