“Let me escort you back to your rooms,” Shirai said. “There’s food waiting. I asked Liyan to ensure it stayed warm.”
“Thank you.” That was perhaps not quite the right thing to say. She could think of nothing better.
“Come.”
The bees followed them down the stair and back through the Courtyard of the Cadre. Aude held herself tense despite that. She had left her prison without permission. She had sought an escape. Liyan might have ignored that, but Shirai was the leader. He was sure to have something to say about her actions. But he walked in silence beside her, his face calm.
She said, “I told you I didn’t belong here. That I want to go home.”
“Yes.”
“I’m not what Sujien thinks I am. I don’t know anything about what my ancestors did. I can’t fix it.”
“Not yet, perhaps. These things take time.” They came to the end of a corridor. Shirai turned left, paused to hold a curtain aside for her. “And we have not been as helpful to you as we might, I think.” She did not know how to answer that. He went on, “I’ll show you how to open the door to your rooms, so you can explore. I should have done so sooner. Why didn’t you ask?”
She stopped where she was and stared at him. It had never occurred to her to ask. Captives did not get to set the bounds of their own captivity. She said, weakly, “Thank you.” And then, “I never thought…I mean, you dragged me here.”
“Yes. But it will not help us if you don’t come to understand the Rice Palace.” They had reached a short flight of stairs. At their foot was a high, arcaded hall ending in a door, iron bound and closed.
The door whose opening mechanisms she had been unable to fathom.
Coming to a halt before it, Shirai said, “It needs to learn you. Place your hand on it. It doesn’t matter where.”
She put her right hand on the wooden surface, felt it solid and cool under her palm. “And then?”
His hand came down over hers, eclipsing it. His fingers were broad and strong and warm. His arm brushed along the length of hers and despite herself she felt somehow safer. He said, “Now tell it your name.”
She inhaled, and felt him inhale with her. She said, “Aude Pèlerin des Puiz. My name is Aude Pèlerin des Puiz.” A breeze wrapped her forearm, slid its way over her wrist, lapping at bones and tendons, shimmering over skin, slipping over the back of her hand to flow between her fingers. Under her hand, the door swung open.
“There,” Shirai said. “It knows you. Henceforth, it’ll open as you require.” He released her and stepped back.
Her mouth was dry. She swallowed and looked up at him. She said, “How…?”
“Because I can.” He studied her a few moments, then smiled. “I’m made that way. This place knows me. We belong.”
“Does that mean I…” She was not sure how to ask. “Will things like that happen for me now, too?”
“No. I’ve taught the door.” The smile broadened. “The rest is up to you.”
22
A Machine to Shape the Sky
MARCELLAN DID NOT UNDERSTAND, though the twins glared at him, knocked over his inkcakes and water, chewed his pens, left damp pawmarks on his carefully written pages. “Dangerous,” Yelena said, spitting. “Words are bad. This…this…printing is bad. Grass King won’t like it. It doesn’t belong.” She tugged at Marcellan’s sleeve. “Don’t write. Writing is bad.”
“It will be all right.” Putting his pen down, Marcellan patted her hand. “I’ve written many books. I know how to be careful.”
If Marcellan understood how to be careful, he would have stayed in WorldAbove. There was little safety for humans in WorldBelow to begin with. It was not their proper place; it was not shaped for them. Its fields and rivers, rocks and woodlands held secrets that men did not know and would not understand. Even the Rice Palace, built as it was to the Grass King’s will and peopled with his creatures, had places that were not to be trusted.
Places and people. Liyan’s workshop was full of sharp, odd, untrustworthy things, birds that breathed fire and flowers that stung. Liyan, above all, was not to be trusted. Trouble followed him wherever he went, and if it lagged behind, he urged it on. “He burned down the Water Granary,” Julana told Marcellan, thin face solemn. “He made holes in the walls of the Blue Morning Pavilion, and it fell on the seventh underchamberlain. He made all the fountains in the courtyards of the lesser lords run warm.”
“Warm and green.” Yelena added. “It tasted bad. Old apples.”
“Old apples and manure. They burst, made everything wet.” Julana’s nose wrinkled. “The lesser lords had to live with the Clerks of the Robes for days and days. More days than my toes.”
“The Grass King made him mend the fountains and sent him to walk the bounds of the outer rice paddies.”
“And that was a little bad thing.”
“He’s done worse. Big fires. Big explosions.”
“Qiaqia.”
“Qiaqia was really bad.” Yelena caught herself up short and looked anxiously at the door. The twins were afraid of Qiaqia. She was not like the rest of the Cadre. She did things no one could predict. She killed things. If she heard them speak of her, if she learned that they had taught themselves human shape, human speech…Yelena shuddered. Not safe. Not safe at all.
Marcellan looked across at her and smiled. “You don’t have to be scared. The printing press is just a thing. It can’t hurt you. It’s just wood and metal.”
Wood and metal did not matter. What mattered was what the printing press did. The twins could not imagine that the Grass King would like it, letting words breed like that, and without his supervision and approval. Words were important. The senior chamberlain and his many clerks had huge tall racks in which words were tied down with string and sealing wax. That would not happen if words were not dangerous somehow.
Marcellan said, “And anyway, the books aren’t for here. They’re for my kind. They won’t stay in WorldBelow.”
The twins exchanged a glance. Suspiciously, Yelena said, “Where will they go?”
“To where I came from.”
“No.” Julana came to her feet. “Not good. Things of our world don’t go to yours. Not safe. Not allowed.”
“But the books aren’t of your world,” Marcellan said. “They’re human things. They were made for my kind.”
That almost made sense. Julana thought about it, chewing her lower lip. Marcellan wrote the words. Marcellan had taught Liyan about the printing press. Did that make it his? It seemed possible. She looked again at Yelena. Is that right? Does that make it all right?
Yelena frowned. Slowly, she said, “Liyan shaped the machine.”
“I wrote the words. Human words. Not words from here.”
Words were big things, complex, hard to manage, harder still to catch and hold down. Yelena said, “Your words?”
“All mine. I promise.”
Perhaps that made it all right. Yelena did not know.
It did not occur to either twin to wonder what those written words might say. Days succeeded nights, and nights days, and the Grass King took no steps against the printing press. It thumped and clacked away in Liyan’s courtyard, spilling out pages under the efficient hands of the Fire Banner. “It does what you said,” Liyan said to Marcellan, sitting on the steps of his workshop early one evening. “No more than that.” He set down his cup and stretched out his legs before him. “It’s not so interesting. I don’t see why you carried parts of it with you.”
“The importance is what can be done with it,” Marcellan said.
“Books and papers.” Liyan said. “We’ve done those, too.”
“There are always different books. New books.”
“Perhaps.” But Liyan’s lack of interest was clear. “That’s a matter for clerks. The machine itself…It’s built, it works.”
Under the steps, the twins exchanged glances. Liyan had tired of the project, as he tired, in the end, of all his projects. All his mechanical
projects, anyway. (Qiaqia was another matter. But the twins did not like to think about Qiaqia.) And if Liyan was bored, he would not want more words from Marcellan, and Marcellan would be safe. “We learned human shape for this,” Julana said, disgusted. “He wouldn’t listen. We could have waited for Liyan to be bored.”
“Yes,” Yelena said. But she was not sure. There was still something…She said, “It might have worked. Marcellan might have listened.”
“Human shape doesn’t listen.”
“No…” But Yelena still hesitated. Something teased at her, like a breeze in her fur. “Maybe, later, we might need it.”
“Maybe.” But Julana was not convinced. She yawned. “Hungry. I want rabbits. Or rats.”
“There are rats in the granaries,” Yelena said. “Too many. I heard the steward talking.”
“Rats are fun to catch. Good to eat.”
“Grass King likes us to catch rats.” The twins exchanged another look.
“Hunting,” Julana said.
“We like hunting.” And in a twist of whiskers and tails, they were gone.
“You can see the stars,” Marcellan said, “but not the moons or the sun. Why is that?”
Two days had passed, or four. The twins had not needed to count them, knowing that their man was once again safe from danger. They had hunted rats in the big south granaries, and slept off their meal in a tangle of silk bales in one of the nearby storerooms. They had chased each other around and around the roofs of the Courtyard of the Middle Ladies, dislodging moss and tile chips, dirt, and a scolding flock of starlings. They had breakfasted with the Grass King, lolling beside him and the Concubine on his favorite terrace. Content filled them, wrote satisfaction along every line of their long bodies, from sharp noses to tail tips.
They did not know about the sky. It was there, amber and ocher and flecked with stars. It was always there, like the waters that flowed from the great rock at the center of the Rice Palace, fed its fountains and pools, washed under its courts, and swept out, at last, to form the great river that ran through all the lands of the Grass King. They paused in their investigations in the long grass around the boles of the plum orchard to look back at their man in wonderment. “Can’t eat the sky,” Julana said. “Can’t chase it. It’s not useful.”
“Not interesting,” Yelena agreed.
The remains of a meal lay spread out on the grass, breadcrumbs and fruit pips, cheese rinds and nutshells. In the lee of one great tree, Qiaqia leaned back on her elbows and looked up into its blossoms. “I remember the moons. One so pale and one so bright. They helped us count time passing. They counted out our lives.”
“Human lives.” Beside her, Liyan was disapproving. “That was WorldAbove, Mo-Qia. The moons have nothing to do with us here. Nothing to do with you.”
“Mothmoon does,” Qiaqia said. “Mothmoon houses the Masters of Dark, and I am of the Darkness Banner.”
“You represent darkness in earth. Nothing more. Nothing to do with humans.” Liyan reached out and took her hand. “You are one of us. You belong with us. I asked the Grass King for you, and he made it so.”
“So he did.” But Qiaqia withdrew her hand from his and folded it against her breast.
“Certainly, it’s said among my people that the souls of our kind travel to Mothmoon after death,” Marcellan said, mildly. “And that the Emperor of Air watches us from his court behind Handmoon. Is that why you can’t see the moons down here? They belong to different domains?”
“Of course,” Liyan said.
“I see.”
Silence fell, broken only by the twins’ rustlings. Qiaqia stared up, through the branches, into the amber sky. Liyan watched her, face anxious. Somewhere beyond the orchard wall, the notes of some stringed instrument began to play. Marcellan said, “So the sky never changes.”
“No.” Qiaqia’s voice was flat. “Like the palace. Like the domain.”
“It rains sometimes,” Liyan said. In their grassy nest, the twins shivered. They did not like rain. “The fields like it. So Tsai makes it rain. It amuses her.”
Everything amused Tsai, from the whisper of the hems of her silk robes to the thunder of earthquakes. Tsai could not be trusted. The twins exchanged glances and crept closer. Liyan went on, “And the Grass King likes her to be amused.”
“Sujien doesn’t,” Qiaqia said.
“Sujien is not the Grass King.”
Qiaqia sat up and looked at Marcellan. “When I was alive, when I followed the Yellow General, his councillors made maps of the sky, to learn its secrets and guide his campaigns.”
“Men still do such things,” Marcellan said. “In the great libraries, there are shelves and shelves of them. They chart the ground beneath their feet, too. Other men build devices to measure the movements of the stars and imitate the paths of the moons. And to chart the passage of time.”
“To tell their own futures?”
“Sometimes,” Marcellan said. “But they also seek to tell how the moons pull the tides, how the sun’s changes affect crops and droughts, what rhythms underlie the world they live in.”
“WorldAbove.” Liyan was dismissive.
Qiaqia turned. “Sun and moons affect more than WorldAbove, Mo-Liyan. That is why the Grass King chose to have his banners inflected with the powers of the other domains. Air and water,” and she smiled, putting her hand back over his. “Fire and darkness. WorldBelow doesn’t exist all alone.”
Liyan considered. He said, “Our time—domain time—is not the same as human time. We don’t change as they do.”
“Perhaps time is slower here,” Marcellan said. “The clerks measure it as part of their duties. Crops and fruits ripen here. There is time of some kind.”
“Hmmm.” Liyan frowned. “And these human machines measure all this? Time and sun and moons and tides?” A note of interest hung in his voice.
The twins froze where they were. It was one thing for clerks to keep track of the hours. That was part of their function. It kept the palace running smoothly. It ensured, most particularly, that meals were prepared and delivered on time. But measuring the sun and the moons and the tides was another matter. Such things did not belong to WorldBelow. WorldBelow was green growth and fecundity, golden grain and young bamboo, dark loam, white chalk, granite and gypsum. Its rhythms were those of planting and growing, harvest and fallow. Light of sun and change of moons did not filter down to it, but lapped the surface of WorldAbove, that vast and drafty place of mortal men. “Not good,” Yelena murmured to Julana. “Not safe.” Bellies low to the grass, they slunk back toward Marcellan.
He was talking. Talking and drawing, wielding a brush he had pulled from his sleeve to make fine black lines on papers he had likewise produced. Liyan bent over his shoulder, watching and asking occasional questions. The words made hard foreign rhythms, tappets and jacks, cog and catch, escapement and drive chain, sliding and tripping past each other.
Liyan said, “This device could model the motions of the moons?”
“Not good,” Julana repeated. “We should bite him. Make him stop.”
“Wait,” said Yelena. “They’re still talking.”
Marcellan put down his pen. He frowned. “There are places where that’s done, yes, to help predict tides and eclipses. But it’s a peripheral use. These devices—they’re called orreries—are mainly for telling time.”
“The sixth hour is always the sixth hour,” Liyan said, “and the ninth, the ninth. That doesn’t change. Although a system of announcing them regularly and widely would be useful. Sun and moons do. That interests me. Why do they? Can your device tell us?”
“Not this design.”
“Another, then?”
“I don’t know. Mortals have devoted lifetimes to watching the sun and moons and have given many answers to that. I’ve never heard one that can be held to be certain.”
“Mortal men don’t know,” said Julana, furious. “Sun belongs to fire. Moons belong to air. Mortal men can’t know.”
“It’s our nature to bite,” Julana said. But she sat back on her haunches. There was truth in Yelena’s words. Liyan came of the Fire Banner, and fire twined with earth within him. Fire made and explored as much as it destroyed. Metals shaped themselves for Liyan, ran or bent or solidified as he told them. Such was the Firehand, and thus…Julana could not hold onto it, her head lacked the space. She said, “Sun is fire, but…” It smelled wrong, Liyan’s question. It prickled at her taste buds with the acrid warning of decay. She said, “This isn’t the sun. Not the domain of the Fire Witch.”
Yelena looked across at Marcellan. There was a long silence, punctuated by his quiet voice, by the scratch of his quill on the paper. Marcellan wanted to write; it made him happy. She said, uncertainly, “Man is happy.”
“Man, yes. But,” Julana hunched. “I taste trouble.”
“Not yet,” Yelena said. “We wait. We watch. The printing thing brought no harm. Remember?”
“Yes. But…” Julana said, and stopped.
Yelena nosed her consolingly. She said, “It’s mortal things. Mortal things can’t hurt us.”
“Man should be careful.” Julana turned her head away. “Not safe.”
“We’re here. We’ll guard him.”
Beside Marcellan, Liyan picked up the pen and began to add lines to what Marcellan had drawn. “This human design is simple. I can see improvements…I should like to know more about how the domains fit together. It could be useful. But these human things are rather static. I will need some means of movement.”
“I have heard of instruments that combine the functions of a clock and an orrery that are driven by water,” Marcellan said. “Men call them clepsydras.”
Qiaqia leaned toward him. “Fire needs balance, Mo-Liyan. Perhaps you should ask Tsai to lend you her waters to help you.”
23
Glimmering
The Grass King’s Concubine Page 30
