The Grass King’s Concubine

by Kari Sperring

  She trembled. Her feet itched to run, to flee for the safety of her sister’s warmth. It must not be done. She must not let it be done. She made herself follow the familiar trail along this corridor, through a gap in the wall behind the arras into that hall, out, and on. At last she came to the door to the Grass King’s private suite, and, three feet to its right, a crack in the skirting just large enough to allow her to pass, left unblocked by the Grass King’s order. Yelena stopped. What if the Grass King had changed his mind? What if he had noticed their recent neglect? The twins did not like to be neglected. Ignored, they tore and ripped, bit and soiled to show their displeasure. The Grass King was so much bigger and stronger and greater. He might close their paths and more. She edged up to the gap and sniffed once again. Plaster dust and old fur. Her whiskers curved forward, into the dimness. Ragged edges of wood and the rough back of the wall. A spider had moved into one corner and she pulled back as one whisker brushed the side of a web. Nothing new, nothing changed save the traces of their absence. Slowly, anxiously, she slipped inside.

  Beyond lay darkness and silence. Her nose and feet knew the way, led her in and up, scrambling and scrabbling up the wall joists, along beams, over thick pins. She wriggled, hooked front paws into cracks and hauled, squeezed and oozed and pattered. At the top she halted. It was cool up here under the palace roof, and she longed once again for Julana. Her body was not used to this aloneness; it shivered and protested, struck answering quivers across her thoughts. Not like this. Not right like this, not proper, not safe…

  Marcellan was not safe. It was her duty—her duty and Julana’s—to ensure that he came to no harm. She hastened onward, up the last steep stretch of wall and came at last to her goal. Here under the roof tiles ran the long spaces of the palace attics, low and grimy, pigeon scented and cobwebbed. From here, she could clamber through the plaster moldings onto the tops of the painted beams that ran across the ceiling of the Grass King’s bedchamber and watch him at his most secret doings.

  She slipped out, snaked though a gap in the plasterwork onto the top of a green-blue corbel. The air touched her with light fingers, bringing with it scents of rosewater and salt, green leaves and fresh earth. She waited, tasting each new smell as it reached her, normal and reassuring and calm, no trace of anger, no trace of change. She crept forward to peer over the edge. On his great divan the Grass King rested, loam-brown skin on heaped golden cushions, cedar-bark hair unbound. Tsai curled against him, loose limbed and untidy, fronds of her hair trailing over the pillows and onto the floor. Yelena’s paws twitched. Sometimes, she and Julana would chase those trails, pouncing and patting, chewing out knots and sucking ends, while Tsai laughed and wriggled and swatted at them with her hands. If Julana were here, they could drop now and coil themselves between them in the warm hollow of the Grass King’s knees, they could inhale his strong potent smell and sleep completely protected. Her eyes drooped, thinking of it. Safe. Safer than they had been for twice as many days as she and Julana had toes between them and twice more and more. Her mouth could taste the comfort. They could sleep and forget, and all would be well.

  She swayed, and her hip bumped a sharp corner of the plasterwork. Outraged, she turned, bared her teeth to bite, and remembered. No Julana. Julana was back in the Courtyard of Fallows with Marcellan. She was here to watch and to learn. She sniffed again. The breeze spoke of heat, of the opening and unbanking of the great bread ovens. It was day, or almost day, and the palace was stirring. Soon the Grass King would wake, and she must hold to her purpose. Yelena curled back against the plaster and closed her eyes. Soon. Very soon…

  Across the courtyards and gardens of the Rice Palace, roses and orange blossoms drooped, petals shrouded. The fountains played unwatched, their light spray ghosting across tiles and flags. Birds dozed on carved windowsills and the finials of roofs. In the libraries and archives, the chanceries and accounts offices, ledgers lay closed on desktops, scrolls had been returned to their cases or tied off with bright ribbons. Writing brushes dried in the light breeze. In the stables, grooms slept beside their charges. Behind carved doors and swinging swaths of beads, under quilted and embroidered covers, on hearthstones and in stair alcoves, dormitories and long barracks, on cushions and carpet scraps, coiled together or stretched out apart, the courtiers and servants and officers of the Grass King slept, dreaming their dreams of stone and dirt and growth. The night guard, the Darkness Banner, watched with dark flat eyes from their door niches and sentry boxes, stiller than the walls around them, untroubled by breath or hunger or boredom. In the halls and gardens closest to Marcellan’s quarters, a faint metallic scent clung, wove itself into tapestries and hangings, left dim oily traces on tiles and plaster.

  In her neat dark room off the Courtyard of the Cadre, Qiaqia sat cross-legged, hands upturned on her knees, counting the stars beyond her windows, her unbound hair brushing the floor around her. Under her calves, under the blades of her feet, the palace whispered to her of its sleep and its silences. The dark brown night wrapped her, carrying with it the taste of a thousand thousand tiny lives. She wandered through them, drifting on the tides of their dreams, remembering with them the fragments of their memories. Out beyond the palace, under the deep sepia skies, stone and earth, water and green growth shifted and stretched, recalling their older selves. Asleep, WorldBelow relaxed, regressed, remade itself in older shapes.

  Fire flickered behind the shutters of Liyan’s workshop. Almost alone, he woke and worked. His hands stroked and twisted metal into shape, carved out lines and smoothed over planes. Before him on his workbench stood the world in miniature—here the curving sides of WorldAbove, there the bright orbs of the moons, here the concavity that was WorldBelow, there the jagged brilliances of the shores and waters. Piece by piece, he fitted them, a wave here, a peak there. Around the concentric spheres of Worlds Above and Below, the WorldsBeside shimmered and drifted, moved by slender strong rods, silky chains, filigree cogs. Gears moved the moons in their lazy orbits; clouds and stars hung suspended from a fine mesh and shivered at a breath or a touch. Through the whole ran a single gear shaft, carved with flame and wave, corn and cloud, and counterbalanced by a single weight of silky jet. WorldAbove, the domain of men, ragged and ill-disciplined, was depicted by his hands in rough lines and jagged masses. WorldBelow, where the Grass King reigned, he etched and inlaid in silver and copper and gold. The WorldsBeside, fire and water, the domains of Fire Witch and Lady of Shores and Shoals, he built of bright lines and motion in ruby and garnet and lapis. WorldOver with its hanging treasures, ruled by the Emperor of Air, hung from the tip, shimmering in opals and pearls. Finally, at the heart of the orrery, he placed its center and its end, WorldUnder, the featureless domain of the Masters of Dark.

  In the courtyard outside, the vast tower that held the rest of the water clock stood motionless. The shutters that hid the jacks were closed; the gates and scoops and wheels that moved its waters were still. Starlight cast its shadow across the ground, made dark bands over the water conduit, cast curled shapes onto the side wall. At its apex, the space under its final roof stood vacant and ready. From beside the workbench, Liyan looked up at it and nodded. Then he lowered the last piece of the orrery, a simple piece of stone, into its proper place. At the touch of his fingertips, the orrery stirred, began to turn, each part in balance, each motion in harmony. He turned and headed into the back of the workshop. From a long shelf, he took a stout padded basket and a length of strong linen. Spreading the linen out on an adjacent bench, he lifted the orrery with both hands and placed it carefully in the center. Then he wrapped the cloth around it and tied off the ends. Lowering it into the basket, he hesitated, then made another trip to the storage shelves. He ran spider-shaped leather straps under the basket and fastened them tightly, testing each one. They curved upward to meet over the top, where they could be attached to a thick length of rope.

  He could wait until day and enlist the aid of his bannermen. He could make a ceremony of it; invite courtie
rs and musicians and poets to record the moment. None of that was worth the waiting. Liyan carried the basket out into the courtyard and set it down at the foot of the clepsydra. Taking a brass key from a pocket, he unlocked a small door that was set into one side of the clock. Beyond it, a series of ladders led up to the roof and the plinth where the orrery was to sit. He climbed them quickly, feet suited to the rungs of his own work, the coil of rope over one shoulder. At the top, he attached one end of the rope to the metal struts that held up the roof of the open pagoda and dropped the other over the side. A trip down to fasten the rope to the basket, and then another back up. Hand over hand, slowly, gently, he pulled the basket upward. It came swaying and rocking, sides bumping slightly against the outer skin of the clock. The night—Qiaqia’s night—watched him, the small breeze slipping around him. Down below, the waters of the conduit shimmered and sighed. Breath by breath, he lifted the worlds up to the edge of the parapet and over. He set the basket down and untied it before unwrapping the linen. The orrery gleamed in the low light as he raised it and set it down on the thick wooden plinth and its central driveshaft. His hands rested on the base of the orrery, fingers outspread as he felt his way through brass and wood. Heat spread out from him, gently, stroked out from the metal, curving the wood. Fraction by fraction the base sank into its setting, molded, melded, made itself one.

  In the mesh of the orrery, in the canopy overhead, the stars shivered. The breeze fell away, dropped into stillness amid the leaves of the gardens. Tsai’s fountains paused, droplets caught in midleap. All through the Rice Palace, down the walls and under the floors, through pillars and roof tiles, along drains and flues and passages, through plant root and tree root, leaf tip and blossoming head, the thrill ran. For long moments, WorldBelow held its breath.

  From his hip pocket, Liyan drew five small straight-barreled keys, all alike in shape and size, each bright and neat, carved from crystal, one for each domain, one for each side of the plinth. He set them to their sockets, one by one, tiger’s eye and white quartz, jet and garnet and aquamarine. One by one, he turned them, and the clepsydra began to move. At its base, the watergate lifted. The waters of the conduit pushed their way within, into the waiting scoops, each dropping downward as it filled, pulling the next scoop after it. At the head of their chain, a gear drive began to run, tripping cogs and levers, setting further chains and shafts into motion. Shivering and thrumming, the clock awoke. It sang beneath Liyan’s feet as he stood at its apex and watched the orrery begin to turn. Beyond him, WorldBelow shook itself and breathed anew.

  A lever fell, setting a new cog into motion. Around the clock’s waist, doors began to open, sliding aside. Jacks, green-robed and green-capped, carrying silver bells and brass cymbals in their painted hands, emerged from each one, bowing. Their wooden arms rose and fell, striking high sharp notes from their instruments. The first hour.

  The first hour. Across the palace, birds started up from their perches. In the kitchens and chambers, scullions and cooks blinked awake; courtiers turned and muttered and blinked on their cushions. Bannermen scrambled to stand, reaching for weapons even before they fully woke. Qiaqia snapped from her thoughts, eyes wide and worried. In the small room with its loom and its papers, Julana nipped Marcellan’s arm in her terror. On her beam in the Grass King’s bedroom, Yelena jumped from her doze.

  The Grass King sat up, frowning. Lying beside him, Tsai wriggled and turned, began to laugh. “Oh,” she said, gasping. “Oh. That tickles.”

  25

  The Courtyard of the Cistern

  SHIRAI HAD MISLED HER.

  It did not take Aude long to realize that. The door into her rooms—the Concubine’s rooms—opened now to her touch, and her feet could take her wherever she wished within the palace. But nowhere was there an answer. Room followed room: Fine halls and kitchens, offices and bedchambers, withdrawing rooms and lounging rooms, stillrooms, laundry rooms, weaving rooms and bathing chambers. Stone warriors stood at certain doors or reclined on bunks; piles of garments—some silk, some linen or cotton—lay in heaps on stools or at desks and tables. Bees busied themselves in silent courtyards or basked on window ledges. Everywhere was deserted. The first time she came upon a library, her heart leaped. Line upon line of scrolls lay in long racks, stretching along the sides of a single plain courtyard, each neatly labeled. She pounced on them, lifting out double handfuls and unrolling them on the oblong tables that stood opposite the racks. All her life, she had been taught that answers lay in written words. Somewhere in the scrolls must be what she sought. She located the catalogs and used them to find the sections that seemed most likely to offer what she needed. She wound and unwound the most promising scrolls, scanning each new portion eagerly, until her neck and shoulders burned. She worked through records of harvests and renders, each bushel or bale or barrel noted on receipt and again on use; account rolls for foodstuffs and fabrics, perfumes and sandals, pigments and plaster, wages and stipends. Another shelf held nothing but dry notations of court rituals she did not know or understand; a third was devoted to judgments in court over lands she had never heard of and officials whose titles were meaningless. A whole wing was given over to poetry and plays and songs, many in tongues she did not know. Nowhere among the labels and catalogs did she find any reference to histories, of this place or any other. Nowhere did she find any hint of what had happened. Nevertheless, head aching and throat sore with thirst, she took an armload back to her room to study through the night, and she found nothing piled upon nothing. She had been tricked, with that casual offer of freedom to roam. If an answer lay anywhere within the Rice Palace, it was well hidden. She needed a map or a guide. Neither was forthcoming. The bureaucrats who had made the libraries and muniments rooms had counted the chambers and windows and arcades of the palace, foot by foot, but they had not thought to map them. It was hard enough to make her way back to her rooms; she might, she suspected, lose herself her for months or years and never find what she was looking for.

  A trick, or a simple piece of cruelty. Either way, her precious gain had fallen apart in her hands. As she had in the Woven House, she fell asleep over the scrolls, propped up on her divan.

  Her dreams were full of broken blooms, shattered mirrors, empty echoing ballrooms. She wandered through them, her court gown ragged and dirty, lured on by a glimpse of candlelight and a faint hint of distant voices. Marble floors hurt her bare feet; her sides ached with the effort of walking so far in corset and heavy petticoats. In the mirrored fragments, Jehan’s face stared out at her, gray and lax in death. Dust caught in her throat, pain made her limbs heavy as she struggled up steps that grew steeper with each tread. Her abdomen was swollen, but whatever was within lay sluggish and sour. She was trapped, she was sinking, and there was no one to see or to care.

  She woke into hot twilight, her hair tumbled over her face and winding into her mouth. For an instant, the dream still held her, pinning her down, bringing panic. Jehan would not come. He lay out there, somewhere on that empty steppe, his body flayed by the winds. Her head swam, and a vague nausea gripped the pit of her stomach. She gulped and tasted the ends of her hair. A dream, just a dream, and a stupid one that. I’m on my own here. I shouldn’t be surprised. She spat out the hair, turning to curl on her side. Jehan was alive and well, she was sure of that. She would know—surely she would know—if any harm had come to him. She closed her eyes, seeking him, and her body conjured the memory of his hands on her shoulders, the smell of him when she coiled close, the quiet noises he made in his sleep. She wrapped her arms around herself, turning her face into the pillow in default of his shoulder. She did not want to be alone. She did not want to have to rescue herself from this tangle. He would come. He had come for her in the Brass City, and he would come now. In the meantime, she would learn everything she could to help them both.

  It would do her no good to spend another day wandering through the echoing chambers of the palace. She needed a plan. She was sick with it, this searching, this pilin
g up of questions without answers. If she had stayed at home…There was no point to that wish, either. She was here, and that was that. She wanted Jehan, his body solid against hers, his impatience at her starts, his resigned practicality. Until he came, she must supply all that for herself.

  She rolled over, dislodging the scrolls, which slithered to the floor. She looked across at the mural wall. Streaks of light crossed it in amber bars. Had the steppe ever looked so fertile? She could not bring them together, the bright lushness of the painting and the desiccation she had traveled through. Water. Everywhere, it’s to do with water. No water for fields and crops, livestock and people. Where did they go? They could not all still be there, wandering the plain as envelopes of old dry flesh. Most of them, she supposed, would have left long ago, abandoning their yurts and huts to chase a new livelihood in some other place. The rest…She shivered. If there were more of those shambling undead things out there, she did not want to know it. She did not want to think of Jehan up there, out there somewhere, facing such creatures. As for here…She frowned. What had become of those who worked and played in this vast palace? She could not put it together; her mind kept skittering away, to Jehan, to the rags of her dream. Had the women who had dwelled here been no more than ghosts, had they simply stepped through their mirrors into some other space? Or, like Tsai, had they washed away? She sat up and hugged her knees.