The Grass King’s Concubine

by Kari Sperring

  Nothing here was human. She could not afford to lose sight of that. And if not human, then…Then what? What became of the wind when it died away? Did it coil away somewhere, tucked into rock crevices? Did it rise up and up and up above the clouds, so high that it became intangible? Or did it simply fall apart, drift into puffs and snatches of breath? She might, she supposed, ask Sujien about that. A smile touched her lips at the thought. He would scarcely thank her for the question. But if air blew away, and stone hardened, what of water? She propped her chin on her knees. Heated, it evaporated; left in a fractured vessel, it seeped away; subjected to bitter cold, it froze. In no case was it gone; it simply transformed itself. Even on the steppe—and she looked back up at the mural—even there, the stone ground had carried with it the memory of water, locked away in that iron ground. And here…She turned, looking toward the entrance to the bathing room and the silent bedchamber beyond it, with that sad small hollow on the bed. Fading, but not yet completely gone. The water that supplied her baths must come from somewhere, a well, a cistern, a spring. If she could find that…

  And… Some small cold thing at the back of her mind was unconvinced. Finding it does what, precisely? She frowned. Surely there would be some clue, some indication of what had happened. Indeed, said the voice, and this time it was Jehan’s. Why should that be? Wells fail and cisterns empty. Even springs can run dry. But that doesn’t tell you why. There can be deeper reasons than that.

  “Yes, but,” Aude said, and stopped, startled by her own voice in the quiet room. She shook her head. What caused wells to fail and springs to dry, that was the deeper question. She did not know. Nothing in her education had addressed such issues.

  Water mattered. That much she was certain of. The deeds and ledgers of her property were crisscrossed with references to water rights and settlements, to disputes over ownership and access. In the Brass City, shipmasters paid a premium rate for favorable moorings and merchants for well-sited warehouses and mills. The regent’s council sold licenses to travel on the great river or to site water-powered factories, and they levied heavy fines on those who broke their rules. In the great marshes surrounding the city, the boatwomen kept a tight hold on their routes and privileges. And in the country…She was not sure. Some land was better watered than other places, more suited to particular crops or beasts. Her own lands were rich in water rights and water access. None of that told her why water might fail.

  The Brass City wells and public pumps frequently ran sour. Jehan had told her that on one of their long wanderings. They had come to a crossroads to find it blocked by a scrim of women carrying jugs and flasks, each one jostling her neighbor, muttering and calling insults at a handful of men who stood around the communal pump, their arms linked. Aude stopped in the middle of the road, transfixed, and Jehan put his hand on her elbow. His fingers dug in, finding the soft place between the bones, so that she exclaimed and tried to pull away from him.

  He said, “Come away. This is no place for you.”

  The tide of women rustled and surged forward. The ring of men held firm, and five or six more came to join them, shoving their way between the front row of the women and their comrades before the pump. “There’s no water for you today. The mill master has the right to it.”

  Jehan tugged at her again. She ignored him.

  “That pump’s city property. It belongs to the street. To those who live here.” The woman who spoke was square-built and squat. Gray hair flopped into her face; her bare forearms were muscular and mottled. “The mill master has no more rights than the rest of us.”

  The spokesman pulled a rag of paper out of his sleeve and shook it in her face. “The mill master has any rights he likes. And this here’s the warrant as says so.”

  The woman spat in his face. There was a moment of stillness, then the spokesman raised his hand to strike her. From somewhere in the crowd, a jug came sailing to smash into his chest. The man snarled and grabbed for the square woman. On either side of him, his colleagues stepped forward, fists clenching. A barrage of jars and flasks, stones and cobbles, pelted down on them.

  Jehan caught Aude about the waist and lifted her backward. She gasped and wriggled, twisting to free herself. His hands were unrelenting. Tug as she might, she could not break loose as he carried her away from the trouble. When at last he set her down, they were in a side street some distance away. She glared at him. “How dare you!”

  “Mademoiselle, it’s nothing to me if you get yourself killed in the general way. But not when I’m with you. It’d look bad on my record.”

  “Why you…” She lifted her hand, ready to slap him, and stopped. For all the world, she might be the bully back by the pump. The hand dropped. She said, “I just…” And then, “Back there, what was happening…Can they do that? Can people just take over the pumps?”

  “If they can afford it, yes.”

  “But it’s a municipal pump. That woman said so.”

  “Money has the longest reach down here.”

  “But if someone reported it…If those women went to the city governors…”

  “They’d find themselves fined as troublemakers.”

  “I could report it.”

  He had made no reply, only looked her slowly up and down, from veil to boots. She was a spoiled daughter of the Silver City. The city governors would smile and pat her hand and do nothing. In her youth and her sex, she had no power here. She said, “But it’s wrong. It’s unfair.”

  “That’s often the case down here.”

  People needed water to live. And other people sought to profit from that by controlling the sources and wells. Even here in WorldBelow, it seemed that water could be stolen. Sujien somehow believed her responsible for that. She looked down at her hands. After what she had witnessed in the Brass City that day, she had gone to her property deeds to see what, if any, water rights she might possess in the lower city, only to find an intractable morass of old charters and grants, of ancient entitlements whose meaning she could not decode, and modern deeds thick with legal obscurantism. She might moor her ships at the East Dock and derive revenue from some elements of the boat trade, but of municipal pumps she could find no trace. And there had been no one she might ask, not without attracting her uncle’s disapproving attention. She did not, she realized, even know the name of the street on which the trouble had erupted.

  She rubbed her neck. If she was going to cure the plight that afflicted WorldBelow, she would need to find the source of its water and discover what had become of it. And to find the source…She looked up again. The water channels that she had followed had led out and away, to the clepsydra and the walls beyond it. Therefore…She frowned. The channels in the other direction must surely lead her to the well or spring or cistern. Or one of them. With a place this size, it would not do to assume a single source. Her shoulders slumped. If there were multiple sources and she must find them all…

  She had better make a start on it. She straightened and swung her feet to the floor. A wave of dizziness gripped her, and she swayed. She groped for the cup beside her bed and drank a mouthful of water. No time for this, for fatigue or whatever it was. She had more important things to do. She forced herself upright.

  It was time to go hunting.

  Dressed once again in tunic and trousers, she inched her way forward along the water conduit. The ache, the faint queasiness were still with her, though she had made herself wash and break her fast on a small lump of yesterday’s bread. This section of the drains was cleaner than the ones she had crawled through earlier; that made it easier on her knees and elbows, but in the back of her mind was the knowledge that water must flow through some parts of them. She kept a careful count of the grilles overhead, trying always to have some sense of how far she was from escape. From time to time she stopped, peering into the gloom ahead for any trace of recent wetness, trying to listen for the sounds of water running over her own rough breathing. Every time, she heard nothing, saw nothing save more tiles.
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br />   She came to a junction. It was the fourth she had come to, but this was the first where both pipes were large enough to admit her. The floors stretched away. No sounds drifted back. She hesitated. In this dim underworld it was easy to lose track of where she was. She still knew so little about the Rice Palace; if she were to climb out through any of the grilles, she could not rely on finding herself anywhere recognizable. She would have to take care not to lose count.

  From the right came nothing save the dry drift of dust, a taste of emptiness on her tongue. From the left, more dust, yes, but behind it a strand of something more, a sourness, a musty catch in the throat, like the scent that rose up from the kitchens of her childhood home early on baking days. Something lay down there, perhaps kitchens. Well, and those required a water supply. In her townhouse, the main pump stood in the kitchen courtyard while the old well that supplied her country home was sunk into the thick wall of the vegetable garden. She pulled herself into the left fork, squirming a little on the corner, and inched her way forward, following the trace of smell.

  The floor of the conduit was rough, gritty; when she glanced down, she saw that it was littered with bits of stick and scraps of gravel, with rice husks and shards of nutshells, crumbs of soil and chips of bone. When water had last flowed down here—whenever that had been—it must have been soupy with debris. The farther she crawled, the more there was of it, and the larger the fragments. Here and there she spotted rotten shreds of fabric, faded silks and wools, their weave ragged and threadbare. Pausing to catch her breath, her hand went to her ear, finding the shape of the earring that still hung there. More flotsam of the court. Where had they gone, all those who had worn the garments whose memory littered this route? They could not all have turned to stone, like the guards. If so, she must surely have seen some of them, somewhere. Perhaps they had fled, like the people of the steppe. Perhaps somewhere out under the sepia sky, outside the palace walls, a new dwelling arose even now, filled with the remainder of the court. Perhaps it was only the Cadre who had chosen to remain, bound by some loyalty.

  She had seen no signs of such an exodus.

  The yeasty scent began to thicken. When she breathed in, she tasted sour dough and mulch and something else, something gelid and lumpen. She had smelled it before, when she had lost herself on the way from Liyan’s workshop and met Sujien in the empty corridor. Her hand crept back to her waist to check for the knife handle.

  She paused to wrap a scarf around her nose and mouth before moving on. After a few more lengths the conduit turned left and a little uphill. Beneath her, the surface of the pipe was tacky. When she moved, it clung to the edges of her clothing, holding, holding, then giving way with a soft moist gasp. Under her hands, it was sticky and damp, like aspic, as dirt and dust and vegetable matter sank into each other and mingled. Her palms and fingers were clotted with it. She closed her mind to that, refusing to allow herself the revulsion that would well up if she thought too hard. Surely she must be close to something important? The light filtering down to her had changed, moving from sepia to honey. She quickened her pace, breathing as lightly as she could. Water clearly had flowed through here more recently than elsewhere. She moved, found herself slipping. Beneath her, the floor of the conduit was slick with mud and…and other things, and it tilted yet more steeply upward. She curled her fingers, trying to gain some purchase, and ended up with a handful of muck. Her knees slid out from under her, and she hit the ground with an audible thump. And then she was skidding back down the pipe, her garments rucking up about her, mud creeping into her eyes and ears and mouth as she shook and rocked and tumbled.

  She landed hard at the base of the slope and lay there gasping. All that distance to do again and this time on a surface made more slippery by her fall. She lifted her head, and strands of her hair, filthy from her fall, slapped into her face and neck. She gagged, coughed. She had to try again. It was not as far as she had feared, no more than eight or ten feet. She could do that, yes, and more, and this time with more care. She set her shoulders and began once again to move forward.

  This time she made around fifteen feet before her knees let her down and she skidded. She flung her hands out to her sides, grabbing for the walls in an attempt to brake. The rough surface of the tiles stung her palms, and she bit back a cry. Scrapes and scratches could be cleaned and wrapped later. She could gain no traction with her knees but one big effort turned her feet out, ramming her toes against the sides. Slowly, painfully, she slowed, stopped.

  She knew she must not let herself relax. Setting her teeth, she maintained the pressure outward and began to climb. Her limbs shook, protesting the abuse. She made herself ignore them and press on. Two feet. Four. Eight and she was farther up than she had managed before. Ten feet. Twelve. She was a white shriek of strain and pain. Fifteen feet. Twenty. She stared straight down, concentrating on movement. Another two feet and another.

  Her fingers slipped. Once again she dropped, landing hard on her front. She flung her hands forward, grasping for something, anything that might stop her from sliding backward yet again. She felt herself begin to move, dug her toes into the noxious layer of muck that covered the bottom of the conduit. She would not do all this again, she would not. Her fingers found something, a ridge, perhaps no more than the edge of a tile and she hung on to it, keeping herself in place more by willpower than anything. All around her, the smell clung, creeping into her lungs despite her scarf.

  She looked forward, lifting her head as much as she dared. Ahead of her, no more than another eight or ten feet away, the pipe ended in a wide, dark opening. She could make it that far; she had to. Inch by inch, she forced her way forward, burrowing into the dirt for any possible handhold. Her pulse thudded in her ears; her mouth was sour with effort and debris, her limbs burned with strain. The earring rocked, slapping into her neck, its surface hot.

  Her left hand closed on the lip of the opening. With one last effort, she heaved herself to it and found herself staring into what appeared to be a cistern. It rose above her, its walls lined with tiles. They had once been bright and clear: now they were filthy with mold and rust stains. A foot or two below her the base was covered in a few inches of dark, oily water, its surface foul with old leaves, bits of sodden bark, and scraps of rotten fabric. Its odor—the stench that had filled the pipe—rose to embrace her, close and vile as an unwanted lover. She gagged again, coughing into her scarf. To her left, perhaps a third of the way round the circumference of the cistern, a rusting thin ladder snaked upward toward a honey-brown roof.

  To reach it, she would have to wade. She swallowed, wrinkling up her nose at the idea. It was that or go back, undoing all her efforts. Her clothes were ruined already. She pushed on the ledge, slid herself farther forward. The mouth of the conduit was wider than the rest of it, but not wide enough to allow her to turn or to draw her knees up under her. Her only way into the cistern was front first. She gulped and shoved.

  For a moment she was stuck, balanced on her hips in the end of the pipe, her hands sunk to their wrists into the foul mess below. It oozed between her fingers, warm and sticky. Every impulse told her to pull back. Instead, she wriggled, pushing with her toes. The rough edge of the conduit snagged on her trousers, clinging to the fabric. Then it gave with a short brisk rip and she dropped, landing on hands and knees in the muck. Glutinous droplets licked her face, ran down her cheeks, lingered in her hair, making her retch. Her eyes stung. Shaking, she clambered upright and groped her way to the ladder. Its rungs were cool and sweet to her sticky, scratched hands. She clung to it, resting her brow against the chill metal. Her skin recoiled from itself, shivering under the seeping touch of what lay in the base of the cistern. If this was water…It clung; it squelched under her feet and in the creases of her elbows and knees. She climbed as fast as she could, fingers and toes slipping, sliding, catching, heart hammering.

  The ladder came to a halt perhaps two feet from the top of the cistern. She paused, palms on the edge, and peered out.


  The cistern sat in the center of a small dark building with a beehive stone roof. Three of its sides rose up straight and neat, pierced with long thin windows and, in one case, a stout wooden door. The fourth was not a wall at all, but rather the serrated slope of a cliff, mossy and ragged and broken up by many many cracks and crevices from which, it seemed, water had once flowed. Between it and the cistern, the stone floor was stained, rust and green, bowed in its middle by the constant former passage of liquid. Aude balanced on the top rung of the ladder, then crawled out onto the side so that she could look more easily. Toward the top of the rock, three feet or so below where the roof began to curve outward, she could see a long, low passage. That had, she supposed, been the main route by which the water flowed. It looked too narrow to admit her, even supposing she could climb the cliff face to reach it. She rubbed her hands on the fronts of her thighs and considered her options. The air was cleaner now that she was out of the conduits, but it was far from sweet, and her hair and clothes stuck to her greasily.

  She must be close to the water source. There could be no question of going back through the pipes. That left the door. She clambered to her feet and padded across to it, her feet skidding and leaving oozy tracks behind her. For a moment, the door resisted her, holding fast in its frame as she shook and twisted the latch. If there was no other way out…She tugged again, and the door swung open. Off balance, she slipped, stumbled, and felt her feet slide out from under her. She fell forward, banging an elbow on the doorframe. She landed on her right side on a solid uneven surface. She lay there for several moments, winded, eyes closed, struggling to bring her breath back under control. Her skin hurt, stinging her as if she had somehow acquired an all-over sunburn. The sour taste of yeast once again scraped and caught at the back of her throat. She coughed, curling up.

  Something snagged on her ankle. Despite herself, she shrieked, rolling onto her back and pushing herself as far away as she could. The rough surface below her caught in her sleeves, tearing them here and there, leaving thin and bloody scratches on her skin alongside the layers of dust and slime. She swallowed, made herself open her eyes. The cistern house was behind her and a little to her left, occupying the narrow end of an irregular oval courtyard. Tree roots reared up through the mosaic floor; the cistern house and its stone back wall were covered with thick dry vines, their smallest stems thicker than Jehan’s wrists. They swept down to feel out the floor, finding holds for their fine tendrils between the mosaic tiles and creeping out to stifle the tall pillars that protected the arcades that made up the perimeter. It was one of those that had tangled with her foot, nothing worse. She pulled her knees up and hugged them, trying not to feel foolish.