The Grass King’s Concubine (15 page)

The map was new, but the information it recorded was long out of date. Aude had brought it with her from the Silver City, wrapped in oilcloth and stowed in the center of her saddlebags. It showed the wide bounds of her property in these parts, marked in crisp red against the sepia lines of rivers and contours. By its testimony, a river named the Lefmay flowed some half a mile to the southwest of the Woven House. Muffled in heavy coat and gloves and scarves, Jehan stared down at its relict, no more now than a graze of shingle leading away across the face of the plain. Perhaps, somewhere along its length, some trace of moisture lingered. At his back, the pony shuffled its feet, nosing at his shoulder. Dirt particles bounced and crackled in his clothes. His eyes stung as he tried to peer out along the
dead watercourse. The wind made him restless, had driven him out from the Woven House and the scrolls and Aude’s desperate concentration into this pointless search for a well, a spring, a scrape of mud. He looped the leading rein more securely about his hand and led the pony down into the streambed. Its hoofs kicked up swirls of earth; the wind answered with handfuls of dust. Man and pony ducked their heads and began to walk carefully westward. To all sides, the steppe spread out, gray dead grass on gray hard earth. The long cuts of old irrigation channels fed away from the streambed at regular intervals, checkering the land. Jehan told off the distance by counting the cuts—five, twenty, thirty—step after trudging step. He could see no sign of habitation to either side, beyond the occasional bones of yurts jutting out of the ground. The wind had scoured the landscape of all its features; it tugged at him, unwound his scarf, clasped his fingers, fretted the pony’s tail into hessian. At the fiftieth dyke, he hesitated. There was no change to be seen, and, it seemed to him, precious little hope of one. Perhaps he should turn back. A glance upward suggested it was still before noon. He looked at the pony, nose down, mouthing at a scrap of dry grass. If he
could
find water, he might buy Aude the extra time she craved. He took a small sip from the water flask he carried, poured a little more into a leather bowl for the pony. According to the map, he should be no more than two miles from a spring. He looked along the watercourse. Up ahead, the ground began to slope upward. It was worth continuing a little way.

More ditches, more wind and iron earth and dead grass. The watercourse twisted upward and somewhat more westerly. Beyond it, shaded by dust spirals, another hill rose, crowned by ghost-glimpses of cliff or walls. Jehan shielded his eyes from the dirt, trying to discern any trace of windows or roof. The wind kicked up grit, blurring his vision, doubling the image into a furze of sepia and taupe.

The pony nickered, tossing its head up and down. He put
a hand to its head, and it shied away, dragging on the lead rein, pulling him off balance. He stumbled backward. The pony tugged again, nostrils flaring. Steadying himself, Jehan rubbed its nose, felt the tremor that ran through it. He frowned. He could hear nothing beyond the rumble of wind, see nothing new save the distant hill, could smell nothing save stale flesh and wool. The pony had sharper senses than he did. The irrigation ditches could provide cover for another of those desiccated things, maybe more than one. The wind shoved at him, once, twice, again, each time with increased force until he stumbled sideways into the pony. He caught at it for balance. It was still trembling. He reached across the packsaddle for the carbine. A gust of wind threw dirt into his face, and he coughed. His gloved fingers fumbled on the rifle, refusing to grip. The pony pulled again on the rein. With his spare hand, he rubbed once again along its nose. Still nothing new to be seen out there, not by him, anyway. Nothing new to hear. He gave the pony one last pat and began to unwind the lead rein. Time to turn back.

The pony balked, digging its hoofs down into the shingle. The wind caught at him, shoved him sideways, snaring his feet in loose pebbles and the veins of old grass. He stumbled, dropped to one knee.

The world went silent. The air cleared, dust sifting downward. The pony stamped a hoof. Moment followed moment. Jehan became aware of his breath, lifting and falling, the tang of wool in his nostrils, the patina of chill on his skin below his layers, the sourness of dirt on his tongue. He could see, now, the slash of the streambed cutting its way down the hill’s flank and, to the north, a square stern house of dark stone squatting on the height of the rise, roof steep and intact. Windows punctuated it, one, four, six. No smoke rose from its two chimneys. Aude had spoken repeatedly of a house made of stone. Perhaps this would satisfy her. They could ride out toward it tomorrow and then turn back. He inhaled, once more heard how loud his breath had become.
Man and pony stood, struck to stillness by the silence. And then…

A thrumming, a drumming through the earth, almost too low to hear, stealing up from the ground through bone and tendon. The sky dimmed, dropped, and exhaled in one hard gust, tumbling Jehan onto hands and knees. Soil and grit spiraled upward, outward, razoring into garments. The pony whickered in fear. A second gust snatched at the lead rein. Blinded, gasping, he clung to it, scrambling backward until he collided with the pony. He groped for it, knotted fingers into its mane. The watercourse channeled the wind straight at them. If they stayed here, that harsh blast would lay them open to the bone. Clinging to the pony, he climbed to his feet, wrapped his arms about its neck. They had to get out of this wind. They would never make it to the house of stone on its exposed hill, not facing into this. The pony could barely stand, let alone walk into the wind. If they turned…The Woven House was too far. The plain afforded no shelter.

Not quite no shelter. The irrigation channels might give them two or three feet of cover. They had passed one only a few yards earlier. Head bowed, arms locked tight, Jehan leaned into the pony, urging it to turn. It resisted him, shocked into stillness. He let go of its neck, dug his fingers into its ear, twisted. It flung its head up and turned. He released the ear and tugged on the lead rein. Now, if only it did not bolt…It twitched, stamped a hoof, and leaned into him. Pushed by the hard palms of the storm, they stumbled back along the waterbed, weaving, half blind, to the lip of the last irrigation ditch. The wind hit them broadside as they turned, knocking him into the pony. He clung, let it drag him around, around and down, as the wind sent both to their knees just into the lee of the bank. Jehan buried his face in the pony’s coat, arms locked to it, and shut his eyes.

He did not know how long they huddled there. He knew only the bite of cold, the drag of wind, the slow scrubbing
ache of grit ground through fabric and coat into flesh below. Each breath scoured his lungs. Gusts punched and rocked him. Overhead, the air growled and thrashed. Breath by breath, he waited. At last, breath by slow breath, the wind braked and lessened.

When he lifted his head and opened sore eyes, broken soil tumbled down his neck, bounced and flowed from shoulders and back. His mouth tasted foul. Beside him, the brown pony was powdered gray. He patted it. Opening its eyes, it pushed its nose into his hand, and he rubbed it, murmuring nonsense into its ear. For long moments they rested, each leaning into the other. The pony had no name. Jehan had acquired all three a month before in trade for Aude’s chestnut saddle mare and his own square bay trooper. Now he stroked the long nose and said, “Clairet: that’s you.” Whatever happened, this animal was his kin now.

He fished in the saddlebags and poured water for the pony before taking two sips himself. Then he rose. On all sides, the steppe stretched out, no less gray and bleak than before. The same heavy pewter clouds cramped the sky. Perhaps an inch or two more dirt had settled into the irrigation channel. He turned, slowly, and his breath tripped.

The top layer of the streambed was gone. It snaked away, rock laid raw to the sky. Here and there the low light struck sticky gleams from its surface. Stones the size of Clairet’s head had been tilted or dumped, exposing splintered hearts. He swallowed. Beside him, Clairet clambered upright, nudged the small of his back. He reached back absently to pat her.

The wind had galloped along the watercourse and flayed it. Somewhere, back along its track, lay the Woven House on its low rise, unprotected and frail. Somewhere back there sat Aude, wrapped in her scrolls and sheltered only by old bamboo. Intent on her research, she might not even have noticed the change in the wind until it was upon her. Jehan threw the lead rein over the pony’s neck and
scrambled into the saddle. They headed back along the stream at a canter.

They were two thirds of the way back when it began to rain. Not water, but drifting flakes of yellow, lifting, tilting, swirling. One by one at first, letters and words scattered down into the watercourse, nested in clothes and hair. Prepositions littered the pony’s mane; Jehan shrugged, and a small avalanche of nouns skittered from his shoulders. As they reached the foot of the rise to the Woven House, the cloud of verbiage thickened. They inhaled verbs, coughed numbers, crushed participles underfoot. Parchment and splinters of bamboo had displaced dust from the wind. Jehan dismounted, ducking his head, brushed fragments from his face with one hand.
Sixteen bushels
read one scrap lodged in his glove;
loaned two hoes. Two silver five copper
nested between the pony’s ears.
Lefmay dry from Ost…
scudded past to settle on a knot of dead grass. Looking up the slope, a thick swirl of text ghosted his sight, cut him off from the Woven House.

He chewed on his underlip.
Think, Jehan
. There could be a simple explanation. Most likely Aude had been a little slow in fastening the shutters, so deeply had she been absorbed in her reading. He ought to be able to believe that, it was like her. He was not sure he did. Broken words and broken bamboo…He shook himself, closed down on panic. The scouring wind had spared him and the pony, both smaller and lighter targets than a house. Aude was no fool.

The irrigation channel had sheltered him. The Woven House, by contrast, stood exposed. He swallowed, tasting old ink, and forced the thought further away. He could not afford fear, not here, not now. He was almost back: from the top of the slope, he would see the house and its compound.
Bad witch bargain
whirled past, making him blink.
Stone House
. Aude had forgotten to close a window, that was all. Probably the one in that fetid bedchamber. Almost
there…She was likely as worried about him as he about her. He quickened his pace. Cold struck up through his soles. He wiped at his eyes with one end of his outer scarf and peered up.

Dry grass and drier earth, a litter of broken vegetation and parchment and that endless cold, low sky. He must somehow have turned himself around. He rotated slowly, scanning. Plain and sky on all sides, icy wind tugging, but nowhere stood the Woven House. Where it should have been there was only breakage and jetsam: here the split bone of a stilt, there ragged patches of a woven wall. Long splinters and nooses of cane coiled underfoot. The old loom lay broken, thread flapping, adrift in a sea of potsherds and chair legs, mattress stuffing, brass pans, and worn leather straps. The jumble of parchment pieces dusted everything. Jehan swallowed. Nowhere could he see any trace of Aude or the two other ponies. Perhaps, after all, she had heard the wind rising and taken shelter elsewhere.

The most likely place was the old watercourse. It did him no good to think that. If the ponies had panicked, she could be a mile or more away. In which case, she would make her way back here. He should give her credit enough to believe that. He freed his pony of saddle and headstall so she could browse whatever she found. Then, methodically, he set himself to pick through the debris for such of their possessions that Aude might not have had time to take. A tattered horse blanket. One saddlebag, foul with dirt but still buckled shut. From under a broken house panel, a water canteen, undamaged and still full. A hand count of spare undergarments, torn by bamboo shreds and soiled. Aude’s silver-backed hairbrush, its surface scoured to opacity. Her locket, the chain tangled and the clasp broken.

Bone. First one small fragment, caught in a hank of mattress stuffing. Then another. And then, under the shattered staves of what had been the floor, a hail of them, long and short, all sharp, all broken, some still with shreds of muscle attached. He pulled back, gagging. Here at the heart of the debris lay a charnel heap, bone and flesh rendered down
into pieces, none longer than his hand.
The ponies…
He had no proof that Aude made part of this litter.

He had no proof that she did not. Scraps of fabric snagged and flapped throughout the ruins, the wool and cotton of her clothes. Jehan sank back onto his heels and buried his face in his hands.