The Grass King’s Concubine (42 page)

“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.”

“Liyan,” said Yelena, “is Firehand. It’s his nature.”

“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.”

Glimmering

J
EHAN KEPT A TIGHT HOLD ON HIS SWORD. Eyes fixed on the ragged young woman, he rose. She cringed away from him, winding her thin limbs closer, pressing back against the bole of the dead tree. He drew in one long, slow breath. The air still tasted sour, brine and lemon. What was this place? The twins had said there were no guardians in this forest, and yet…The woman did not look strong.

The dry shambling thing that haunted the Woven House had not looked strong, either. This new creature had appeared out of cloying mist and danger. He had no reason not to distrust her. The forest was silent around them. Filaments of mist coiled here and there around the pillars forming the stone aisle. He was a stranger. This was not his land, not his world at all. He began to back away, slowly, still watching the woman, and she stared back at him with her white eyes. Underfoot, crystal fragments cracked. She started and from her throat came a noise like a crying child.

It was a trap, a trick. She was no more human that the dead thing or the twins or the flying armored creatures on the beach. His purpose here was to find Aude and bring her back safely. This woman, whatever she was, was no business of his. He straightened his shoulders. Around them, the forest stirred, some faint breath of wind setting crystal leaves
ringing and shivering. The woman wailed again, and one of her thin hands reached out toward him.

He stopped, cursing. This could do him no good. He said, “Look, what
is
all this?”

Her hand dropped back, and she fell silent, rocking back and forth against her dead tree. He said, “What are you doing here?” Her eyes held his, huge and colorless. He said, “I don’t know anything about this place. I can’t help you, you know.” He sighed. “You can’t even talk to me, can you?”

Her mouth opened, worked. Her tongue was thin and pale, running over her lips. He shivered. Another thin wail came from her, a choking gasp. And then, as her lips struggled, a sound. “Wuh…” This time, it did not sound like an echo, a copy of his words. He waited, holding firm to his sword. His uncle, who had gone to sea as a young man, used to tell tales of sea-wraiths, pale hungry things that sucked the life from men. He had learned, these last few days, to be less quick to discard such stories. If the sea could birth its monsters, why not a wood or a mist?

“Wuh…” The woman gasped, her face straining. “Wah…”

Was she trying to repeat the syllables she had first uttered? Or was she trying to talk to him. Distrustfully, he said, “Do you want something?”

Again, her hand reached out to him. He said, “I can’t help you.”

A single tear welled from her left eye and rolled down her cheek. She stopped it with a fingertip and brought it to her mouth, licking at it far longer than was needed. Her lips were dry and cracked. He hesitated. Then he said, “Water, is that it? You want water?”

Her eyes widened; this time both of her hands reached out to him. She did not look like that desiccated nightmare from the Woven House. She looked like nothing he had ever seen before. From habit, he had hooked the small canteen to his belt before he set out into the forest. He could afford to offer it to her; the river, though low, was
enough to replenish it several times over. And yet…The desiccated thing would have ripped him apart for water, he was sure. Ripped, and then sucked his flesh and bones for such moisture as they held. He had no evidence to suggest that this woman was any less dangerous.

Aude would let her drink
. The thought rose unbidden. Aude was here somewhere in this crazy place. He had to hope that her captors would feed her and give her water. Aude would have helped this woman, regardless of the risk. Aude wanted to help everyone.

He was not Aude. He had never liked to take easy risks. His upbringing had taught him neither trust of strangers nor the expectation of good treatment from everyone he met. The woman crouched before him, hands begging. He bit his lip and sheathed his sword. Then he unhooked the canteen. He did not want to give it to her, nor did he wish to touch her. He cast about him for a solution. Leaf fragments, long and friable and thin; pebbles; the flaking side of the nearest standing stone; the bole of the dead tree. A branch leaned out from that to the right; about a third of the way along, a smaller branch had broken off from where it had reached upward. The junction remained, a shallow hollow in the gleaming mica. Carefully, he circled the trunk, all the while keeping his eyes fixed on the young woman, until he stood on the opposite side from her. She twisted to watch him, still holding up her hands. He opened the canteen and poured a thin trickle of water into the dip.

She sprang, fingers clawing, mouth agape around white sharp teeth. Jehan scrambled backward, hand grabbing for the hilt of his sword. It resisted, catching in the scabbard, and he cursed himself for his sympathy. The woman’s nails scraped the crystal surface of the dead tree, sinking in, and he shuddered. Her mouth closed on the dip, cheeks hollowing with the force of her sucking. The trunk shuddered. Jehan got a proper grip at last on the sword and drew it. The point shook a little, betraying his hand. In his other hand, the canteen sloshed.

The young woman raised her head. Her lips had smoothed
out; her eyes taken on the faintest hint of green. She was looking at the canteen. He took another step backward.

She swallowed and her mouth worked. Then she said, “Puh…puhleese…more.” Her voice was thin, a thread of sound like the distant dripping of a leaking tin cistern. He held on to his sword and asked, “Who are you?”

She gave a low keening sigh. “Please…. Wuh …wuh-ter.”

If so little could make this much change in her…Nerves prickled all along his spine, counseling flight. He knew nothing of this place, only that it was alien to him and that its denizens had stolen Aude. He said, “Why should I help you?”