The Grass King’s Concubine (49 page)

The earring jerked in her lobe, a quick clean pain amid all this slithering horror. She gasped again and remembered the knife. Liyan’s knife. When she stripped and changed, she had tucked it into her sash. She could feel it there still, solid against her ribs. She clutched at it, and the hilt soothed the ache in her palm. She leaned into the door, fighting to ignore its heat, and pushed upward, forcing limbs to uncurl from beneath the robes. They resisted her. Even as she pulled, strands of black embroidery uncoiled themselves and stretched out long suckers to the ground. The words from her garments…They were alive, these things…She reached over and slashed at them with the knife. Strands snapped before it, springing back, and she tugged upward again. There was a ripping sound, a sheet of hot pain, and then she was standing. Droplets of blood
fanned out about her, misting the air. All around, bones clicked and chimed as they climbed onto one another, weaving themselves upright in their red, bloody web. From somewhere came a deep, dusky thrumming.

A knife might draw blood. She did not know if it could also cut it. Well, she was about to find out. She longed for the carbine, to blow the crystal into shards. It was lost to her, along with Jehan. She must make do with what she had and waste no more time in regret. With her dagger, she cut through the sash and the strings of the robes, sliced them from her shoulders. Better naked than garbed in treachery. The long hair still swung around her, and she shook it back.
It doesn’t seem to want to hurt me.
She would think about that later. She set her teeth and swung out at the nearest pile of bones.

They rumbled, moving toward her with a stumbling, halting gait. Blood—could she really have bled that much?—dripped from them, staining the floor. The blade slid from the smooth surface of something, caught in the crevice of another. Hanging on to it with both hands, she tugged, then twisted with all the weight she could muster. There was a sharp, sour crack, and a cloud of tiny biting shards flew up around her. She ducked her head, cringed backward, felt the fragments bite into her arms and flank.
More blood…
That could only help her enemy. She pulled back, considered. If instead she cut through the web…A whip of bones reached out for her, and she ducked, slashing at it. The bloody strands were tough as animal sinew, resisting her. She forced her arm downward. The tendril snapped with a sudden twang, and she threw her arms up to protect herself. Bones dropped, sprang back in a shower of shards. Sticky strands of blood latched onto her forearms, tugging. She twisted, trying to break free, and the threads bound themselves to her all the more tightly. She could not get the knife to them; her wrists could not bend like that. She stepped back and collided with the door. It, too, laid hold of her, clinging to the wounds in her flank. She threw herself
forward, cried out as her skin tore. Bones flew up around her, grazing, binding, biting.

The floor rippled. At first, she thought her eyes betrayed her, confused by the swirling net of blood and crystal fragments. She was bound by them, trapped and trammeled on all sides, and their hunger set needle teeth into her everywhere. In front of her, the flat stone of the floor rose, stirred like troubled waters.
Another danger…
She could move no farther, held as she was in the trap of her own blood. Stone flowed outward, and a figure broke upward broad and dark, its hands filled, it seemed, with some deep shadowed light.
Sickles…
Wicked crescents of obsidian struck, and several bloody strings fell about in a moist shower. Aude gasped, shivered, anticipating the slash of those blades against her body. The figure spun, scythes dancing around it, breaking through more strands. She coughed, nose and mouth filling with salt and iron. A wind roared around her, drawn in the wake of those sickle blades. More threads snapped, and she squeezed her eyes shut as bones shattered on every side. The door let her go with a slow, sucking pop. Rocked, buffeted, whirled into confusion, she dropped to her knees and coiled herself tight against the onslaught. Her skin prickled and started, flinched and quivered under the rain of tiny crystal spikes and soft damp droplets. She knotted her arms beneath her thighs, the haft of her dagger cold against her flesh.

The wind stilled. She stayed unmoving.
What next?
She could not bear to imagine. She did not want to move. She was chilled, her skin slick now and burning with the stinging of many tiny cuts. She was bleeding all over, a gift to the ravenous bones that haunted this room. It could be a matter of minutes, nothing more. She would be ripped to pieces; she would be spun apart and devoured…

Hands settled on her shoulders, heavy as iron. She shrieked, coiling tighter. A thread of wind slipped its way around her and spread its fingers on her flesh. She could not fold tight enough to prevent it. It pushed at her, pried her fingers apart. She fought it and cried out again as her
muscles and tendons were forced into submission and the iron hands lent their strength to her tormenter. She came to her knees, weeping and struggling and shaking and found herself eye to eye with Sujien.

He meant her no good. She was no safer with him than alone with the hungry bones. The heavy grasp still had her, keeping her in place. She spat at him, and he glared. Somehow, her arms lifted, her hands clenched to pummel him, and then she dropped against his breast, sobbing. The grip on her shoulders let go.

“This is no place for you to be.” That was Shirai’s voice, not Sujien’s. It came from behind her. It must have been him, holding her in that solid grasp. “It isn’t safe here for human creatures at the best of times.”

She swallowed and lifted her head, rubbing a hand across her face. It came up stained and sore. She said, “I didn’t know…I was looking…You said there was an answer.”

“An answer.” Shirai’s voice was deep and reflective. “For that, we would need the right question.”

“I want to go home.” She turned to look at him over her shoulder. He stood behind her, arms folded. Two wicked black crescent blades were tucked into his belt, slick with blood. She said, “You could let me go.”

“Yes.” But Shirai’s eyes eluded hers, looking over her head. He was speaking now to Sujien, she realized. “There’s little purpose to this captivity, and certainly no gain.”

“We don’t know that,” Sujien said. “The courtiers knew her. They came to her blood.”

“They would seek out any living thing,” Shirai answered. “They starve. They can’t afford to be choosy.”

“She has the trace of it in her. We felt her. Tsai senses her. You saw that, just now.”

Just now
. Aude could not follow them. She wrapped her arms around herself, conscious of her nudity. Her hair was no help, hanging as it did no farther than her shoulders.

No farther…In the water basin, in her dreaming progress to the golden doors, her hair had hung down her spine,
cloaking her with its opulence, bright, silken, water-shaded.
Tsai senses her…

The dagger was still under her calves. She felt for it, then pushed herself to her feet, clutching it. The two Cadre turned to look at her. Voice thin and hard, she said, “What exactly are you trying to do to me?”

Yelena Alone

T
HE GRASS KING REACHED FOR THE BELL that stood on the floor beside his divan and rang it, one peremptory ring. It sounded flat and dull in comparison with the strange bright note that had preceded it. On the beam overhead, Yelena steadied herself, digging in her claws. Tsai hugged her chest, gulping down laughter. There was a knock on the door, and the Grass King said, “Come in.”

A bannerman wearing the tabard of the Darkness Banner entered and bowed low. The Grass King said, “That noise. What was it?”

The man spoke to the carpet. “I don’t know, Sire. I will discover.”

“Good.” The Grass King said. “Have Shirai sent to me. And Liyan. I taste him in this.”

“Yes, Sire.” With another bow, the bannerman withdrew.

Tsai sat up, her hair falling all around her. Yelena flattened herself against the beam. Tsai had sharp senses. Tsai could not be relied on: she changed without hint or warning. Cushions and covers slipped to the floor as Tsai stretched, arching her back and pointing her toes. Her hair—greenish-blue—snaked down her back, leaving dark damp marks behind it. She wriggled her shoulders in a shower of water droplets and Yelena hissed.

“New things,” Tsai said. Her voice was light and high. “New sounds from brown and blue. New ways to say the
old, new ways to make the day.” She lifted her arms out before her and spread out her fingers. “I can feel it running through me. Fire and water. Wood and iron. Sujien won’t like it.”

The Grass King considered her, smiling. He said, “There are a lot of things Sujien doesn’t like.”

“Many.” Tsai fished for one of the fallen coverlets and wrapped it around herself. She rose, trailing it behind her. “New furnishings. Envoys. New hills. Movements in the river. Having to listen to Shirai.” She halted, looked back over her shoulder. “Qiaqia. Me.”

“He likes you well enough, Mo-Tsai.”

Yelena bared her teeth. There was too much liking of Tsai in this palace. The twins did not like her. She dripped and she raged, she promised, and sometimes she threw things. She was too…Yelena did not have the word for it. Too involving. Too absorbing. It was hard to find space beside her.

Tsai took a brush from the top of an inlaid cabinet and began to work it through her hair. She said, “I’m moving. I can feel it. I have a new game. A new reach.”

The Grass King watched her. He said, “I feel nothing.”

“No.” Tsai was already bored with her brushing. She dropped the brush on the floor and went to a window. “In and not of. The small things that move the big.”

That made no sense to Yelena. Not that Tsai often made sense. Only trouble and nuisance. There was something new in the palace, and Tsai was amused. That was not relevant. It did not protect Marcellan. If Tsai came closer, if she walked beneath the right beam, Yelena would drop on her head and bite her. She deserved to be bitten.

The Grass King would not like that. He was fond of Tsai in some way that the twins had never comprehended. He would be angry and send Yelena from the room, and then she would learn nothing. She subsided, nose twitching. Tsai opened the window lattice and leaned out. She said, “Cool air. Sujien is angry.”

“We’ll see,” the Grass King said.

That too was nothing out of the ordinary. Sujien’s anger was as common as dust and rose petals. He snapped and brooded at anything that challenged him. It made him barely less tolerable than Tsai, and more frightening.

Tsai turned again and came back to the bed. She bent to kiss the Grass King on the brow. “Water calls. It flows, I go.” She drifted away toward the door, trailing her impromptu robe behind her. Her bare feet left damp marks where she trod. She laid a hand on the wood of the door, and it swung open before her. “A new feeling. I will see.” She spoke into the passageway, as if to herself. As she meandered out, she began to sing. Yelena flattened her ears. She did not like Tsai’s voice, so light and high. It hurt her, sent her thoughts awry.

A valet entered in Tsai’s wake, bearing hot water and clean towels for the Grass King’s first ablution. Yelena settled back on her beam, comforted by the regular sounds of the morning ritual. First came the ritual shaving, then the oiling and rebraiding of the king’s hair before it was pinned up onto the crown of his head. Then the second valet entered, bearing the Robe of Bathing, and the king rose, holding out his arms to be helped into it. The procession to the adjacent Royal Bathing Room followed. A mist of jasmine and mint and ambergris rose from the bath water. Often and often, she and Julana had watched and interfered with the process, launching raids on dangling bed fringes and bare toes, tipping over powder pots, stealing combs, chasing each other through the tangle of outraged legs while the Grass King laughed and fed them tidbits from the fruit plate that was set by his hand. On the beam, Yelena swayed, eyes closed, comforted by the steam. They could go back to that, she and Julana; they could curl up on the Grass King’s hem and be safe.

If they abandoned Marcellan. Her eyes snapped open. Marcellan was theirs, theirs to watch and follow and guard. She shook herself, shedding memory. She was here to listen, to learn, not to let herself be lulled into what once had been. While the Grass King bathed, a servant had come into the bedchamber to collect the covers and straighten
the cushions. Another brought garments from the wardrobe and hung them on a long carved rack, next to a great cheval mirror. An outer robe in green and brown and gold, embroidered with the patterns for Audience and Administration. To go under it, seven layers of fine underrobes in silk and lawn, each a little shorter than the next, and, under those, the privy garments of plain cotton. Slippers, beaded and bound in goldwork, soled in thin leather, and mud-brown stockings to be worn under them. A headpiece of soft felt, with its pale green veil held on by a gold-sheaf pin. From an inlaid cabinet, the servant laid out a series of rings, a leaf-shaped brooch, a golden cuff set with jade and carnelian. No jet, no bitter edged obsidian or shards of quartz. Not, then, the jewels of sentencing. The Grass King’s entourage were alert to no dangers, it seemed.