The Grass King’s Concubine (61 page)

One of the twins shrugged. “Don’t know. We were in exile.”

“Grass King exiled us.”

“It feels wrong.” The twins moved closer together. “We need to find Marcellan quickly.”

“Claim Marcellan.” The twin glanced over at him and added, “Find your wife.”

Aude. Somewhere in this dying ruin was Aude. He said, “Do you know where she is? Can you find her?”

Another shrug. “Palace is silent, now. That might make it easier. Or harder. It depends.”

Depends on what?
But he did not ask. He doubted whatever answer he got would make much sense anyway. He shifted again, trying to ease the strain in his shoulders. His feet wanted to hurry off now, to run, to thrust doors aside and tear down hangings until he found her, until he had her safe in his arms. His common sense hobbled them. He had Clairet to care for. And there was the woman thing. He did not want her anywhere near Aude.

Assuming, of course, that Aude still lived. He swallowed, licked his dry lips. It did him no good to think about that. Aude was alive. She had to be. He had committed himself to that belief from the moment he set foot in WorldBelow. Her locket was warm against his breastbone, the only touch of heat left under the chill weight of the woman thing. That had to mean something, didn’t it? That could mean—had to mean—that Aude still lived.

She was here somewhere, and he would find her.

The twins were restless, prowling up and down the arcade. One of them batted at a hanging loop of vine, and the other growled low in her throat. “Qiaqia said don’t touch.”

“Qiaqia is Cadre. Not Grass King. Not Marcellan. Doesn’t command us.”

“Qiaqia,” said her sister, “knows how not to attract attention. We’re not meant to be here. Remember?”

“We need to find Marcellan.” But the delinquent twin—
which one was it? Jehan suspected Julana—came back to their small group and sank down into a squat next to Clairet.

The other twin—Yelena?—said, “We will find him.” She looked across at Jehan, and added, “And the other one, your woman.”

The doors opened. Jehan started. He had not heard footsteps. It was Qiaqia, accompanied by a man in brown tunic and trousers. He was square and plain-faced, his skin much the same loam shade as Jehan’s own, his eyes clear and smiling. Something in Jehan released, relaxed.
This one can be trusted, this one is my kind…
The man held out a hand, and Clairet went to him, pushing her muzzle into his palm.

Qiaqia said, “This is Shirai. He’ll see to the pony.”

Jehan could not bow, laden as he was. He nodded instead and said, “I’m Jehan Favre.”

“Welcome.” Shirai’s voice was as warm as his face, washed with the hint of an accent not unlike that of Jehan’s father.
He’s just a farmer, an ordinary man. He’s just a man like me.

A twin kicked his ankle. He pulled back and glared at them. They had risen, stood tight together, arms wrapped around each other and their book. Low, one of them said, “Still Cadre.”

Oh, but…
Jehan wanted so much to trust this man, to take him as the countryman he seemed. Long and long since he had seen a face, heard a voice that was so reminiscent of his home, his childhood.
Still Cadre
. The woman thing dragged at his shoulders. The Cadre had taken Aude, dragged her from the Woven House into their alien world. The Cadre, including this man before him. Perhaps this very warmth was what had trapped her. He said, “I’ve come for my wife.”

Shirai exchanged a look with Qiaqia. Then he said, “Of course. However,” and he indicated the creature slung over Jehan’s shoulder, “there are perhaps other things that need dealing with first.”

“Marcellan,” said one of the twins.

Neither of the Cadre so much as looked at them. Shirai said, “Qiaqia will explain. I will tend your pony.” He rubbed a hand along Clairet’s nose. “You go with my comrade. There can be no healing where either she is or what you carry is.”

Jehan looked at the twins. One of them nodded. “
Pony
will be safe.” He still wanted to trust this man. He knew he could not afford to.

He said, “Perhaps…”

“Your pony will not be harmed.” Qiaqia was impatient. “We mustn’t linger here. It’s not…advisable. Come.”

He hesitated a moment longer. Clairet turned her head to face him and whickered. Her ears were upright and happy. He shook his head and followed Qiaqia.

He was two courtyards away before he realized that the twins were no longer with them.

The Rice Palace smelled wrong. Working their way through the servants’ corridors, the twins were jumpy. They had left the book in the arcade of the Cistern Court when they shifted back to ferret form. The book had served its purpose and opened the way for them. Yet nothing around them was at it should be. The absence of inhabitants did not trouble them overmuch—it made things easier, with no one to hide from or worry about. But the rest…Everywhere smelled of dust and dead foliage. No alluring whiffs of cooking, no hints of small and delicious animals to pursue. The walls stood dry and silent, devoid of the warm thrum of life and movement. The palace was dying. Dead, maybe. The odor of decay had curdled the air in the Court of the Cistern. Out here, away from the core, it was fainter, a trace, a thin memory, but it was still present, under the tiles, running through the walls. The Grass King was failing, fading, and his palace failed with him. The twins kept close together, flank to flank. They avoided their familiar routes between walls, under floors. They feared to get too close to the slow
death that extended its filaments everywhere around them. They ran at full speed, long bodies stretching, paws galloping and leaping. No inhabitants. No green, growing things. No bannermen—they swerved away from the silent statues. Only the Cadre and, surely, Marcellan.

Marcellan had to be here, had to be living. They had staked everything on that—freedom, their place at the Grass King’s side. They would not, could not be cheated of him now.

They would know if he was dead. Something would have told them, somehow. Neither of them could have explained how they came to be sure of that, but sure they were. Marcellan was theirs: They had claimed him in front of the Grass King. Therefore…

They came to the courtyard where he had been imprisoned. It was as still and silent as everywhere else. The door to Marcellan’s room stood closed. No bannermen—remains of bannermen—were stationed outside it. The twins came to a halt a few feet from it. Julana’s whiskers swept forward. “Can’t smell…No smell of him.”

“The door is closed.” But there was no conviction in Yelena’s voice. The twins’ scent range went far beyond the impediment of a door.

“Perhaps he’s bathing,” Julana ventured.

“Perhaps.” But there was no scent of water, either, no mist of soap and warm skin. Inch by inch, they crept toward the door, ears pitched to the front. Silence. Everywhere silence, broken only by the soft click of their claws on the tiles, the quick sweep of their breathing. No scratch of a pen on paper flittered out to them, no clack of shuttle across the loom. “Perhaps he’s asleep?” said Yelena, but they could hear no other breath. They stopped again right in front of the door and sniffed at it. Wood. Dust. The faintest trace of their musk, left there long ago. The filaments of decay.

They did not want to go farther. They did not want to know. Julana sat back on her haunches. “You go.”

“Why?” Yelena bared her teeth. “Why me?”

Julana had no reason other than her own reluctance. She said, “Why not?”

“Why not you?”

“I don’t want to.” The twins snarled at each other, nose to nose, backs arching.

Yelena said, “Someone has to.” She sank down. “Look together. It’s better that way.”

For a heartbeat, Julana hesitated. She could make her sister go; she could spit and claw. The hair along her spine flattened. She said, “It’s scary.”

“Yes.” Yelena touched her nose to her twin’s, then wiggled into the gap in the skirting. Julana followed her, close enough still to touch. The space between the walls felt wrong, desiccated. They shot out into the room beyond, shaking dust from their coats. Julana rolled on a rug, trying to remove the stain of loss. The room was still and dim and empty.

Empty. No papers on the table. No loom, no pens or tray of food and drink. No bedding on the divan. The air held only mold and damp. No memory of Marcellan clung to it, no memory of the twins themselves, where once their musk had hung comforting and heavy. Yelena sniffed at a cushion, then said, slowly, “Did we forget something? Remember wrong?”

“I don’t think so.” Julana finished rolling and came to join her sister. “I think this is the room.”

“This room…” The route into it had been right. The lattice on the tallest window still showed traces of their teeth. She sagged again. “No Marcellan.”

“Too late.” All the strength, all the long determination drained from Julana. She curled up into herself, nose to belly. “Gone.” She shivered again. “Dead?”

Something bumped against one of the windows. Yelena looked up. The shadow of a bee zigged and zagged behind the lattice. Slowly, Yelena said, “Not dead.” They would know. She was sure they would know.

Why was she so sure? She sank on her haunches, thinking.
“We’d know. We’d know because…” They had claimed Marcellan, but it was more than that. The Grass King had glared at them and growled and forbade them to defy him. He had denied their claim, and yet…Softly, slowly, the memory returned to her, the Grass King’s hand stretched out against them, against Marcellan. Herself, naked before him in her silly human form, Marcellan behind her.
Man is ours.

Say rather, said Liyan, eyes not on the Grass King but on Sujien, say rather that they are the man’s. Taste them, Sire. Smell them. His blood runs in their veins now, and theirs in his.

Marcellan was a part of them, had been from the instant they chose to change for him. And when Julana had bitten him, she had only woven that bond tighter. The Grass King could punish them, he could exile and reshape them, but he could not destroy them entirely. Earth returned to earth. But it might not destroy itself. And thus…“Not dead,” Yelena repeated, and her head rose. “Not dead. He shares our blood. While we live, he lives. And we live.” She nosed her sister. “Not dead. Just…just somewhere else.”

Julana uncurled, slowly. She said, “Sure?”

“Sure,” Yelena said, and nipped her ear lovingly. “Come. We have to find him.”

Qiaqia was in a hurry. Burdened as he was with the woman thing, who seemed to get heavier with every step, Jehan struggled to keep up. She took him through gloomy undecorated corridors, clearly the domain of servants, quickening her pace whenever they came to a more open area, a kitchen, a hall, a courtyard. Amber light slipped through lattices, played over gravel and tile, but the two of them—three of them—traversed only and always through shadows. She kept close to the walls, hissing at him when he stumbled close to the garden edge of an arcade they were rushing through. Though the place seemed deserted, she was on the alert, looking about her constantly.

If she was furtive, that implied that there was something
she wished to avoid, someone whose attention she did not wish to draw. The Grass King himself? Jehan had no way of knowing. If there was to be trouble, there was little he could do to defend himself, encumbered as he was. There seemed to be no one around, though here and there stone figures stood guard outside doors, or piles of garments lay abandoned in the middle of the floor. He could not account for her carefulness. That did not, of course, mean that he would be wise to discount it.

The passage they were following came out into a long, pillared chamber. Qiaqia stopped, looked around, and raised her hands. She said, “Stay close and be as silent as you can.” He moved nearer. She gestured, and something began to wind itself about her fingers. Shadows…from beneath pillars, from alcoves and distant corners, patches and strands and shreds of darkness spun themselves, gathered to her and wrapped around them all. Jehan gasped, and she frowned at him. Another turn of her hands and another, and they were cloaked from head to toe in shadow. Swiftly—even more swiftly than before—she hustled him across the hall, out onto a stepped terrace, and into a wide paved yard, with a deep trench bisecting it and a squat tower at its center. The air here smelled sour, an acrid bite of ash and rust. On his shoulder, the woman thing stirred again, and he stumbled.