The Grass King’s Concubine (18 page)

The pony nudged him again, this time more forcefully. He patted her, and she shoved him anew. They were downwind of the bloody rags of their companions. That would be upsetting to her, doubtless. They should move. He took a few steps; the pony followed him and once more shoved. Off balance, he rocked against her, and she began to steer him, drawing him west. Stumbling and limping, pushing and leaning, they fumbled down the slope from the Woven House back toward the dry watercourse. Step by step, the pony led him across the steppe, over the iron earth, to the bounds of the Stone House.

In the attic, the twins stopped moving. Black eyes snapped open, whiskers quivered and snapped back. Three bounds took them to the threshold; flank to flank they looped and raced down the stairs, slithering on corners, bouncing from the edges of the banister. Their paws chattered and tapped across the stone kitchen floor, then skittered to a halt before the door.

“Man,” said Yelena, restless with excitement. “Man here.”

“Man and pony.”

“We taste them. We smell them.”

“We brought them. Ours, now.”

“Ours.” In the dim light, their eyes were bright as flame. “Ours to command.”

“Man,” Julana said. “Man to read our book. Marcellan’s book.”

“Man,” said Yelena, “to take us home.”

Jehan and the Twins

J
EHAN’S HEAD HURT. No—all of him hurt. He was cramped and aching and chilled to his core; no part of him did not twinge and moan as he stirred. The surface beneath him offered no comfort to joints or bones. His throat felt rasped dry and sour. He swallowed painfully, tasted dirt and wool, inhaled.

The air was foul, sharp, raw. Coughing, he rose onto his knees and felt muscle and sinew protest further. He was cold and sore and alone, cast adrift on the steppe, bereft of water, of shelter. Bereft of company.

Aude was dead. His breath caught, scraping his throat. He gulped, swayed, fought for calm. He could not dwell on that, not now. That way led only to more death. He needed to work out where he was and what to do next. He blinked, wincing at grit in his eyes, let them open slowly onto darkness.

No, not darkness, dimness. A sepia gloom filtered in from somewhere, washing over dirty flagstones and the corners of a heavy old dresser. He tracked the light back to filthy glass panels. Not the steppe, nor yet the Woven House. Not anywhere he remembered having ever been before.

Perhaps he was dead and this was some joke of the Masters of Dark, throwing him into confusion. Perhaps this was all that there was of that realm, which hosted the dead.

If he was dead, then he might hope to find Aude.

He did not think that, dead, his body would complain so much, of pain, of fatigue, of thirst. Perhaps he was dying, lying out on the cold plain dreaming. He closed his eyes again, counted heartbeats, struggling to slow down his breathing. If this was no more than mirage, he could break it.

But when he opened his eyes again, the view was the same. So, if this was dream, it was a strong one, invading all his senses. The stink in the air filled his lungs, wrinkled his nose, offended his taste buds. Not dust, not age, but an animal musk, like that of the ferrets his brother used to keep, thick and foul. He did not think he would dream such a thing.

This was, then, real, or real enough. As his breathing slowed, his heart rate followed, willy-nilly. He had come here…He had come here how? His bones remembered the watercourse and the endless dry dead grasses, the cold and the change in the wind. His body remembered the silence after the wind, the wreck of the Woven House. His heart remembered the charnel secret.

Dead.

Don’t think of that.

All through their long journey the specter haunting them was Aude’s uncle’s men. He had lain awake, some nights, watching the light rise and fall of her breath, the movements of her eyes under her closed lids, and sworn to kill any man who tried to harm her or tear her from him. But now…The rasp in his throat came from shouting Aude’s name into the air as the light died and the wind turned. The wind had taken her, broken and flayed her.

He could not kill the wind.

The pony, Clairet, with her soft nose and insistent push. He had resisted at first, but he had been too tired for that to last. And he had to go somewhere…He had, he recalled, tied his inner scarf, the one patterned with birds, to the strongest of the broken beams in the wreckage, a token that he had been there and would—he hoped—return, in case Aude had survived and came back there, looking for signs
of him. The pony must have brought him here, somehow, step by step through the night and the cold.

Wherever here might be. He could not see the pony. He tried to lick his lips, to whistle to it, but his mouth was too dry. Rawly, weakly, he said, “Hey?” and coughed. Somewhere, something scratched and scrabbled. Not hoofs. He looked round, one hand to his aching neck. Dust and dimness.

A chair stood a few feet away to his left. He shuffled over to it on his knees and used its ladder back to help heave himself upright. His legs protested but held. He said, “Hello?” and then, “Is there anyone here?” In the corner, dust once again shifted and scrabbled. This time, he caught a flash of movement, the furred tip of a tail. Rats? If so, there must be food, there must be water…

None of it made sense. Perhaps after all this
was
a dream.
Although,
noted some tidy part of his brain,
one would expect a man dying of thirst and cold to dream of water.
They had said that happened, back in his barracks, that men lost in the great deserts of east Tarnaroq chased illusory springs and pools and leafy cool glades. Not this filthy room and the stink of musk. Under his hand, the chair was solid. He dropped onto it and looked around him again.
Think
. The room resembled nothing more than a long-neglected farm pantry. Small animal prints crisscrossed the dirty floor, and the shelves of the dresser held nothing but dust and cracked tableware. From the single door, a scuffed trail led to where he had lain, fringed with traces of more footprints, small as a child’s. Wherever he was, he was not alone; there was a stranger. Unless, of course, the pony had somehow transformed herself into human shape.

He shook his head. That thought bespoke fatigue and did no good. Someone had found him, brought him here. He was alive, then, and no longer alone. And if he was safe, then perhaps, just perhaps, Aude was safe also. Hope bubbled up inside him, caught in his throat, checked his breath. Perhaps she had found shelter from the storm and somehow the pony had scented her. Those footprints might be
hers. He swallowed, said, “Aude?” His voice was small in the tiny room. He bit his lip, tried again, “Aude?” If she had found him, she might be outside, searching for water or with their savior, whoever that was.

Whoever or whatever. He shivered.
Think, Jehan.
That creature, that dry dead thing had seemed more aware of the water than of him or of Aude. He did not think it—its like—would bring either him or Aude here, wherever here was. Perhaps there were a handful of survivors eking out a living on the steppe. Perhaps there were other travelers. Perhaps Aude had found them, or vice versa, and then…

If that was the case, where was she now? Something or someone had died at the Woven House. Two ponies…Clairet had been with him. What had become of her? What about their luggage, or Aude’s precious scrolls? Were they all broken under the debris? Questions piled up, choking him. He shook his head. He could wait here forever without ever resolving any of them.

He was thirsty, and his canteen was not in the room with him. He needed to find out where he was. He needed to find water. He rose, carefully, body as stiff as the day after a route march. The handle on the door was cold and rusty—an iron loop, reluctant to turn. He leaned into it, and it ground itself open. The door swung inward, spilling gray light. He put up a hand to shield his eyes. Again, from somewhere, a rustle, a skitter. The acrid reek was denser here. It stung his eyes. He coughed, blinked. “Hello? Aude?”

A skitter, then a puff of air, as if someone had just pulled the lid from a tight jar. Beyond him, back to the light, stood a figure, ragged-headed and twig-limbed.

He repeated, “Aude?”

“Man thing,” a voice responded. It was not Aude’s. It was hoarse and thin and high. “Man thing. Can you read?”

There was a bare wooden table, surface dulled and dirty and tracked with animal prints. A handful of chairs stood around it, askew. On its top stood a book, a pitcher of
water, and a humanlike shape. A woman, perhaps. She squatted on the tabletop, angular and skinny. The nails of her short fingers were curved and dark, her eyes matte black and shiny. Beside her, on the cover of the book, an outsize ferret crouched.
That
, noted some corner of Jehan’s mind,
explains the smell. Maybe
. The woman creature held the handle of the pitcher tight in one hand. Her face—sharp as her limbs—was fixed on Jehan. She had pulled and prodded him from the threshold of the pantry into here and shoved him onto one of the chairs before he had had time to gather his thoughts. Her skin and her short chemise were both rank with filth. He sat limply, trying not to breathe in too much. The stench was bad enough as it was. There was no sign of Aude. The only consolation—if the word were not too strong—was that Clairet stood in a corner of the room, head down into an untidy pile of hay.

The—what was she? A girl? A woman?—the captor pushed the jug toward him. Water slopped from its rim, splattered the table. He could smell it, even over the ferret reek. The woman said, “Drink. Then read.”

“What?” It was not what he had expected. He could see the spine of the book, bound in cracked green leather and tooled in red.
Codex maior gyrivagi: de quinque regnis
.
The Greater Volume of the Wanderer: On the Five Realms
. The first Book of Marcellan. He had never seen a copy outside one of the great temples, though perhaps a handful of the greatest Silver City lords might have one on their library shelves. Most people, if they had faith at all, made do with an
Epitome
. The book did not belong here in the dust and dark. Nothing here made sense. And Aude…

He said, “My wife?”

“Cadre took her. Cadre have her,” the woman thing said. “We saw. We smelled. Cadre rode the wind, pulled her down to WorldBelow.” She shoved at the jug again. “Drink.”

The woman thing was crazy, or else he was. What she said made no sense. The water called to him from inside the
jug. He licked dry lips. He said, “Where is she? What have you done with her?”

“We’ve done nothing. Cadre have her. We smelled. We felt. Drink.”

“Cadre?” So there were still living men on this steppe, bandits or desperadoes. This woman might know where such men camped, what they craved…“Where are they? What do they want with her?”

The woman thing smiled, exposing her yellow teeth. “Cadre went back below, back to the Grass King. Took her with them.”

His hands knotted into fists. The Grass King was a legend, nothing more, a figment of the layers and layers of old tales told to children or to fools in temples. This creature
was
crazy, or she wanted him to think so. He said, “Just tell me.”

“We did.”

“There’s no such place as WorldBelow.”

“No?” The smiled widened. “Then why did pony bring you here? The Stone House called you. We called you. WorldBelow called you.”

His head hurt. The scent of the water in that jug filled his nostrils, filled his head.

Aude had talked of a Stone House, a dream, a portal…He said, “That can’t be possible. That
isn’t
possible.” He rubbed at his temples. “The wind…She was alone in that place and the wind destroyed it.”

The woman repeated, “Drink. And then read. Reading opens the gate.” Atop the book, the ferret chattered. Its teeth were as yellow and pointed as hers. The woman said, “Cadre took your wife to the court. Our man is trapped by the court. You read, we go, we find them. Drink.”

He could smell the water in the pitcher, cool and alluring against the animal stench. His hand reached for it. Under his fingers, the earthenware was damp and rough. He swallowed, mouth dry, tongue drier.