The Grass King’s Concubine (24 page)

“To learn,” said the man, “is to grow.”

“To grow,” said the Grass King, “is both creation and
recursion.” He lowered his hand. “Words are limited, traveler, by the mind that conceived them. Your claims will be pondered.” He turned to the bannermen. “Mo-Shirai.”

“Sire,” Shirai said, head bowed.

“Take the traveler to the Court of the Fallows. I will digest.”

The twins coiled backward as the Grass King’s hem began to move. They curled in the shadows thrown by the wide feet of the throne. Courtiers and guards sank in obeisance as the Grass King rose. His coat swept the floor, gilded the tiles, as he walked. He pressed a molding on the wall behind the throne, and a door slid open into darkness. It closed behind him with a sigh of yeast and mulch. The twins waited, eyes fixed on the man as the Cadre led him away.

There was no plan of the Rice Palace, nor was it clear that anyone outside the Grass King himself knew its full extent. It grew as needed, or so the courtiers said, opening out into archways and courtyards, corridors and chambers, each with a purpose, each ornamented and furnished as required. There were, it was said, places that moved or reshaped themselves, places belonging solely to one time or mood, places that connected to nothing that could be understood. The twins mapped by scent, by taste, by the vagaries of curiosity, and remembered only by chance. They knew the granaries, with their cargo of sweet rodent flesh, the fields, rich and green, the comforts of the rooms of the harem. Their feet left patterns on the scrolls of the scribes in spilled ink, taunted the cooks with hieroglyphs in salt and flour, made blood spoor on the stable yard. They belonged to exploration and to play, not to duty. The Grass King indulged them, smiled at their depredations and prevented the punishments his servants might have inflicted. Now, his indulgence cloaked them as they followed Shirai and his charge along the passage of the princes, down its marble steps, through the Great Court of Lemon Trees and its daughters, over the Willow Bridge and through a wall
covered in clematis to the shadows of the circular courts and, at last, to the brown-gray Court of the Fallows. Courtiers and servants stopped as they passed, staring at the stranger. The walls of the Fallows’ Court were tall, coated with the clean boughs of winter vines. On the inside, they were plastered in winter gray and decorated with lines of barren trees. Its gardens were made of rock, shaped and turned by frost and wind and water into filigree and fretwork. The rooms were small, their windows high and narrow, protected by shutters over their lattice. Their entrances were closed by thick oak doors, rather than the curtains and screens common to most of the palace. The tiled floors hid under dark rugs, muffling steps and warming feet into lethargy. Slipping along its edges, the twins slowed, lulled into sleepiness by this place of waiting, of inertia. Silence held heavy sway here.

Shirai opened the doors to the largest of the chambers and showed the man inside. The room was rich with comforts; a heap of thick carpets piled with quilts and cushions formed a bed. The plastered walls hid behind tapestries, embroidered with winter woodlands and misted lakes. Solid dressers held wadded robes and slippers, eating utensils and the equipment for grooming. An upright loom occupied the center of the floor. “There’s water in the jugs.” Shirai said. “Food will be brought to you.” And he left the room, leaving the door ajar. The man stood near the doorway, looking around him. Outside, two bannerman took up positions to either side of the entrance. Two more guarded the arch into the courtyard. The twins coiled into a corner, pulled shadow over themselves, and waited. The bannermen settled, arms folded, eyes fixed ahead. A breath, two, and they mantled into stone.

Julana crept forward, cautiously, ears alert, fur bristling. The bannermen ignored her. Yelena followed. Along the edge of the wall they slunk, behind the feet of the left guard, along the base of the door. They peered around its lip. Within the room, the man had sat down, cross-legged, upon the bed. His eyes were closed. A twitch, a curl of
motion, and the twins were in the room, coiled close together beneath a chest, bright eyes staring.

In the Stone House, Julana wound her fingers into Clairet’s mane. “We watched.”

“We watched,” Yelena echoed, “and we waited.”

“Long and long.”

“Bannermen brought food.”

“Four times. And four more.”

“We watched.”

“Man watched the bannermen, ate the food.”

“Studied the rugs and the patterns on the walls.”

“The carvings on the chests.”

“Opened them, examined clothes and cups.”

“Man washed.”

“Slept.”

“Worked at the loom.”

“Time and time.”

“Shadow time.”

“Waiting.”

“Cadre came and went.”

“Shirai.”

“Quiet, kind.”

“Sujien.”

“Cold. Unreliable.”

“Tsai.”

“Laughing. Dancing. Never to be trusted.”

“Liyan and Qiaqia.”

“Quick hands. Stilling hands.”

“Man asked questions.”

He had sat on the bed, or at the loom, waiting as the twins waited, absorbing the stillness, or so it seemed. Around him, the room settled, turning slowly to reflect him, walls a little darker, clothes more robust. On the loom, his pattern grew under his slow fingers, blue like the sky of WorldAbove, peppered with birds. When the Cadre came,
he regarded them, shoulders relaxed, face open. “And how,” he would ask, “is the palace today?”

“As ever,” would say Shirai, or Qiaqia, or sometimes Liyan. Sujien glowered and growled and refused to respond. Little Tsai smiled, and answered at random. “Blue-flowered,” came one day. “Plangent,” another. To all answers, even Sujien’s refusals, the man responded with thanks and a nod. With Shirai, or sometimes Qiaqia, if her mood was good, he might talk further, asking about plants and water, building materials and the stars. A day passed and a night and another day. In their corners, under things, nested in cushions or quilts, the twins watched and listened and wondered. The world the man described did not seem like theirs. He did not inquire of the smells or the tastes; the wallows and the scent pits. His was a world of eyes alone. “A part world,” said Yelena, fascinated.

“Like WorldAbove?” Julana asked.

Yelena did not know. They had traveled to WorldAbove in the Grass King’s sleeves, coiled about his wrists, enveloped in his scent and his presence. She said, “Maybe.” They could not picture it, a place made up of vision and no more.

They watched and they listened and, day by day, crept closer to the man. His smell filled the room, rich as loam. They were learning him, the language of his limbs and his movements, the rhythms of his breath. His flesh was thick, solid, immutable in this place of palimpsests and echoes. His skin was worn and earth colored, abraded by weather and time, his hair as black as Qiaqia’s eyes. Under his skin, through his veins, his blood moved to its own tides, salt and slow, occluded only by his mortality. Never had they come so close to one like him. Here in the Grass King’s lands, all the inhabitants reflected its nature to one degree or more. Shapeshifters, elementals of earth, immanence of soil and growing things, they were not held to a single form or a mortal track. The twins had seen creatures of the other domains, flavored differently but formed much as they themselves. They had seen the shadow beings of the domain of darkness, built from the memories and yearnings of
humankind. But they had had no dealing with living men. This man—this real, astonishing man—drew them whisker by whisker and hypnotized them with his otherness. At the heart of the second night, they came at last to the edge of his bed and hid themselves amid the bedclothes. He slept. Inch by inch, they moved until they reached him, long warm bodies pressed against him, one on either side. And there, in his lee, they slept.

He shifted as he slept, his body conforming to the pressure of theirs. His dreams spread sleepy wings over all of them, perfumed with memories of WorldAbove. Ink and soot, paper and animal skin, heated metal and acid. His feet—their feet—slipped on filthy paving, tracked sand from a long seashore, crunched across snow and frost and ashes. Skin reddened under a searing sun, shivered with cold in a smoky hut, folded and dried with age. Fragment by fragment, the twins winkled into his dreams and learned from them the rhythms, the tides, of his shape. Julana stretched in her sleep, and her small front paws touched the man’s cheek. Yelena chattered her teeth and turned tighter into the comfort of his belly. He wriggled, stretched, and his eyelids flickered.

The twins woke. Muscles tightened, ready to spring for cover. The man opened his eyes and looked down, straight at Yelena. She froze in place, while her sister bristled, teeth bared. He said, “Hello. I was wondering when you’d come out into the open.”

He had seen them. It should not be possible. Concealment was their gift, their art, honed over long years. Not even sharp-eyed Sujien could always spot them when they chose to hide. Not even the Grass King. Usually. At his back, Julana said, “Not possible.”

Yelena crouched down low, afraid to speak. The man said, “Don’t be frightened. I won’t hurt you.”

“We bite,” said Julana. But without her sister’s echo, she lacked the nerve. “We scratch. We’re
dangerous
.” Her speech faltered, fur fluffing out, body cringing.

“Are you hungry?” The man asked. “I have some food
saved, if you’d like it.” He reached out with an arm, and Yelena trembled. His hand moved away from her, to the table beside the bed. Recumbent, he could not see what he did; his fingers groped about, rattling plates and cutlery. They seized first on a heel of bread, which he pushed aside, then an apple, then, at last, a hunk of meat. He drew it back toward him and offered it, carefully, to Yelena.

It smelled good. Despite herself, her neck craned forward, nose twitching. She said, “Pig meat. Chewy.”

Julana could smell it also. Her fur settled back a little. She said, “Taste it.”

Yelena inched forward, touched the ham with the tip of her tongue. Wood smoke and salt and flesh. Instinct grabbed her; she set her teeth into the meat and jumped to the floor. Julana followed her, scrambling over the man. Together, they ripped and bit and chewed, haggled over choice pieces, stole from each other, batted and gnawed and played. The man was forgotten, blotted over by taste and smell and hunger.

“Good,” said Julana. “But better raw.”

“Blood and sinew.”

“Bones. Crunching. Snapping.”

Replete, the twins settled back against each other in the center of the floor, licking the last scraps from their whiskers. The man had shifted to sit once more cross-legged on his bed, munching a piece of bread. Two sets of eyes looked at him and stopped.

“He fed us,” Yelena said. “Didn’t hurt. Didn’t yell.”

“We didn’t bite him,” Julana pointed out.

“No.” Yelena considered him for long moments. “I don’t think I want to bite him.”

He said, “I’m sorry I frightened you. I didn’t mean to. Are these your rooms?”

The twins lived where they pleased. They looked at one another, unsure of the meaning of the question. He went on, “I don’t know very much about this palace yet. I’m still waiting for the Grass King’s permission to leave this courtyard.” He smiled at them, “But you two keep me company, and I like that.”

The twins looked at one another again. Then, slowly, Yelena moved forward to the side of the bed. Carefully, guardedly, she rose onto her haunches and set her front feet on its rim. The man watched her. She extended her nose up to him, and he reached out, slowly, with a hand. The tip of his longest finger stopped just short of her nose, where she could smell it. He said, “You’re ferrets, aren’t you? But a lot bigger than the ones I’ve seen before. Your cousins where I come from are about as long as my hand.” He withdrew his finger. “My name’s Marcellan.”

“Marcellan,” Yelena said, then in memory, now in the Stone House.

“Marcellan,” Julana echoed. They tasted the name, rolled it over pink tongues, inhaled it through sharp noses, shaped it in the fan of their whiskers, learned how it wrapped him, covered him, gave him self. “Marcellan.”