The Grass King’s Concubine (31 page)

The first twig she found was long enough, but too thin to do more than break. She found and rejected two more that were too thick to fit through the bars. Her fourth attempt yielded a broken-tipped pin made of some soft gray metal. It slipped easily through the grille, and a little manipulation slid it end up to the bolt. But it would not catch. She squinted upward. If she bent the tip, it would fit around the shaft of the bolthead, and she could drag it down. She tried again, and this time the pin caught. Carefully, slowly, she pulled on the bolt. It resisted, then with a puff of dust came suddenly free. The grille toppled open with a clang, spilling her out into a wide stone drain.

Her right shoulder hit the surface hard, and she swore. For a moment or two she lay still, gasping. Then she pushed herself onto her knees and looked around. It was another courtyard, but wholly unlike the one in which she had been held. On three of its five sides, it was closed off by plain high walls of dark stone. The fourth wall was occupied by a workshop, fronted with heavy sliding doors, which stood partially open. Beyond them a forge stood cold and deserted, flanked by racks of tools, benches, and a huge dresser. The remains of some contraption rusted to one side of the latter. Behind her, the grille had opened out at the base of a three-foot plinth, itself the foot of a long terrace. The drain sloped away, cut into stone flags, toward a vast…a vast
something
that occupied the center of the courtyard. The air held a faint tang of oil and metal.

She rose, knees complaining at this further requirement and moved closer to the object. What was it? Some kind of fountain? The drain led toward it, opening out into a flattish funnel before vanishing through an arch set in the base of the thing. Surely it was too vast. A tower? Like the courtyard, it was five-sided, but where the walls were plain, this thing was ornate. Fluted stone pillars rose up at each corner, branching out into a series of fine arches. Intricately carved screens decorated in gold and green filled each arch. Under the center were closed shutters. Each set of arches was topped by a curving roof, like the eaves of a pagoda.
She craned her neck: one, two…five stories in total, and atop them all an openwork dome. The side nearest her was decorated with the familiar wreathes of corn and garlands of grape vines, painted onto the carved wood. She walked around it, slowly. The second side was in shades of blue and sea-green, depicting waves and waterfalls. The one beyond that spoke of fire: scarlet and orange and yellow flames fanning in faded tints. The fourth bore clouds in pale blues and grays. The fifth, facing the workshop, was completely plain: no carvings, no lattices, simply smooth black-stained wood and stone. There were no windows on that side, only a single door set at the top of a flight of steps leading up to the second story. She stepped backward, peering up at the structure at the very top. Under the dome something stood: a nest of rings set at angles to one another.

She had seen something like that before, at least, in the west gallery of the royal palace in the Silver City. An astrolabe…No, an orrery, used to watch the cycles of the moons, presented to some old regent by the Guild of Merchant Adventurers. She did not know why such a thing would need to stand on top of a tower. She did not know why such a tower was necessary at all. Not to study the moons, surely, not here in this place where they did not shine. She had read of machines to lift water and grind corn, to roll metal and weave cloth, to stamp out clay and power spinning frames. She had seen them at work in the guts of the Brass City. This thing was nothing of that kind, if machine it was at all. And why did the water conduit—the same one that ran, it seemed, under so many courtyards—feed into its base? Was it a device for regulating water flow? There were sluices and locks and even an inclined plane for lifting barges in the docks of the Brass City. If so, where did the water flow out? She couldn’t see an exit pipe. She walked around the tower again, considering. Given where it entered, and assuming it flowed in a straight line, the water should leave the tower at one of its corners. The obvious corner was smooth and blank. Was this perhaps some kind of engine, like the huge steam pumps that were the
workhorses of Brass City industry? She could not see what it drove, unless it was the orrery on its roof. She could make no sense of it.

She sat down on the steps up to the workshop and inspected the state of her elbows. Raw and red. Well, she was out of her prison courtyard, that was something, and this one was far more promising. From this side, she could see that the terrace gave onto a hall with many curtained archways leading out from it. The workshop was likely to hold hammers and knives and wrenches to help her break through locks or defend herself. Best of all, none of the Cadre were here. The drain had dead-ended, but before her were many new possibilities. She hugged her knees and smiled to herself. This was more than a start. Jehan would be proud of her. So would Colonel Lord Saverell.

She pulled herself upright and turned, contemplating the workshop. Sooner or later, the Cadre would discover she was not where they had stored her. Best to equip herself first before exploring any further.

Inside the workshop, it was dark and cool, raising goose bumps on her arms. She stood in the opening, waiting once again for her eyes to adjust. Benches stood to either side of her, wide and hefty, their tops scattered with tools of different sizes, papers, and pieces of metal in various stages of work. At least two of them were given over entirely to printers’ frames, their edges buckled. Blocks of type scattered willy-nilly under them, spilling out onto the rest of the floor. Beyond to her left stood a forge, its bed piled with ashes. Vats of some kind flanked it. Against the back wall were wide shelves, stacked higgledy-piggledy with coils of wire, sheets of metal, lumps of ore. Racks held vast tongs and hammers, wrenches and clamps and every kind of metalworking tool, from the mallets used for beating sheets down to tiny implements for engraving. All of it, every part, was coated in a fine layer of dust.

No one but herself and the four Cadre.
She was beginning to think that this place was as deserted as the steppe.

She went to the nearest bench. Somewhere would be a
knife, a sharp chisel, a file. Papers stirred at her movement, fluttering their edges. The topmost one held a diagram, a machine anatomized in ink to its gear chains and drive shafts and cogs. She could not tell what it was. She had not read much about engineering, except as it related to the economics of the Silver and Brass cities. Jehan, perhaps, might know. He had spent far longer than she amid the factories and foundries and dockyards. She flipped through the papers. More cogs and chains and struts. Toward the bottom of the pile were images of people: men and women in long coats and wide trousers holding drums and bells and cymbals in narrow hands, attached at the ankle to long rods. That she had seen before, on the ugly clock that adorned the front of the Central Guild and Counting House in Great Market Square in the Brass City. On the hour, every hour, a parade of soldiers marched beneath the clockface beating gongs or blowing wooden trumpets. In the palace in the Silver City, the regent had a collection of far daintier clocks, adorned with acrobats and dancers and birds that flapped their wings and sang. She looked back at the tower. Could it be a clock? There was no face to show the time. And why the orrery on the top? She shook her head and turned back to the bench.

“It’s a clepsydra,” said a voice from the shadows at the back of the workshop. Aude started, one hand going to her throat where her locket had once hung. From the darkness in the farthest corner, a shade detached itself and came toward her with a leisurely stride. She stepped backward and banged her hip on one corner of the bench. With her other hand, she groped across its surface for a weapon of some kind. The figure came nearer, forming itself into one of the Cadre. Narrow eyes, braid hanging over one shoulder, a dark brown robe thrown over green tunic and trousers. Liyan, who seldom spoke, only watched her. Her fingers found the handle of something and closed on it. He stopped about eight feet away and asked, “Do you know what a clepsydra is?”

“No.” Her mouth was dry. She could not see if he was
armed. She would never make it back to the water pipe before he caught her. If she fled into the hall…

“It’s a water clock.” He made no move to come closer. “Well, it’s partly a water clock. Telling time is useful, but I wanted to model the moons.”

“What?” Despite herself, Aude was puzzled. “Why?” That, surely, was the job of sea captains and factors in harbors.

Liyan shrugged. “Because it’s interesting. I like to know.”

I like to know.
She looked at him. His face was calm; his arms hanging relaxed at his sides. He did not look threatening or angry.

He went on, “I can show you, if you like. Well, I can show you the mechanism. It doesn’t work anymore. It’s broken. And there isn’t enough water. It went away.”

“Like the steppe,” she said.

“The steppe.” That seemed to catch him. “Is it dry? I don’t think I looked.”

“There’s no water anywhere. Just dust and dried-up grass and…” She shied away from the memory of that desiccated dead thing in the Woven House. “No one lives there. No people.”

“I should ask Sujien. He goes to look. Or Shirai. The land speaks to him.” Perhaps he had not heard her. She began to back toward the exit. He continued, “Drought above and below. And Tsai…” Suddenly he was aware of her again. “Where are you going?”

“I…” Aude swallowed. “You were going to show me the…the clepsydra.” The word caught on her tongue, tripping her.

“Yes.” He reached into a sleeve, and she gasped. He paused, looked at her oddly. “I won’t hurt you. I can see no reason to.” He removed his hand from the sleeve and spread it out. He held a pen. “See. Nothing harmful.”

He stepped forward. Her hand brought up her impromptu weapon. She found herself holding a thin file. He looked at it, then shook his head. “Not effective.” He turned to the bench beside him, moving items, hunting through the
heaps of things. Then, “Here.” He was holding out a knife, fat-bladed and squat. “This is better.”

The Cadre did not even allow her a blunt knife to spread conserves. She said, “But,” and stopped herself. If he willingly offered her a weapon…She took the knife, felt the hilt solid and hard in her hand. “Thank you.”

“It should give Sujien pause, at the very least.” A smile flickered briefly across his mouth. She could make no sense of it. Well, she would worry over it afterward. For now, she had a knife. She was away from the Courtyard of the Concubine. Liyan seemed unconcerned by either of those things. He nodded, once, then said, “Come, then.”

She hesitated, hand tight on her new knife. The tower—clepsydra—whatever it was could easily turn into a far straiter prison than the Courtyard of the Concubine. She said, “I’m not…” and stopped.

He folded his arms across his chest, looking at her. He said, “You come from WorldAbove.”

“Yes.”

“There are many engines. Many machines.”

“I…I suppose so.” She could not see where this was leading.

“And you don’t fear them.”

She was less sure about that. The machines in the Brass City consumed men, wore their bodies to rags, snatched them up to be torn apart in their steel teeth. Their breath was poison and choking smoke. If machines were gods, they were cruel ones, rewarding few, devouring many. She said, “They aren’t…they don’t…” And then, “It’s not like that.”

Liyan’s eyes widened. He asked, “Then what is it like?”

She did not know where to begin. She did not know what he wanted of her. She said, “I’m not sure I…”

“Mortal men make these machines to serve them, yes? To spread knowledge?”

“Well…They make things. The machines, I mean. Things like cloth and iron and…” She did not know. She had watched the men in the factory yards, not the products
over which they labored. “People own them—the machines—and they pay other people to use them to make things to sell. It’s more efficient that way.”

Liyan seemed to have forgotten his intention to show her the clepsydra. He pulled a stool from under a bench and dusted it off with a sleeve. Thrusting it at her, he pushed himself neatly onto the bench top and pulled up his legs. He said, “Sit. Then explain.”

Jehan would know all this far better than she did. Had he felt this way, when she marched into his life and demanded enlightenment? She said, “I don’t really know that much about it.”

“A little is more than nothing.”

“I don’t really understand it myself. I mean, I don’t know how the machines are made or how they work.” She looked at the papers on the bench in front of her. “I suppose they have cogs and things. Some of them work by steam; there are water boilers and…and valves and…” She did not know. It had not occurred to her to find out. It had not seemed important.

Liyan said, “Tell me what you do know.”

She knew how to read account books and choose servants. She knew pamphlets and illegal books and the hundred competing theories of their authors. She knew the dreams of Marcellan and the multiple explanations of his priests, followers, and critics. Seated opposite her, Liyan waited. She had the uncomfortable feeling he might do that indefinitely. She sat down on the stool, shook her head. She said, “I don’t have anything to do with machines. I own some, but I don’t make them work.” It was the same problem all over again, the same question of why some had wealth and ease and some had nothing and labored. “I didn’t make them. Someone else did that, I don’t know who.” An engineer who had sold his skills to her father or grandfather in return for patronage and an entrée into high society, perhaps. Her uncle had not encouraged her to ask those sorts of questions. At court, it was not polite to be related to someone like that. “Things like cloth used to be
made by hand, by people in their homes, but the machines do it faster. They can make more of it.”

“So the weavers built the machines to aid their labor?”

Put like that, it made sense. Why wouldn’t the weavers control their own work? But it had not happened that way. Why? She frowned, “The weavers didn’t work for themselves. They were tenants. They owed rent—goods, money—to their landlords. The landlords built the machines. They’re expensive to build, and I suppose the weavers couldn’t afford them.” Would such machines, built by weavers or any other worker, have belonged to the landlords anyway? She did not know that, either. Some of the pamphlets wrote of tenants as if they were property, pure and simple, with no more rights or freedom than a horse or a field. She went on, “The landlords own the land, the houses. Tenants work for them.”