The Grass King’s Concubine (45 page)

Julana sniffed them. “Smell like plaster. Like the Rice Palace.”

Had the markings always been there? The twins could not remember. But still the clock haunted them, climbed into their dreams, disturbed their play. “We should ask,” Julana said. “Ask Shirai.”

“The Grass King loves Shirai,” Yelena said. “More than Liyan or Qiaqia or Sujien. Shirai would tell the Grass King everything, and the Grass King would listen. He might be angry. Angry with Marcellan.”

Julana, in turn, shivered. She said, “Perhaps Liyan will get bored.” But she did not believe it. Liyan did not let go once he desired something. Qiaqia was tangible evidence of that. The twins grew thin and nervy, fur dulled, jumping at shadows. They refused to accompany Marcellan on his daily trips to Liyan’s workshop, choosing instead to lurk in the shadows beneath its walls. Nor would they take on their new human forms in order to talk to him. Marcellan sought to coax them with ever-better morsels, and they turned their backs and hid under the cupboards or up on the eaves. The cooks and butlers and granary masters smiled behind their hands and hoped for easier times ahead. Day after day, the clepsydra took shape, and the Grass King did nothing. “Maybe,” Julana said, at last, “it’s all right after all. Maybe the Grass King approves.”

“But does he know?” worried Yelena. “Does he know about the clock?”

“He must,” Julana said. “He always knows. Shirai knows. So the Grass King must know.” She jumped up onto the top of a chest. “Air smells good. No stinging. No bad noises. Ground is steady. Grass King is happy.”

Yelena leaped up to join her. It was night; on his divan, Marcellan slept. Yellow twilight filtered in through the long windows, made swirling trefoil patterns across the floor. Yelena gazed up at the stars and the clear sky. Perhaps, after all, it was all right. She said, “We should check. We should listen.”

“And leave our man?” The twins had stayed close to him for more days than they could think how to count.

Yelena looked over at him. “One of us should stay. Watch.”

Julana started. The twins were never apart. They did not know how to do such a thing. It should not be thinkable. And yet…She asked, “Can we?” She did not know how to say it. “Can we
be
, if not two?”

“I
think
so.” Yelena considered. “Sometimes you sleep and I don’t. I sleep and you don’t. But we’re still us. Still real.”

“Sleeping isn’t apart.” Julana could not hold on to the thoughts. Was one twin, a lone twin, still a twin? If Yelena was not there, could she remain Julana? Or would she become something, someone else? There were no other twins, no other
them
that they knew of. If they were apart, would other twins be made somewhere to replace them? She said, “Can’t…”

“You stay,” Yelena said. “I’ll go. Find out about the Grass King. About danger.”

The halls were quiet, yet, scurrying through the shadows at the bottom of the walls, Yelena was rank with fear. Easier by far to think of being alone, to talk of it, than to do it. Without Julana, she was naked. Her fur bristled around her, alert for any danger. Coming to a junction, she hung back. How could she cross, without Julana to watch out for her, to
guard the places at her sides? All around her was still, empty; from behind curtained doorways came the deep tides of sleep. The scent of difference that shadowed Marcellan’s courtyard was present here, too, a faint trace of gall and oil. Shivering, Yelena launched herself into the shadowless center of the corridor and fled at her fastest pace toward her goal. The breeze blew a dried leaf toward her from a hidden garden, and she jumped sideways. A servant snored and shifted in his sleep, and she flattened herself to the ground. This must be done. They had decided—two of them had decided. The man might be in danger. They had to know.

She trembled. Her feet itched to run, to flee for the safety of her sister’s warmth. It must not be done. She must not let it be done. She made herself follow the familiar trail along this corridor, through a gap in the wall behind the arras into that hall, out, and on. At last she came to the door to the Grass King’s private suite, and, three feet to its right, a crack in the skirting just large enough to allow her to pass, left unblocked by the Grass King’s order. Yelena stopped. What if the Grass King had changed his mind? What if he had noticed their recent neglect? The twins did not like to be neglected. Ignored, they tore and ripped, bit and soiled to show their displeasure. The Grass King was so much bigger and stronger and greater. He might close their paths and more. She edged up to the gap and sniffed once again. Plaster dust and old fur. Her whiskers curved forward, into the dimness. Ragged edges of wood and the rough back of the wall. A spider had moved into one corner and she pulled back as one whisker brushed the side of a web. Nothing new, nothing changed save the traces of their absence. Slowly, anxiously, she slipped inside.

Beyond lay darkness and silence. Her nose and feet knew the way, led her in and up, scrambling and scrabbling up the wall joists, along beams, over thick pins. She wriggled, hooked front paws into cracks and hauled, squeezed and oozed and pattered. At the top she halted. It was cool up here under the palace roof, and she longed once again
for Julana. Her body was not used to this aloneness; it shivered and protested, struck answering quivers across her thoughts.
Not like this. Not right like this, not proper, not safe…

Marcellan was not safe. It was her duty—her duty and Julana’s—to ensure that he came to no harm. She hastened onward, up the last steep stretch of wall and came at last to her goal. Here under the roof tiles ran the long spaces of the palace attics, low and grimy, pigeon scented and cobwebbed. From here, she could clamber through the plaster moldings onto the tops of the painted beams that ran across the ceiling of the Grass King’s bedchamber and watch him at his most secret doings.

She slipped out, snaked though a gap in the plasterwork onto the top of a green-blue corbel. The air touched her with light fingers, bringing with it scents of rosewater and salt, green leaves and fresh earth. She waited, tasting each new smell as it reached her, normal and reassuring and calm, no trace of anger, no trace of change. She crept forward to peer over the edge. On his great divan the Grass King rested, loam-brown skin on heaped golden cushions, cedar-bark hair unbound. Tsai curled against him, loose limbed and untidy, fronds of her hair trailing over the pillows and onto the floor. Yelena’s paws twitched. Sometimes, she and Julana would chase those trails, pouncing and patting, chewing out knots and sucking ends, while Tsai laughed and wriggled and swatted at them with her hands. If Julana were here, they could drop now and coil themselves between them in the warm hollow of the Grass King’s knees, they could inhale his strong potent smell and sleep completely protected. Her eyes drooped, thinking of it. Safe. Safer than they had been for twice as many days as she and Julana had toes between them and twice more and more. Her mouth could taste the comfort. They could sleep and forget, and all would be well.

She swayed, and her hip bumped a sharp corner of the plasterwork. Outraged, she turned, bared her teeth to bite, and remembered. No Julana. Julana was back in the
Courtyard of Fallows with Marcellan. She was here to watch and to learn. She sniffed again. The breeze spoke of heat, of the opening and unbanking of the great bread ovens. It was day, or almost day, and the palace was stirring. Soon the Grass King would wake, and she must hold to her purpose. Yelena curled back against the plaster and closed her eyes. Soon. Very soon…

Across the courtyards and gardens of the Rice Palace, roses and orange blossoms drooped, petals shrouded. The fountains played unwatched, their light spray ghosting across tiles and flags. Birds dozed on carved windowsills and the finials of roofs. In the libraries and archives, the chanceries and accounts offices, ledgers lay closed on desktops, scrolls had been returned to their cases or tied off with bright ribbons. Writing brushes dried in the light breeze. In the stables, grooms slept beside their charges. Behind carved doors and swinging swaths of beads, under quilted and embroidered covers, on hearthstones and in stair alcoves, dormitories and long barracks, on cushions and carpet scraps, coiled together or stretched out apart, the courtiers and servants and officers of the Grass King slept, dreaming their dreams of stone and dirt and growth. The night guard, the Darkness Banner, watched with dark flat eyes from their door niches and sentry boxes, stiller than the walls around them, untroubled by breath or hunger or boredom. In the halls and gardens closest to Marcellan’s quarters, a faint metallic scent clung, wove itself into tapestries and hangings, left dim oily traces on tiles and plaster.

In her neat dark room off the Courtyard of the Cadre, Qiaqia sat cross-legged, hands upturned on her knees, counting the stars beyond her windows, her unbound hair brushing the floor around her. Under her calves, under the blades of her feet, the palace whispered to her of its sleep and its silences. The dark brown night wrapped her, carrying with it the taste of a thousand thousand tiny lives. She wandered through them, drifting on the tides of their dreams,
remembering with them the fragments of their memories. Out beyond the palace, under the deep sepia skies, stone and earth, water and green growth shifted and stretched, recalling their older selves. Asleep, WorldBelow relaxed, regressed, remade itself in older shapes.

Fire flickered behind the shutters of Liyan’s workshop. Almost alone, he woke and worked. His hands stroked and twisted metal into shape, carved out lines and smoothed over planes. Before him on his workbench stood the world in miniature—here the curving sides of WorldAbove, there the bright orbs of the moons, here the concavity that was WorldBelow, there the jagged brilliances of the shores and waters. Piece by piece, he fitted them, a wave here, a peak there. Around the concentric spheres of Worlds Above and Below, the WorldsBeside shimmered and drifted, moved by slender strong rods, silky chains, filigree cogs. Gears moved the moons in their lazy orbits; clouds and stars hung suspended from a fine mesh and shivered at a breath or a touch. Through the whole ran a single gear shaft, carved with flame and wave, corn and cloud, and counterbalanced by a single weight of silky jet. WorldAbove, the domain of men, ragged and ill-disciplined, was depicted by his hands in rough lines and jagged masses. WorldBelow, where the Grass King reigned, he etched and inlaid in silver and copper and gold. The WorldsBeside, fire and water, the domains of Fire Witch and Lady of Shores and Shoals, he built of bright lines and motion in ruby and garnet and lapis. WorldOver with its hanging treasures, ruled by the Emperor of Air, hung from the tip, shimmering in opals and pearls. Finally, at the heart of the orrery, he placed its center and its end, WorldUnder, the featureless domain of the Masters of Dark.

In the courtyard outside, the vast tower that held the rest of the water clock stood motionless. The shutters that hid the jacks were closed; the gates and scoops and wheels that moved its waters were still. Starlight cast its shadow across the ground, made dark bands over the water conduit, cast curled shapes onto the side wall. At its apex, the
space under its final roof stood vacant and ready. From beside the workbench, Liyan looked up at it and nodded. Then he lowered the last piece of the orrery, a simple piece of stone, into its proper place. At the touch of his fingertips, the orrery stirred, began to turn, each part in balance, each motion in harmony. He turned and headed into the back of the workshop. From a long shelf, he took a stout padded basket and a length of strong linen. Spreading the linen out on an adjacent bench, he lifted the orrery with both hands and placed it carefully in the center. Then he wrapped the cloth around it and tied off the ends. Lowering it into the basket, he hesitated, then made another trip to the storage shelves. He ran spider-shaped leather straps under the basket and fastened them tightly, testing each one. They curved upward to meet over the top, where they could be attached to a thick length of rope.

He could wait until day and enlist the aid of his bannermen. He could make a ceremony of it; invite courtiers and musicians and poets to record the moment. None of that was worth the waiting. Liyan carried the basket out into the courtyard and set it down at the foot of the clepsydra. Taking a brass key from a pocket, he unlocked a small door that was set into one side of the clock. Beyond it, a series of ladders led up to the roof and the plinth where the orrery was to sit. He climbed them quickly, feet suited to the rungs of his own work, the coil of rope over one shoulder. At the top, he attached one end of the rope to the metal struts that held up the roof of the open pagoda and dropped the other over the side. A trip down to fasten the rope to the basket, and then another back up. Hand over hand, slowly, gently, he pulled the basket upward. It came swaying and rocking, sides bumping slightly against the outer skin of the clock. The night—Qiaqia’s night—watched him, the small breeze slipping around him. Down below, the waters of the conduit shimmered and sighed. Breath by breath, he lifted the worlds up to the edge of the parapet and over. He set the basket down and untied it before unwrapping the linen. The orrery gleamed in the low light as he raised it and set it
down on the thick wooden plinth and its central driveshaft. His hands rested on the base of the orrery, fingers outspread as he felt his way through brass and wood. Heat spread out from him, gently, stroked out from the metal, curving the wood. Fraction by fraction the base sank into its setting, molded, melded, made itself one.