The Grass King’s Concubine (53 page)

She spoke, soft words whose shape he could not hear. The mud quivered. She lowered her arms, hands palm down, fingers spread, and touched its glistening foul surface. It creaked, groaned, shuddered. Tiny fractures spread
outward from her touch, threading through the mass swift as fire. She spoke again, and the mud cracked. Clods of earth fell off, rolling and shattering on the ground around her. Flakes of dirt drifted to dust the branches of the bushes, coating Jehan’s face and shoulders, settling along Clairet’s back and in the twins’ fur. The mist eddied, swirled, faded. Coughing and blinking, Jehan rubbed his eyes, and found his hands as filthy as his face. Clairet shook herself, skin twitching, whickering as granules found their way into her cuts. He brushed them off for her, as best he could, sheltering as many of her injuries as he could. The scabbing, the calming from Julana’s attentions, had spread upward, working along her injuries, helping to close them. The air was full of grit and soil, falling slowly down.

Qiaqia stood, still upright, still calm, though her garments were thick with earth. Around her feet was a low, dirty mound. She stepped over it and turned, facing Jehan and the twins. Then she knelt and began to brush the surface of the mound. Earth and leaf fragments and chippings of bark, brown on brown on brown. Her hands were long and thin, tendons standing out yellow under her white fish’s skin. The dirt crumbled under her touch, did not cling to her flesh. She did not look up.
Now,
Jehan noted distantly to himself,
would be an excellent time to leave.
But he did not move, fascinated by the steady movement of those ugly hands. The twins, both now fully ferret formed, curved themselves around his boots and leaned into him, as enthralled as he was. He could feel their breath, quick and regular, through the leather.

A thread of white, paler even than Qiaqia’s hands, ghosted up through the soil. White in darkness, glimpsed at, hinted at…Jehan thought of the forest and the stone aisle. Brush, brush, brush. More white broke through, bluish, like skimmed milk. He stiffened. Catching his alarm, the twins quivered. Brush, brush. Strands of milky hair drifted free, webbing out over the ground. A fold of gauze followed. Slowly, steadily, earth gave way to thin white limbs, a long
torso, a head. The woman thing lay curled in a nest of soil. Her head was turned toward him; her eyes were closed. She did not breathe. Qiaqia sat back on her heels and looked at Jehan. She said, “This, I take it, is the thing you found in my wood?”

“Yes.”

“Then we must hurry. Things are changing, and more swiftly than I expected.”

He could hear Clairet’s breathing, pained and labored. Despite his best attempts, some of her remaining cuts were filled with grit. They could go nowhere with her in this condition. Qiaqia’s problems were not his. Bending, he began to unbuckle the straps holding the packs onto the pony. She could carry them no further. Well, and chances were none of them would live long enough to need most of what he’d packed anyway. If he did find a way through this place, if he did find Aude…He dropped the packs to the ground. The stone chip was in the left-hand one; he bent and fished it out, under the pretense of retrieving his comb. Then he unhooked the canteen. It was barely half-full, and the river was gone, blown to dust and memory. He shrugged, and opened it.

A moan. He stopped. At Qiaqia’s knees, the woman thing quivered and twitched, one limb moving feebly outward, toward him. He capped the canteen again hastily. Water. It all came back to that. He said, “What happened here?”

“Now? Or before?” Qiaqia rose, stepping over the woman thing without a glance. “We lost our water. And now everything craves it.”

Like the steppe, with its hollow irrigation channels and dead grasses. Like the dry undying thing that haunted the Woven House. He said, “Aude can’t give it back to you.”

“I didn’t say she could.”

“You took her.”

“
We
took her.”

There was some meaning to that, some message he could not quite decode. He did not know if she expected
him to understand. At his feet, the twins shifted, butting against his calves. He did not know what that meant, either, unless they wanted him to move. He looked over at the woman thing again, saw that she once more lay still and silent.

Qiaqia followed his gaze. “We must bring it. It may be needed.”

“My pony isn’t fit to carry anything.” He stopped, shook his head. He was no longer a soldier. Even if he was, he had never been under her command. He said, “That’s your problem.”

Qiaqia said, “I can’t heal your pony, but I can take you to someone who can help her. But we must bring the creature. You must carry her. My touch is…is sometimes unhelpful.”

One of the twins pushed her head against his leg again, harder this time and he looked down. She pushed again, hopping up on to her back legs.

“He doesn’t understand you,” Qiaqia said. “He’s human.” And then, to Jehan, “They don’t trust me or you.” At his feet, the twin chattered and then jumped. She landed on his hip in a scrabble of claws, and he bit down on an exclamation. Her sister retreated toward the saddlebags, and suddenly he understood.

The book. They were afraid he would abandon their book. They had almost no water, they had been found by one of this land’s guardians, Clairet was injured, and the twins were still focused on their book. Somehow, without sense, he was laughing, trapped by the absurdity of it. He was in one of the worlds of the Brass City pamphlets. The rules were not those to which he had been raised. These were book rules, story rules, and he did not know them.

Qiaqia had offered further help for the pony. He unhooked the twin from his hip and settled her on his shoulder. Then he said, “Can you take me to Aude as well?”

“Yes,” said Qiaqia.

“Then I’ll go.” He could not see the twin he carried, so he addressed the other one. “I can’t carry your book as well as that thing. If you want it, you’ll have to change and carry
it yourself.” He looked back at Qiaqia. “You frighten them. That’s why they’re hiding.”

She smiled a third time. “Not fear. Guilt. But they may bring the book if it means so much to them.”

Jehan could not carry the saddlebags and the woman thing, and he doubted, somehow, that the twins would trouble themselves over his possessions. Their book was all they wanted. He bent and pulled out those other few items he really wished to keep and could carry. Aude’s locket was already in his heart pocket. Tinderbox, shot, and powder horn could be hooked onto his belt, and his sword slung crosswise with them. He hung the carbine over one shoulder, dislodging the twin, while the canteen’s long strap wrapped across his body. The rest he could do without. He left the bags lying under a bush, open to the soft breeze and the crumble of leaves. The twins, still both in their ferret shape, darted over to them and began to nose among the rags of his clothing for their book.

He had set the horse blanket to one side. Now, he gathered it up and walked over to the woman thing. It—she, whatever—lay inert, watery eyes open and empty, long hair trailing. The smell of stagnant water clung to her, sour in his throat. He shook out the blanket. He had no desire whatsoever to touch her again. Careful, fastidious, he dropped the blanket over her and tucked its edges around her with a booted foot. She did not stir. Swallowing his revulsion, he crouched down and slid his hands under her, taking care to keep the blanket between his skin and hers.

Once, in the filthy cellar of an equally filthy tenement, he and his patrol had found the bodies of three starved children, huddled together against the cold and hunger that had killed them. The woman thing weighed less than the littlest of those, hanging in his arms like a bundled rope ladder, all loose knots and rattling limbs. He averted his face, not wanting to see what he held, as he slung her over his shoulder. He said, short and harsh, “How far?”

“Two steps and two thousand. A candle’s length and a day’s.” The words were mocking, but the tone was not. “It’s
my route, not yours. Your measures aren’t made for it.” Qiaqia stood next to Clairet, her arms folded. One of the twins stood the other side of the pony, her finger locked in the mane. Her sister was behind her, cradling their book to her chest. One wore their ragged shift. The other had wrapped herself in his dirty spare shirt.

Qiaqia unfolded her arms. “Come here. You must stand close for this. I don’t usually have to move the giftless.” He came to stand beside the twin with the book. Qiaqia nodded. “Good.” And then, “I hope you aren’t scared of the dark.”

He opened his mouth to reply, and the world turned black.

Julana Alone

S
OMETHING WAS WRONG. Jangled by her sister’s absence, the sound of the clock’s first bell hit Julana like a blow. Half asleep, she lashed out with teeth and claws against this sudden attack. Hot blood filled her mouth. Beside her, Marcellan recoiled with a yelp of pain. She came back to herself, shaking. She nuzzled into his arm, seeking comfort and forgiveness. She was here to defend him, not to harm. He reached down to caress her back. “It’s all right. The clock startled you.” She butted her head into his hand. He went on, “It’s perfectly safe. You’re safe with me.”

He did not understand. He did not know. The noise—that sweet hard noise—was not of the Rice Palace. It did not belong here. Julana’s instincts told her it could bring no good. Marcellan had talked to Liyan and Liyan…Liyan made trouble: his hands were shaped that way. The Grass King would ask questions and Marcellan would come to harm. Julana pressed herself close against him and he cradled her with a hand. No good. All this would come to no good. And he—he was smiling as he caressed her. Julana sagged. He would never understand. Even while he smiled, the Grass King might be ordering the bannermen to come and seize him, cast him into some pit, bury him in some dark dank cave, have Sujien blow him twice and thrice as high as the highest point in the palace and let him fall.

The Grass King might send Qiaqia, all dark eyes and deadly fingers. There was no cure for that. Julana might bite and claw till she exhausted herself, but alone she was no match for any of the dangers that might follow at the Grass King’s word. If Marcellan would but fit through the crack in the skirting, the gaps in the lattice, then she knew many places where she might hide him. There was nowhere in this courtyard that could substitute, nowhere big enough. She inhaled his smell and readied herself to do what she could. The voices thrummed and pattered outside; footsteps hastened into some distance and did not return. One by one, the sounds subsided. Cautious, Julana jumped from Marcellan’s lap and crept to the door. Silence. Setting her nose to the crack at its base, she sniffed. Tiles and floor polish, clay and linen. No alarm or anger, not even the edgy scent of nerves. The bannermen who guarded Marcellan’s courtyard were at peace. It was still a little time before the hour at which they brought his breakfast. Behind her, he had risen and was about his morning ablutions. Perhaps all was well after all.

She padded back to Marcellan and made herself comfortable on his feet. He bent to scratch behind her ears, then picked up his pen and began to make new scrawls on his pile of papers. The scent of him settled around her, familiar and reassuring. One of the Earth Banner entered with a tray of bread and fruit and small beer, demeanor no different from that of any other day. Marcellan looked up and thanked him, and the man bowed and withdrew. Julana scrambled once again into Marcellan’s lap, ready for tidbits.

Yelena came back after breakfast. She tumbled in through a gap in the lattice and lay on the windowsill, panting. Her fur stood out from her body, dark with sweat and stress. Julana wrinkled her nose, her own fear forgotten. Alarm like that would carry to any and every predatory nose downwind for miles. She glanced at Marcellan, found him intent on his work. Then she bared her teeth at her sister.

Yelena said, “Too long…” She leaped for the top of a
chest, landing with a neat quiet thump. The fruit bowl was only inches away from her, but she ignored it and gathered herself instead to leap down onto the divan.

Julana noticed a stray strand of fur between her toes and turned to nibble on it. Yelena said, “Night and light, and all alone. It’s not…It’s not what we do. How we are.”

The fur was stubborn. Julana tugged at it. Yelena said, “Cold. Alone is cold.”

Julana finished with the foot and looked up. Yelena crept out from under the edge of a bed cover to bump and rub at her side. This close, she smelled even worse. Julana pulled back.

Yelena’s whiskers drooped. She said, “Broken…Are we broken?”

Julana felt whole enough, well fed and comfortable as she was. She considered her sister. “Maybe you.”

“Grass King knows.” Yelena’s tone was plaintive. “He saw me. He knows we’re here. With the man.”

“Marcellan,” Julana said, for the taste of it. “With Marcellan.”

“Yes.” Again, Yelena crept closer. “So cold…”

Fear washed off her in sticky waves. A shudder began to tug at the very tips of Julana’s whiskers. She had been safe, she had done right, she had…She said, “Man is all right.”