The Grass King’s Concubine (56 page)

“I…” She wasn’t sure. Had her uncle ever talked about that? She frowned, trying to remember. “His family—my family—are supposed to have come from the steppe. A long time ago, I mean. He couldn’t remember that, nor could his grandfather, but he thought it was important. I don’t know why, maybe it made him feel different from the
other merchants.” Water and rice. “My uncle said there was a farm, or something. They had water rights, and that meant they made more money than their neighbors. But that would have been hundreds and hundreds of years ago, if it’s true at all. And I must have had lots of other people as ancestors too.”

“Water rights.”
I told you so
, said Sujien’s voice. He smiled at her, thin and alarming. He spread out his hands. “Water rights. I was right, Shirai-kai. She’s the one.”

Aude felt for her dagger, tucked into the sleeve of her gown. Sujien was still talking, his words tripping over each other. The air in the room grew thicker, warmer, as he spoke, bringing with it ever greater wafts of the smell of yeast. He had begun to pace again. Shirai, still seated, was watching him. Carefully, she began to ease herself from her divan. They were both between her and the door, but if she was cautious…

Sujien said, “Where are you going?”

“Nowhere. I was stretching.” Aude wriggled her shoulders, as if they were stiff. Even to herself, she did not sound convincing.

“There’s nowhere you can go,” Sujien said. “This place knows you. It will always tell me where you are.”

There was nothing she could say to that. She curled her fingers around the knife hilt, staring at him. He said, “You still don’t understand, do you? You still won’t understand.”

“You think I’m responsible for all your problems. I’ve got that.” Scorn tinged her voice. “Even though you’re the ones with all the magic powers and so on, and I’m just a
human thing
.”

Sujien took a step toward her, his hands clenching. Aude held his gaze, chin up. If she could push him enough, if he tried to harm her, then Shirai would surely step in, and she could escape while they were both distracted. She made herself smile and went on, “And, of course, I have no idea what you expect me to do about it.”

“Spilled blood seldom offends.”

The comment came from the doorway. Qiaqia stood in
it, leaning against the frame, her eyes amused. As Aude and her two comrades turned to look at her, she added, “I’d thought to find a welcoming committee. But I see you had other matters to attend to. Shirai-kai, I have need of you. If you please.” Her voice was as amused as her eyes.

Shirai rose. He said, “There was an incident in the Great Room of Reception.”

“Ah.” Qiaqia tilted her head. “And Jien-kai is offended. So now it’s back to normal?”

Sujien made a low noise in his throat. Aude began again to slip to her feet. Of course, Qiaqia was in the door, but if Sujien grew angry with her instead, then she might perhaps have to enter the room, and then…She began to rise, watching Qiaqia.

Something shoved her back down on to the divan and held her there, pressing hard against her chest. None of the Cadre had moved; indeed, none of them seemed to be paying attention to her at all, talking among themselves in low tones. The pressure was steady and firm, restricting her to quick shallow breaths. She swallowed and tried to wiggle sideways. The pressure remained, centered, stable. She bit her lip, and Sujien turned to face her, a thin smile on his face.

You’re the ones with all the magic powers.
He said nothing: He did not need to say anything. It was all there on his face, the difference between them. She had thought to use that difference to anger him, and it had misfired. This was not the Silver City. It wasn’t even the Brass City. She did not think Jehan would have forgotten that, or confused these creatures with human opponents.

She did not think Jehan would have got himself into this situation at all. He would have found a way out of the Rice Palace by now. He would have found some way to make the Cadre talk sense about what they wanted. He knew far more than she did about how hierarchies worked and grew and might be handled. About everything. She lowered her eyes to study the brocade that covered the divan. Long necked birds flew over a landscape of reeds and lakes. If
she could fly…She had not seen a bee since she had left her prison courtyard, nor heard one since…When? She could not remember. Had she simply trapped herself further by trying to trace the source of the water?

Sujien had put that idea into her head. Sujien, who now—she was sure of it—held her pinned in place while he listened to Qiaqia and nodded and—yes—glanced back over his left shoulder to smile at her. Triumph and pride haunted that smile, and all the confidence of the overseers she had seen driving their workforce in the Brass City.

She had wanted answers, she had wanted understanding, she had wanted to know what it was that kept her in comfort while the sisters and cousins of her maids labored over looms for chips of copper. And it had brought her to this: to water rights and captivity and Sujien’s smile. It was so because some people had more than others—more power, more property, more influence—and for no other reason than chance or greed. She closed her eyes and let her head droop. She had run away from all her comfort and safety willingly, and dragged Jehan with her. And now he was lost somewhere on the great steppe, and she was trapped here. The Cadre would do with her as they chose, and she had no way to prevent them.

The voices fell silent, and two sets of footsteps faded away into the distance. Aude swallowed. Two. Scant hope that it would be any other than Sujien who remained. It had been him all along, dragging her here, first locking the doors against her and then opening them again.

She looked up, and he stood before her, winding a thin strand of something around his fingers. The smile had gone, and his face was smooth and serene. He said, “It’s time. Come.” He held out a hand, and despite the pounding in her heart and her ears, Aude found she unfolded from the divan and rose. With his free hand, he took one of hers. She wanted to deny him. Her fingers would not obey her. His palm was dry and cool. He said, “But we need to prepare you; you’re nowhere near fit enough as you are.” He drew her hand through his arm and led her, not to the door, but
to a section of the wall. He pressed the center of one of the tiles, and it slid backward.

A concealed low door opened before them, leading to a narrow, dim staircase with a rope banister. “Few have ever come this way,” he said. “None, to my knowledge, of your kind. You’re privileged.” She did not feel privileged. The bandages on her feet made her clumsy; the brocade gown chafed her injured skin. Her stomach throbbed. The stair was dark and its steps high: Sujien conceded nothing to her for her unfamiliarity and her hurts. Rather, he pushed her up before him at marching pace, jerking her upright when she stumbled. The stair curved before her, up and up, and its windows were few and narrow. No chance here to escape him, if such a thing was even possible. He was between her and the way down. Upward…toward wherever it was he intended her to go.

The stair ended in a short hallway and a single dark wood door. Sujien released her and drew a small amber key from his sleeve. He slid it into the lock and simultaneously spoke a word like a sudden gust of wind down a chimney pot. Aude shivered. The room beyond it was circular and small, its walls and furnishings plain—a table, some cushions, a chest, nothing more. The long windows were shuttered, miserly with the light they admitted. The thick smell of yeast slipped inside with the light, mingled unpleasantly with dust and neglect.

It was not at all what she had expected. She stopped in the doorway, confused. Sujien gave her a push, and she stumbled forward, falling on her knees beside one of the cushions. If he meant to kill her…She fumbled for her knife, found it hard and reassuring in her sleeve. He looked down at her and said, “This is the Grass King’s Tower of Meditation. Its roots are deeper than the highest mountain in your WorldAbove, and its windows open on any place the Grass King desires. Here he can listen to his domain and weave it to his liking.” He smiled, again with that cool triumph. “I can show you your home, if I wish.” He gestured to a window. “I can show you anything.”

The way out of here.
But her lips would not shape the words. Instead, dry mouthed, she whispered, “Jehan…My husband.”

“Ah.” Sujien’s smile widened. “One man. That, alas, I can’t do. I’m not the Grass King. And your husband doesn’t belong to this realm. I can only show you…” He walked to the nearest window and undid its latch. “This.”

Gray sky and iron earth, an ocean of dry grass and emptiness. The steppe. Aude swallowed. Somewhere out there, perhaps, Jehan still wandered, searching for her. She climbed to her knees, craning toward the view. Dirt and ice wind and the shells of irrigation channels. Her eyes tracked them, out and out, until she was tripped by a change in the landscape. There…Yes, a slight rise and on it a pile of wreckage, panels and timbers and long trails of paper.

The Woven House…Even as she recognized it, the window brought it closer. Broken bamboo littered the compound, mixed with the parchment fragments and…

No.

She wanted to rub her eyes, to close them, to deny what she saw. She could not. There in the heart of the destruction was a knot of spoiling meat and bones, shrouded in scraps and rags of clothing and harness, flesh shredded by the storm that had rocked the house and led to her captivity. As she stared, the wind shuffled through it, kicking up the torn arm of a shirtsleeve. One of Jehan’s.

There was no guarantee it was the one he had been wearing, Aude told herself sternly. They had both carried a couple of spares, against their rare chances for a bath and laundry. There was nothing there to prove that his bones were among those the dirt was scouring clean. Sujien had told her he could not show her Jehan. The wind stirred again, and a rag flapped, patterned with birds.

Jehan’s inner scarf. He had been wearing that when he rode out in search of water; she remembered seeing him tug its ends inside his jerkin. She bit her lip, hard, and tears filled her eyes.

No rescue. No hope. No more strong arms to hold her
against the dark and her own loneliness. No Jehan to speak to her and teach her and guard her against her own foolishness. She gulped down a sob and dropped her head into her arms. Wood creaked as Sujien closed the lattice, and the room passed once more into near darkness. And then…

An arm around her, cool and heavy. Not Jehan’s: never again would it be Jehan’s. But an arm, all the same. Aude turned her face into it and leaned into the support. The scent of yeast clung to Sujien, but thinned out, warmed almost to the comforting familiarity of her family bakehouse. Yeast and stone dust and something else, some alien thing she could not name. His breath was in her hair, and that too was cold, but his hands were firm and strong, broader than Jehan’s on her shoulders. Whatever she had expected when he dragged her here, it was not this. She looked up at him, her tears on her lips, and he lowered his face to kiss her.

Aude came back to herself with a start. Hand against his chest, she tried to push herself away from him. His grip tightened, his fingertips digging into her flesh through her borrowed robe. Teeth set, he said, “Don’t you get it yet? You have to replace her. You have to.” He was stronger than she was; however she braced herself against him, he was able to pull her back to him. She ducked her head. Into her hair, he said, “I can make you. I can make you do anything.” She clenched her fists, struggled to find some way to harm him through his lacquered breastplate. There was no space to reach for the knife. She had not chosen to be born to the life she had. She had not chosen to be descended as she was. But this…She would fight this while she still breathed.

He let her go. She fell backward, cracking one shoulder against the tiles. She cried out with the surprise of it. Sujien loomed over her, and his face was blank. Then he said, “Get up. We’ve done what we must here.” She stared up at him, breath rough in her throat. He muttered something she did not catch, then bent, dragging her roughly upright. “This isn’t about you. You don’t matter. All that matters is what
you
mean
.” His hands were hard around her wrists. “I just wanted to make it easier on you.”

She tugged against his hold, found it unshakable. He began to pull her across the room, not to the door but rather toward the longest of the windows. She dug her feet against the floor, leaned back with all her might, and still he moved her.
Give no help
, Jehan had told her once, in one of the dodgy inns they had stayed in.
Limp bodies are harder to move
. She let her weight go dead in Sujien’s grasp. He smiled again and jerked her suddenly inward. She fell against him, knocked breathless by the surprise, and he closed hard arms against her, locking her to him. And then…

He spoke another word of wind and cold, and the window swung open. Gripping Aude to him, he stepped backward out into the air.

He meant to kill them both. Aude had no breath to scream. Wind filled her ears, tugged at her robe, slammed cold hands into her. Her flesh cringed; her eyes squeezed tight, every part of her knotted against the anticipated impact with the ground. Down and down and down…