The Grass King’s Concubine
Page 1
“With its lush imagery, vivid setting, and striking characters, The Grass King’s Concubine is a seamless blend of high fantasy and mythic folk tale. I loved it.”
—Kate Elliott, author of The Crown of Stars novels
“The Grass King’s Concubine meshes old world flavor and modern sensibilities, with flavor-bursts of gosh-wow. Kari Sperring is on my buy-on-sight shortlist.”
—Sherwood Smith, author of the Inda novels
“The Grass King’s Concubine is a ferociously wonderful read, a strange and delightful world filled with equally strange and delightful characters. The young, dreaming Aude; Jehan, subaltern of the Royal Army; the changeling ferrets Julana and Yelena; all are drawn with an exquisite, talented hand. Don’t miss this one!”
—S. L. Farrell, author of the Nessantico novels
“The Grass King’s Concubine reminded me, in turns, of Patricia McKillip, Robin McKinley, and Garth Nix. Sperring gives us a colorful world with complex characters, and a shiver of magic running through every page. This is a book to be savored, not gulped. I’m already anticipating the next one!”
—Laura Anne Gilman, author of Dragon Justice
“Rich and strange, Sperring’s romantic contemplation of myth and modernity is a treat from start to finish.”
—Justina Robson, author of Chasing the Dragon
“Darkly elegant, Kari Sperring’s world is a place both enticing and dangerous.”
—Jon Courtenay Grimwood, author of
End of the World Blues
Kari Sperring’s spellbinding fantasy novels
from DAW Books:
LIVING WITH GHOSTS
THE GRASS KING’S CONCUBINE
The
Grass King’s
CONCUBINE
KARI SPERRING
ELIZABETH R. WOLLHEIM
SHEILA E. GILBERT
PUBLISHERS
http://www.dawbooks.com
Copyright © 2012 by K. L. Maund.
All Rights Reserved.
Cover art by Paul Young.
Girl’s face by permission of Shutterstock.
DAW Book Collectors No. 1597.
DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
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Nearly all the designs and trade names in this book are registered trademarks. All that are still in commercial use are protected by United States and international trademark law.
ISBN: 978-1-101-59478-0
First Printing, August 2012
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
For Nik Ravenscoft, with love.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
No book is an island, and this one has often seemed to be even more connected to the wider world than most. Phil has had to live with it as long as I have, reading various drafts, listening to all the lamentations, and encouraging (or exhorting) when needed. The members of the Friday 13th Writers’ Workshop, Anne, Jackie and Michael, worked their way through it chapter by chapter over several years, provided invaluable feedback, and solved at least one huge plot problem. Participants in the 2006 and 2007 Milford Writers’ Workshop also gave me constructive critiques. April Steenburgen generously beta-read the manuscript for ferret facts. Steve Davies gave me information about mica and Gaby Lyons advised me on Old French spelling. My editor at DAW, Sheila Gilbert, continues to amaze me by her insights into plot and writing, her ability to get what I’m on about even at my most obscure, and her support. My agent John Parker helped me overcome my tendency to get stuck and panic. Many other people answered my sometimes weird questions and soothed my nerves. Thank you all very much indeed: without you, this would be a mess, and not a book at all.
And many thanks to Paul Young for his beautiful cover.
Pronunciation Guide
This is your book: it’s up to you how you want to pronounce the names in it. But for those who are interested, this is how I say them.
Aude Pèlerin des Puiz – “Orde PAYluhran day Pou-ee.”
Jehan Favre – “Jhon FARvruh,” where the “J” is soft like the “j” in “juice,” not hard as in “jelly.”
Yelena – YelLAYna
Julana – YouLARna
Marcellan – MarCHELlan, where the “c” is “ch,” as in “cello.”
Sujien – SOOjhen
Shirai – SHIHray
Liyan – Lee-YAN
Qiaqia – CHEE-a-chee-a
Tsai – T’sigh
Table of Contents
1: The Shining Place
2: The Stone House
3: The Brass City
4: The Book
5: Jehan and the Dead
6: Warriors in the Wind
7: Jehan and the Wind
8: Cadre
9: A Net of Dust and Air
10: The Voice of Water
11: Jehan and the Twins
12: The Nature of the Domains
13: The Courtyard of the Concubine
14: The Twins and Marcellan
15: A Boat of Moss and Stone
16: WorldBelow
17: The Courtyard of the Clepsydra
18: Human Shape
19: The Mica Forest
20: Names
21: The Courtyard of the Cadre
22: A Machine to Shape the Sky
23: Glimmering
24: The Voice of the Hours
25: The Courtyard of the Cistern
26: Yelena Alone
27: Water-Ward
28: Julana Alone
29: The Courtyard of Contemplation
30: The Grass King Is Angry
31: The Oldest Shade of Darkness
32: “Man Is Ours.”
33: The Courtyard of the King
34: Broken Toys
35: Time Turned Backward
1
The Shining Place
AUDE WAS SIX WHEN THE EARTHQUAKE HIT. She had run away from Nurse and the imminence of face-washing time to kick her way through the multicolored leaves that carpeted the shrubbery. Though autumn was well advanced, enough foliage still clung on to hide a person of her size quite satisfactorily. She wriggled her way through the tangled twigs of her favorite bush to her special private place against its trunk and sat, hugging her knees. Her hands, in their green worsted mittens, worked their way under the cuffs of her brown coat. The light was fading, turning the sky beyond the shrubbery dishwater gray. A hint of ice nipped her nose. She could hear Nurse calling, somewhere on the other side of the lawns. Pressing her chin into the collar of her coat, Aude giggled. Perhaps Nurse wouldn’t find her for hours and hours. Perhaps she would stay out here all night, with the owls and the foxes and the little mice. Perhaps—and her imagination caught light—one of the creatures would sniff her out here and invite her back to its home for tea. She bet a mouse or a badger wouldn’t make her wash her face and hands before she ate. A mouse would crawl into the piles of leaves with her, hunting for treasure. A badger—she frowned. She had never seen a badger—a badger would probably
help her jump into puddles and never say a word about dirty stockings. An owl would teach her to turn her arms into wings and fly with him to the very top of the tallest tree in the beech wood, where they would stare at the moons and count the stars and never, ever go to bed early.
Nurse said people never turned into animals or trees or rocks, whatever the storybooks said. Aude knew better. Once, when she had been really small, so small she almost got lost in her bed, she had seen one of the flames in the nursery fire grow a long thin face and wink at her. Nurse had said she’d been dreaming. Nurse had no imagination at all. But the world was bigger and odder than Nurse said. Aude was sure of that. Nurse behaved as though the world began and ended with the big house and its park, the home farm, the village, and the market town that the maids went to every Monday and Thursday. But Aude, perched in the upper branches of her favorite tree, had seen the big black coaches that bowled past the park gates, their sides painted with coats of arms that were not those of her uncle. She had heard her uncle talking to the estate manager, talking about strange places far away, the Silver City and the Brass. At night, she rolled the names over her tongue, trying to picture them with their strange shining buildings of metal, their gleaming streets, their inhabitants who wore silk and fur and slipped and slid as they tried to walk on their shiny roads.
Aude would go to those places one day, she had decided, when she was a bigger girl of ten or twelve. She would go everywhere and then come home and tell Nurse all about it.
Something dug into her thigh; she wriggled, trying to get comfortable, and everything around her shifted. She froze, mouth dropping open in surprise. The bush—her bush—shook and shivered behind her like Aude herself on cold mornings. She put a hand down to steady herself, and the ground shuddered, throwing her backward. Her elbow slammed into a stubby branch, and she cried out, tears starting to her eyes. Leaves shook loose, twigs bounced and twisted, snatching at her coat and hair. Behind her, the bush gave a deep, pained groan. Aude flung herself forward, scrambling frantically back toward the path. The earth heaved, rolling her over and over, back into the arms of her bush. She squeezed her eyes shut. Tangled in the bush, she was rocked and shaken and bounced, back and forth, up and down, harder and wilder than any pony ride.
And then it stopped. She lay for long moments where the turmoil had thrown her, left cheek pressed into the dirt. Her elbow throbbed. Her neck ached, as if someone had grabbed her and shaken her hard. Her mouth was full of soil and broken bits of leaf. She could smell something funny, something not the usual damp leafy smell of the shrubbery. It smelled like kitchen slops and orange and bread left too long to rise. She opened her eyes, carefully, and found them full of dirt. Perhaps she was dead. Perhaps the bush had fallen on her and squashed her flat, and Nurse had buried her. Panic made a big knot in her throat. She gulped and coughed on her mouthful of earth. She wasn’t dead. She didn’t want to be dead. She hadn’t even gone to the village by herself yet. She couldn’t be dead. She rubbed at her eyes with her dirty mittens, blinked and blinked until they cleared.
And stared. There, outside her bush, hung a shimmer of amber light. Aude forgot her panic. A soft breeze reached her, brushed over her with a touch of silk. The strange smell thickened, sweetened to spice cake and fresh bread and oranges. In the midst of the golden shimmer, shapes moved like dancers. Buildings formed behind them, bright colored and shining. They were nothing like the buildings she was used to, not square and solid, not built of redbrick and dark wood, but tall and light, peach colored arches supporting low roofs, doorways filled with misty curtains in scarlet and turquoise and green, slender windows filled with delicate stone lace. It was not a house like her house, safe and boring and known. It was the home of a princess or a queen. Aude stretched one hand out toward them, and the light shifted toward her, widening her view. It was summer there inside the glow: Roses twined up the walls and over the arches, their petals unfurled in shades of gold and yellow. The dancing shapes were men and women, dressed in long silky clothes, their hair unbound to hang down their backs, like the princesses and queens in her storybook. One of them turned, looked up, and saw her. She gasped. The figure smiled at her and held out a hand. Such a beautiful face, with big warm eyes and long lashes. She began to crawl forward, toward the light and the sweet smells and the promise in that face.
Something caught her by the collar and held her back. She squirmed, and a sharp twig dragged itself down her face. She squealed, tugged at it with one hand, and drew her mitten back bloodied. The amber shimmer stilled, paled, died. Sprawled on her side, a branch caught in her coat and a long bleeding scratch on her face, Aude began to cry.
Nurse found her at the edge of the shrubbery, shaking and sobbing, and swept her into a scolding embrace. “There now, lovey, that’s what happens when you run away from me. You hurt yourself, and you spoil your nice clothes.”
Aude gulped. “The ground shook me. It made me hurt myself. It wouldn’t let me go and play with the pretty dancers.”
Nurse hugged her close. “Such an imagination you have. No, don’t cry. Nurse isn’t angry.”
For the rest of that autumn and beyond, Aude hunted for her shining place through the twigs and leaves of the shrubbery. Nurse shook her and grumbled about muddied sleeves and torn stockings, but Aude would not be dissuaded. The bush—her bush—had shown her the shining place once, then held her back. Next time—and she was sure there would be a next time—she would be ready. She checked the size of her hiding place, snapping off twigs that hung too low or pressed too close. She dug out armloads of dead leaves to clear the ground. And above all else, she waited. Whenever she could get free of Nurse, she ran as fast as she could to sit and watch for the earth to shake and the shimmer to form once more. But it never did, though she waited and waited at all the times she could, from straight after breakfast to the hour after her bedtime. But the shimmering light never once returned, at least not while she was awake. But ever after, she would dream of it, of the drift of orange and roses, of that long-lashed, beautiful face gazing at her, reaching out a long hand to call her. She would wake breathless and confused, her own small hands knotted in the coverlet. “Just a dream, lovey,” Nurse would say, stroking her forehead. But Aude was not comforted. They wanted her to come, the shining dancers, and she had let them down.
She was seven when she learned she was to marry. One morning her uncle, on one of his rare visits, called her into his study. The room smelled of beeswax and wood smoke. The huge desk stood almost as tall as she did, its top an expanse wider than the nursery table. Her best shoes were too tight, but she must not fidget, even though she longed to be elsewhere. Nurse had ordered her to keep quiet and still. She watched her uncle’s hands on the desk; they were big and white and dusted with wiry dark hairs. She worried, later, that such hairs might grow on her own plump hands. Nurse was delighted at her sudden enthusiasm for the washing basin and the nailbrush. In the study, she had clenched her fingers into the fabric of her brown dress and tried to keep her eyes on her uncle’s face.
He spoke to the top of her head. Perhaps he was waiting for her to grow up so he wouldn’t have to bend. His large voice was hard to follow, with its rolls and booms. It made her think of the scullery, of the clang of pots against the stone sink. It left her breathless and wide-eyed, tumbling to keep up. “I have arranged your marriage,” he had said. She had carried the information back upstairs with her, contemplating it with every step. Getting married meant cake and a pretty dress: those were most certainly good things. For days and days afterward, she woke every morning in expectation of a scarlet dress and a house decked out with flowers. She wondered if her new husband would be as old as her uncle and what he would do and which room he would sleep in. She did not want to sleep in the same room as a stranger. That kept her awake until Nurse fretted and felt her head to see if she was unwell. “No fever, but what’s keeping you awake, lovey? Did you have your dream again?”
“No,” Aude said. The dream would have
been better. “It’s the husband. I don’t want him in my room here.”
Nurse smiled and shook her head. “He won’t sleep here. Nor will you. He has a fine big house in the Silver City, and you’ll both live there.”
The Silver City…She would see the streets and buildings made of metal, all bright and clean. For a moment she was excited. And then she remembered her shining place. If she left here, if she left this house, how would she ever find it again? Her eyes filled with tears. “But I have to stay here.” She clutched at Nurse. “I won’t go, I won’t. I want to stay here.”
Nurse rocked her. “It’s all right. You don’t have to go for years and years. Not till you’re a grown-up girl.”
Aude gulped. That sounded better. A year was a long time. She knew that; she had already been alive for seven of them, and that was ages and ages. She would not be grown up for at least another two years, maybe more, and she would find her shining place again before that. She snuggled close to Nurse and let her eyes close. She’d find it tomorrow, for certain, and if not, then next week. She’d find it long before the husband and the red dress and the threat of the Silver City.
Later that year, she turned eight, and a governess was engaged. Lessons began to take up more and more of the time that once had been spent playing and exploring. Slowly, her visits to the shrubbery grew less regular, as other things came to occupy her mind. The undercook taught her to make soda bread and let her help roll out the pastry. The kitchen cat gave birth to four plump kittens, and Aude was allowed to keep the two prettiest as her very own pets. She learned to dance and to make butter, to keep accounts and play the spinet. The dream came less frequently, too, as her memory of the dancers blurred. But still, once or twice a year, she woke to a sense of something calling her and a trace in the air of roses and orange and amber.