At the far end of the quarters of the Concubine, beyond that eerie bedroom, she discovered an antechamber. It held only a low pallet, a stool, and a small cupboard. A room for a maid, perhaps; its walls were the plainest of any in the courtyard. In its back right-hand corner was a door, made of some richly perfumed red wood and bound in gold-washed iron. Its surface boasted neither handle nor lock. She had poked and prodded, twisted and thumped and scraped at it until her fingers bled, but it would not open. She was trapped. Jehan was out there, somewhere, up in that other world. And she was here in the place of her childhood dreams, and it was ashes.
Twice a day—and that was her main means of counting time—the Cadre came to bring her meals: rice and spiced vegetables, sour pickles and sweet relishes, sesame-flavored flatbreads, bean pastes and fruit and honey. Porcelain vessels held fragrant infusions, rice wine, barley beer. All her physical wants were catered to.
All save that of freedom. She never saw the Cadre enter, although she watched until her eyes drooped in the antechamber for one of them to open the door only to find a meal served and waiting for her in another room. For all she could tell, the Cadre could walk through walls.
She could not get a sense of them. They came and went in ones and twos. Sometimes they spoke to her, sometimes not. Shirai—the big, square one—was the kindest. His flat face was always unveiled; he smiled at her. He never forgot the felt wrap to keep her tea warm, and he always spoke when he appeared, in order not to startle her. Sometimes he would sit and talk to her while she ate, though he would not answer questions about the way out, nor about Jehan. It was Shirai who helped her trim her hair, who told her fragments about the Grass King and his court, who offered her books of poetry to while away the hours. She did not want to trust him—she did not want to trust any of the Cadre—yet something in his plain flat face made her feel calmer, somehow. Qiaqia came and went without warning, sometimes smiling and talkative, sometimes silent and hurried. Liyan, the one she had seen least of, accompanied Qiaqia once or twice and stood silent and veiled. He never came alone. Sujien slapped trays onto tables, spilling their contents, stood too close to her, called her “creature” or “human thing,” when he spoke at all. She had tried to ask about that, about his constant anger. Shirai had considered the question and said, “It is his nature.”
“What does that mean?” she had asked.
“We are as the Grass King shaped us to be. Sujien is Sujien.”
Qiaqia had flung a glance at Liyan and laughed. “I don’t see,” said Aude, “what’s funny.”
“Sujien,” said Qiaqia, and she put up her veil.
They would not explain. They would not release her. She clenched her fists into her pillows and glared at the picture wall. She had moved into the Concubine’s suite. The rooms were larger, more comfortable, more appropriate to her rank. Clinging to that made her feel stronger, somehow. “Not your place,” said Sujien, eyes narrowed and angry, brows drawn into a line, when he found her there.
Aude had caught up a lamp from the nearest table, ready to defend herself. She would not become his punching bag, however he raged. At his elbow, Shirai sighed and said, “Let be, Jien-kai.”
“It isn’t proper.”
“It isn’t harmful.”
That had been a small victory. She knew that and prized it. She bathed twice daily in the deep bath, using the stock of lotions. She took and wore silk robes from the chests and cupboards, played solo games of chess with the alabaster set she found in a drawer, toyed with the half-finished embroideries. But when she grew tired, she curled up to sleep on the divan in the room with the mural. She could not bring herself to use the bedroom, however much it might serve to irritate her captors. Something lingered there, in the air, in the draperies, something sour and stagnant. She shivered from it and quickened her steps when passing through to the antechamber. She longed for Jehan. He would be hunting for her. She was sure of that. If only he would come…
Now she frowned as she gazed at the picture wall. She had traveled halfway across the known world, risked bandits and corrupt border officials, river crossings and mountain passes, the stir of the sea and the desolation of the steppe in pursuit of her dreams and her questions. She would not be stalled here, however legendary the walls of her prison. She set her jaw. If she could not find an exit route, then she would make the Cadre understand that she was not what they thought her. That she was not guilty of the crime they held against her.
She was beginning to hate the courtyard. Better the cold, dry steppe, for all its discomforts. The courtyard was immutable, trapped in some moment she neither recognized nor sought. Nothing and no one could thrive in this stasis: not the dusty roses, not the orange trees, not, patently, the Concubine. No birds sang in the branches, scratched in the soil, perched on roof or wall. No voices or footfalls seeped through from the other sides of the lattices. In this entire place she had seen no living thing—no moving thing—save herself and the Cadre and the bees who sometimes hunted for pollen amid the tired blossoms. If this was the domain of the Grass King described in the Books of Marcellan, then it was greatly fallen from those lush, legendary times. Gone were the courtiers in their silk robes and jewels, gone the feasts and dances, gone the quick-footed smiling servants and the hum of fertile farming life from beyond the worlds. It was a shell, a shadow, an echo of a dream. There was nothing here for her, for any living thing. There was nothing at all but dust and age and the Cadre.
She was bred to complaisance, to a life laid out in prescribed lines. She was not bred to captivity. She glared at the mural wall. What good to her, here, was this fanciful depiction of the steppe with its rice paddies? Better by far a picture of this place, with all that lay outside the courtyard. That could lead her to freedom.
Something flickered, right on the edge of her vision. She sat up. If it was one of her captors…Sujien would sneak up on her if he could. She looked around her. Nothing. And yet…Another flicker and with it the faintest breath of sound, a ghost, a shade, a low thrumming. She swung her bare feet to the floor and twisted, tracking for movement. Yes, there was the motion again, shivering across the surface of the wall to the right of the picture. A shadow. Definitely a shadow and a small one at that. She rose, trying to pin down the source. Somewhere behind her…
On the other side of one of the lattices piercing the wall into the arcade, something shifted, a careful looping progress, up and around, down and back. Barefoot, she padded to the beaded arch. The sound grew deeper. Beyond the arch, she glimpsed a flitting flash of black and orange and gossamer.
A bee. Her shoulders slumped. Bees could not help her. Bees could crawl through cracks in brick and plaster, fly over roof tiles or pass through the tiny holes in the lattices. She could do none of that. She half turned, letting the beads fall. The bee bumped the lattice closest to her.
She lifted the curtain and slipped outside into the shade of the arcade. The tiles were warm and gritty under her feet. Petals dropped from the roses and lay in exhausted clumps in the dry watercourses. High above her, in the top corner of the window frame, a large bee tumbled and turned, singing to itself as it tasted the plasterwork. Despite herself, despite her frustration, she smiled, said, “Oh, you silly thing, that’s not a flower. They’re there, in the garden.” The bee bumped at the lattice again, then jinked and began to track downward to the base of the window. It halted on the frame, wings stilled, then took off again to brush along the wall, testing painted blossoms for nectar. Aude stood to watch it. It worked its way closer and closer, flower by pictured flower. She remained still, hands hanging limp, until it came to perch on a raised plaster lily only a foot away from her.
It was larger than any she had seen before. The stripes across its wide back looked soft and plushy; its wings were a filigree tissue finer than the silken veils of the Cadre. It bobbed closer to her, its buzz a rich contralto. The breath of its flight brushed her forearm. Softly, wistfully, she said, “You must know far more of this place than I
do.” The bee paused, almost as if considering her. She continued, “You can go anywhere you want.” There were no walls, no locks, no captors to hold a bee from its flight. It could, if it chose, explore every inch of this place, this prison-palace, and leave it on a whim. Somewhere over the roofs, beyond the walls, it must have a stone hive, a papery nest in an old tree, a place of safety of its own.
There had been beehives at the foot of the old orchard attached to the home farm on her family estate. She had been taken to see them often as a small child, part of the round of petting puppies and bottle-feeding orphan lambs, which had been her privilege. She had sat in the cool damp grass, Nurse fussing around her, and watched as bees hurried to and from their domed dwellings, caring for their young and their queen. “Like us and you, little mistress,” the farmer’s wife had said, bringing her a glass of new milk. She must have been no more than six. For years afterward she had pictured the bee queens as little girls in starched pinafores and ringlets, surrounded by huge, bossy, bustling adults. She had been surprised when, years later, the farmer’s younger son had shown her the queen bee tucked away in the heart of the hive. “But she’s the biggest!” she had said.
The boy—two years her junior and in thrall to her smooth amber skin and dark eyes—had gawped at her. “Queens always are, Mademoiselle.”
Queens were prisoners, too. She had learned that from the same boy and from her steward, who had threatened beatings when he learned that she was spending time alone with a tenant’s child. Queens were kept safe and snug in their fortresses, waited on and nurtured and protected for as long as they did not try to escape. Or so it had seemed to her at fourteen. New queens, the boy told her, fought the old queen for control or else fled away accompanied by a court of workers. “Don’t they run away alone?” she had asked him.
“No, Mademoiselle.” The boy had been puzzled. “Why would they do that?”
To be alone. To be in charge of their own lives. But at that age she had not known how to express that, not even known exactly what it was that she wanted. Queen bees had but one taste of freedom, in their mating flight, before returning to their waxy cages to beget more generations of bees. Perhaps her own freedom was to prove as ephemeral, one flight from the questions of the Silver City to the emptiness of the Woven House and this courtyard of dust and barriers. She looked at the bee, now, and said, “Are you a queen?” The bee crawled away from her to investigate another painted flower.
Aude sat down on the low wall that blocked off most of the arches along the arcade on the Concubine’s side of the courtyard. She said, “I suppose you usually send your servants out for you. Fetching and carrying.” Like her in her Silver City townhouse. “But you got bored and wanted to explore.” Again, like her. How hard did the worker bees protest when the queen was restless? Did they summon bee equivalents of uncles and guardians to preach reason? Did they tut and scowl and try to hide exits? Did they worry that she would use her mating flight to run away, that alone in her cell she plotted to evade her suitors and escape, or watched her guards carefully for any sign of weakness? She looked around. There were no other bees anywhere. “Well done,” she said to the bee. “But should you be wandering about here? Shouldn’t you go farther away so they find it hard to track you?” The bee ignored her, tasting the flower.
Aude said, “I wish I could fly out of here.” No chance of that. She shook her head. “There has to be some way out, but I can’t find it.”
The bee abandoned the flower and flew back toward her. It hovered at her side, then landed, softly, on her forearm. Its legs tickled; it bent forward to brush her skin, hunting nectar. Aude sat still, breathing shallowly. Bees must not be alarmed—the farmer’s boy had told her that. If they were alarmed, if they stung, they died. She did not wish to kill this beautiful creature. The bee crawled slowly down her arm to her hand, then took off, darting around her toward the nearest rose bed. She twisted to watch it. It swooped from flower to flower, brushing their petals lightly, looped away onto the next bush and the next, working its way along the beds past the fountain and toward the boundary wall. Leaves whispered in its wake, petals swayed sending bursts of fragrance back to her, a trace of sweetness. The bee reached the row of orange trees and vanished amid the foliage. Aude sighed and looked down into her lap. She could not run. She could not even hide, not here where the Cadre knew every inch. Tears threatened, and she sniffed. There would be none of that. She would not be weak. She would not.
Somewhere out there, on the steppe, somewhere beyond this palace and its borders, whatever and wherever they were, Jehan would be hunting for her. He had followed her this far. She would not believe he would give up on her. She wished he were here, to hold her, to stand with her against the Cadre. He was not. He would expect her to be sensible and strong and do her best to escape.
Well, she would not let him down. She pushed her hair back from her face and looked up.
The bee was back, hovering at eye level. Despite herself, she smiled at it. It flew a slow circle in front of her and once again began to track back across the roses. This time, Aude rose and followed, bare feet prickling on the pebbles. The bee flew a little ahead from rose to rose, drawing her on that thread of fragrance to the oranges. When they reached the trees, the bee swooped, up to brush the foliage and then down low, through leaves, past fruit, back into the darkness of twigs. Aude dropped to her knees, peering into the green gloom. Leaves whispered around her, catching in her hair. Citrus dust drifted down, coating her nose and palate. Under the trees, all was dark and cool and just faintly damp. The soil lay black under its cover of fallen foliage and twigs. The bee zigged over it, a small point of brightness, tracing some unseen path back and back to the base of the wall. Aude squinted, eyes adjusting to the low light. Where? Yes, there, half hidden behind a tree bole, flush to the wall was the bee, circling slowly over a pile of dead leaves. It made no sense to her. Did some bees live underground? The bee flew back toward her, then to the wall again. On hands and knees, she squeezed into the space under the low branches and stopped. The bee returned to its circling. She said, “Look, I don’t think…” A flick of wings, and the bee spiraled downward, into the leaves. Aude hesitated. She did not want to harm it. Perhaps it was simply reentering its nest. And yet…Carefully, she reached out a hand and touched the leaves. Dry and stiff. She brushed one or two aside and stopped.
There at the foot of the orange trees was a grille. She cleared more of it, hands swift and keen. It was perhaps two feet square, backing onto the wall and made of metal. She slid her fingers through its bars, cautiously, and gave a small tug. It shifted, rocking a little under her pressure. She pulled again, and one corner lifted up. Leaning forward a little, she could see curved ceramic—the bottom of a pipe or conduit.
She sat back on her heels. She was stupid. She should have thought of this long before. Water. Everything in the last few days had revolved around water. The arid plain. This courtyard, with its bath and its pitchers and its empty drainage channels. The picture wall with that long river snaking through it. The flower beds, the bath, the fountain, all must be fed and drained somehow, and this grille was a part of that. She looked about her for the bee. It hovered a little to her left. She said, “Thank you,” and smiled. It looped once around her head and flew off to inspect the nearest rose.
Perhaps it was serendipity. Her uncle, back in the Silver City, would shake his head at her and recommend she see her doctor. Jehan…Jehan would have searched for and found this way out long before. The bee had led her here on purpose. Somehow, improbably, she had an ally in this place, however small. Someone had heard her and offered her the help she required. It was up to her to take it.
She turned her attention back to the grille. The bars were set wide; it was easy enough to slip her fingers around them and pull. Nor did it seem to be bolted or otherwise bound into place. She set her shoulders and pulled backward, rocking on her feet. The angle made it difficult; she could not get close enough simply to haul up
ward. Inch by inch, it shifted, scraping and dragging its way out. Leaf fragments dusted up around her, making her cough. She set her teeth against them, gave one final heave, and toppled back as the grille came out. She sat for a moment panting, arms hanging loose, legs akimbo. Then she turned and, on her stomach, wriggled her way forward under the lowest branches. The gap opened onto a shallow semicircular drain, running from the garden to the wall and sloping gently away from her. She considered that. If this was the conduit—a conduit—feeding the water channels, then it must presumably be entering the courtyard on the opposite side, providing her with not one but two potential routes out. Why had the bee led her to this one? That was worth pondering. Something dangerous in the other direction? Maybe it simply led to a central cistern. Or maybe the bee had its own motives for drawing her this way. She shook her head and set the question aside. She would worry about that later. She peered into the pipe. Yes, there it went, passing through a low arch under the wall. Would she fit through there? She wriggled some more and slid her hand into the space. How deep was it? She groped around, trying to gauge. Eighteen inches, perhaps two feet; there were times, then, when the water ran quite deep. Another exploration revealed that the conduit was wider than the grille by around three inches on either side. That was good. She could fit and have some leeway to move forward. As to the arch…she slithered forward, stretching out her arm. The pipe narrowed through it by maybe a foot in width. That was going to be tight. But not impossible.
The Grass King’s Concubine Page 21