The Grass King’s Concubine
Read The Grass King’s Concubine Online
Authors: Kari Sperring
“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
C
ONCUBINE
KARI SPERRING
ELIZABETH R. WOLLHEIM
SHEILA E. GILBERT
PUBLISHERS
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.”
The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
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.
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
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 13
th
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
13: The Courtyard of the Concubine
17: The Courtyard of the Clepsydra
21: The Courtyard of the Cadre
22: A Machine to Shape the Sky
25: The Courtyard of the Cistern
29: The Courtyard of Contemplation
31: The Oldest Shade of Darkness
The Shining Place
A
UDE 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.