Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(100)

“Sawas?” Unar said, coughing.

“It’s you,” Sawas breathed. She’d gained a great deal of weight since Unar had last seen her, and without her duties in the sun, she’d reverted to a lighter golden-brown. One of her enormous breasts was shoved into the greedy mouth of a boy child black as char against her brown bosom. It couldn’t be Epatut’s son. Unar hadn’t been away for long enough. An adopted nephew, maybe. Sawas’s other, covered breast made a wet spot on the front of her fine robe; the sight of the leak made Unar press her own chest even harder, determined that none of the evil she had brought with her would enter Epatut’s House.

“It’s me,” Unar agreed.

“Where’s my mother?” Sawas asked. “You stole her. You killed her.”

“She’s alive in Understorey. I didn’t steal her. I freed her.”

“Only a fool would believe you!”

“Sawas, listen,” Unar said urgently. “Your baby is Audblayin reborn. She’s in danger. Haven’t there been attempts to steal her? You must take her back to the Garden, right now. Where is she?”

Can I beg for her forgiveness?

No. She’s only a baby. She can’t hear me.

“She’s not mine to take,” Sawas said venomously. “She’s the property of the House of Epatut, and you are a runaway thief who couldn’t pass through the Gate of the Garden if you tried. If you have no fear of exposure or arrest—and I would fear both, if I were you—then come back when the sun’s in the sky and ask the mistress for the babe yourself.”

Sawas closed the door in her face. Unar heard the bar dropping into place. There was no time to argue. There was no time to explain. Reluctantly, she took her hands away from her sternum.

“Wake, friend,” she whispered, feeling the great gobletfruit from its top shoots brushed by cloud-filtered starlight and the first suggestion of sunrise to the roots that fed on fish corpses, pressed beneath the restless weight of swirling monsoon water.

The House of Epatut came to life. It had no mind of its own, but it borrowed Unar’s mind while they were merged, and the creatures that had nested in its skin and kept the wounds open made its sap quicken with resentment.

“Be gentle with them,” Unar said softly. “They haven’t given you burdens you could not bear. Only give me the child.”

A man started screaming. His voice was soon joined by a woman’s. More screaming voices joined in.

Branches moved. The tree groaned. Windows widened and narrowed like talking mouths. Leaves entered cavities and brushed woody corners, searching. Unar shook her head; there was no need to search. She felt every human life within the tree. She knew each one of them intimately. Sawas was with both children in the farthest room of the house, body folded protectively over body, as she and Ylly had been before birth.

There was no question about that baby being Audblayin. The power that animated the tree flowed directly from the diminutive form, not to the Garden and then to Unar, but on the shortest path, from one to the other.

Wood bent into wave patterns. Sawas was tossed mercilessly into the air. Ylly was carried out from underneath her mother by undulations that brought her through previously solid walls, out the door and down the ramp.

“As you were,” Unar said sharply, and the tree contorted itself back into shape. The screaming didn’t stop, but Unar knew no one had been harmed. She pressed on her sternum to stop the flow of power, as wonderful as the connection felt. The gobletfruit became separate from her, and she became separate from the child, even as she bent to pick her up beneath the armpits.

Ylly gazed at her with enormous eyes. She was not a baby anymore, not really. Unar had forgotten how quickly children grew. Ylly’s feet, which had been doughy, club-like, and ineffectual, now bore calluses from leather shoes, and her hair was long enough to braid.

“You’re big,” Unar said.

“I want Mama,” Ylly answered.

“Mama will come later. Let’s go to the Garden.”

She wasn’t a thief. The Gates would open for her, though not in the way she dreamt. Nothing she could do would be enough to redeem her. Aoun wouldn’t welcome her with his arms around her. She would not be a Bodyguard, and she would not fly. But Audblayin will be safe.

Then she smelled it. Ozone in the air. She heard the crack of lightning. Felt the flow of a different river of power, this one coming all the way from Airakland.

Aforis.

Clutching Ylly to her chest, she began to run again.

Drawn to the screams of the occupants, people had come to stare at the House of Epatut. Perhaps they’d seen her pick up the baby disgorged by the house itself, but none of them got in her way. If they whispered to each other in her wake; if they reported to the king that the runaway Gardener had been seen; if soldiers came, then that was to her advantage. A heartbeat later, she began to shout at strangers in passing.

“Summon the guards! Rouse the army! Understorians are here!”

She didn’t stay to see if any took heed, nor did she angle towards another, taller gobletfruit which held the palace and its associated outbuildings; it must be in mimicry of the King of Audblayinland that so many wealthy merchants wanted gobletfruit crowns of their own.

Only the Garden mattered, and the blue-white blaze before its Great Gate, distant but growing larger as Unar approached.