Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(104)

Instead, he waited calmly by her side. Over and over, she planted the seed, the key, in the gateway, watched the tendrils curl out of it, only for those tendrils to wither under the weight of her crimes.

I can’t break them. I can’t force my way through.

“Who is this child, Unar?” Aoun asked.

I have stolen human life. Unar didn’t answer him.

“Is she another orphan?”

I am no orphan. The Garden is my mother. The Garden is my father. I must go home.

“The Garden cannot use a slave so young.” Aoun’s face was earnest. He thought he was speaking reason. He hadn’t shared her journey. For him, nothing had changed. “We can’t care for her, not yet. Not until she’s old enough to serve.”

I must go home.

Unar gazed into Aoun’s dark, deep-set eyes. No tears. He could see that she was searching for something and not finding it; the frown lines between his heavy, knitted brows deepened. Why wasn’t he more distraught about their impending separation? Why not euphoric at discovering she was still alive? What was wrong with him? Couldn’t he feel anything? Didn’t he know anything?

So dunderheaded, Aoun.

Unar was made speechless by the depths of her failure, the heights of her absurd expectations.

She could have told him that the child was Audblayin. She could have told him where to find Sawas. Slave mother and slave child would be reunited and readmitted to the Temple. But Unar had fallen in the first place to free a slave. And now she realised what her true destiny had been, all along.

After you have lived with us for long enough, you will wonder why you ever wished to crawl and kiss Audblayin’s hand.

It was not to bring Audblayin to the Garden, that she might grow surrounded by the same ignorance and isolation of Gardeners and Servants that had always surrounded her. It was to answer the questions that Kirrik had posed Unar, back at the dovecote during their first night on watch: And if you desired to feel the sun, what then? If you needed fresh fruits to cure a child’s illness? What if you had fallen and your family remained above, and they were forced to watch while demons ate the flesh off your bones?

Maybe the gods and goddesses didn’t care for the people of Understorey because they didn’t know them. Had never lived among them.

Why them and not us? Why can they not protect everyone? Are they so weak?

She would return Audblayin to the Garden. Yes, she would. But not now. Not yet. The Garden was no place for children, and there was no place that was a good place for slaves. Let baby Ylly stay with her mother, and below the barrier too. Then, perhaps Audblayin in her next life would have a proper answer to give, when asked why everyone couldn’t pass through the barrier, why everyone could not live in the sun.

It was a good decision, Unar thought, but it also robbed her of the triumphant moment she’d dreamed of for so long. She wiped her nose on her torn sleeve. The motion drew Aoun’s attention to the seams where her spines were hidden. His handsome face showed revulsion.

“Unar, those cannot be … you cannot … the rules have been bent, this day. I don’t believe there would be objections if I … Unar, do you want me to … I could remove those. I could heal them.”

“No, Aoun.” Unar gathered Ylly to her again. She reached out to unfasten the sash that held his robes closed. He allowed it, but she took no pleasure in the sight of his muscular chest. The sash was for binding the child safely, and his bore-knife she took because the Garden made good tools. She might not again have the opportunity to take one. “I’ll need them.”

She slashed at the branch beneath her feet with her forearm. Her spines bit deep. She lowered herself over the edge, meeting Aoun’s gaze for what felt like the last time. He could have called the king’s men to imprison her, a traitor whose only place was as a slave. Instead, he shifted his position slightly so that his body shielded her from their line of sight.

Neither of them said good-bye.





FIFTY-EIGHT

AS UNAR dropped through the barrier, her magic faded.

Not all of it, just most. Ylly cried continuously, calling for her mother. Unar would go back for Sawas, but she had to see Oos first. She moved gradually around the great girth of the tree, until the river lay to her left. Down and down, into the rainless gloom, her final task incomplete.

Not yet. I cannot join you yet, Isin. First, I must have an answer to your Master’s question.

At one point, she became aware of three men with hatchets, trying to chop their way into the tree. Tallowwood was extremely hard, and they hadn’t made much progress. They couldn’t enter the huntsmen’s home through the flooded front entrance beneath the river, so they were attempting to enlarge one of the ventilation holes that supplied the storeroom. They’d torn off the mesh that kept insects out, and splinters flew.

Some kind of poisonous smoke made them cough. Esse. He must have been burning something beneath the hole, up on the ledge where the tallow candles normally sat, but it wasn’t poisonous enough to kill the would-be intruders, who still searched for Oos, not knowing that their mistress, Core Kirrik, was dead.

Three white faces looked up and saw Unar. Before they could reach for weapons, she murmured the godsong to herself. Her chest vibrated, relaxing the baby who squirmed there, but there was no sound.

Instead, the three men simply dropped off the tree, their snake-tooth spines dissolved into nothing, eaten by the healing of their own human bones. Aoun had given her the idea.