Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(106)
“I thought you said Audblayin was a god,” Oos said gently. “You were convinced he would be a man this time, Unar.”
“I was wrong,” Unar said. “Take care of little Ylly until her mother gets here. Mothers and daughters shouldn’t be apart for long. I hope you can forgive me. I hope you can forgive us all.”
FIFTY-NINE
DAYLIGHT SEEMED to pierce her.
Unar couldn’t remember it being so bright. Colours of dyed cloth. Scarlet fruit in baskets. Yellow birds so illuminated by sun that they might have been small suns themselves. The House of Epatut was raucous with the chattering of macaques. Disregarding the movements of humans on the roads below, they feasted on nuts and threw the empty casings at passers-by.
Two hired guards who hadn’t been there before dawn flanked the ramp to the front door. One of them yawned behind his hand. The other asked, “What is your business with the House?”
“I’m a healer, come to see Wife-of-Epatut,” Unar said.
The yawning one went inside. When he returned, Wife-of-Epatut was with him, big-bosomed and frog-eyed, but so was Sawas. She threw herself at Unar at first sight, her fist smacking Unar in the eye.
“Where is she? Give her back!”
“Sawas,” Wife-of-Epatut said in a low, acerbic voice, and Sawas retreated behind the woman who owned her, cringing yet trembling with rage at the same time.
“Good day, Wife-of-Epatut,” Unar said. “I knew your slave, Sawas, when I was a Gardener in the Temple of Audblayin. I come to offer you healing and new life, if you will accept it, in exchange for Sawas.”
“That will not be possible,” Wife-of-Epatut said, folding her arms. “Even if you are the adept who turned my house inside out as I slept this morning. Sawas makes milk for my nephew, who has come to live with us. His mother suffered an accident. If you take her, he’ll go hungry.”
“Let him eat nut paste. Fruit mush. Insects trapped in sap and boiled in monkey oil. Or bring his distraught mother to live with you.” It was a guess, but the widening of Wife-of-Epatut’s protuberant eyes told Unar she had hit on the truth. “The healing I offer is a healing of your husband’s mad desire to have a son. Without one, he is afraid that you believe he is less. You are a better weaver than he is. A better trader and a better human being. I can heal his envy. I think I know how.”
Wife-of-Epatut struggled visibly to hide her shock.
“My husband isn’t an envious man,” she said, “but even if he were, what healing could I accept from you? You’re cast out, worse than a slave, and you’re a thief. You wrecked my house.”
“Do you refuse my help, then?”
Her lip quivered.
“I must refuse it,” she said.
“If that’s what you wish,” Unar said, exactly the same way she had said it to Oos. She had no need to sing the godsong here. Seizing power from Canopy itself, she ignored Wife-of-Epatut’s astonishment when the merchant’s already-large breasts became heavy with milk. “I’ll give you this gift instead. Feed your own nephew from now on. Come with me, Sawas. I’ll take you to your daughter.”
“No!” Sawas howled, touching her tongue, which no longer bore her slave’s mark. “Little Epi is like my own child, too. I’ve been closer to him than anyone! You must bring my daughter back here, or, I warn you, my mistress will go to the king!”
Unar sighed. For a moment, she was tempted to leave Sawas where she was. Did Audblayin really need this fool to raise her? Surely she would be better off raised by those who were older and wiser, like Hasbabsah and Ylly the elder.
“You promised to teach me to swim, Sawas,” Unar said. “Somebody else needs your lessons now. Whatever those lessons are.”
However unworthy I may think them.
“You’re a liar,” Sawas cried, clinging to Wife-of-Epatut. “You’re not taking me to Ylly. You’re taking me to drink my blood and steal my soul.”
“What have you done?” Wife-of-Epatut babbled. She patted ineffectually at her erupting bosom. “What have you done to me? Undo it at once!”
Unar didn’t use her magic to seize Sawas with vines. Instead, she marched up to her, plucked her by the collar, and began dragging her down the ramp. The hired guards looked uneasily to the otherwise occupied Wife-of-Epatut, but didn’t try to stop them.
“You were named so you could travel up and down, Sawas,” Unar said. “Down you’ll go. Whether you come back up again is up to you.”
Once they were out of sight of the House of Epatut, Sawas seemed to give in. She allowed Unar to push and prod her along the now-crowded streets of Audblayinland. Everyone who had emerged from their homes—everyone but the occupants of the House of Epatut, it seemed—spoke of the battle that had raged at the Garden Gate that morning. About how the king had defended them, even in the absence of the goddess Audblayin, and that perhaps some of the tribute that had been reserved for the deity might find its way to the palace, instead. Maybe some of their second sons could be spared to serve the royal family.
Meanwhile, marketplaces that should have stayed closed for another two months had become bustling and noisy, the signs still wet with paint and the ropes that kept people from falling from platforms pale green and freshly knotted.
At the Great Gate of the Garden itself, lines of grateful citizens, from stricken to internoders, waited to press material goods upon the Gatekeeper. Aoun ushered them in towards the egg and moat that Unar would never see again.