Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(15)

Sunset painted the wooden terraces of the vegetable garden surrounding the store circle, turning the weathered grey timbers to bronze and making the fruiting oranges and apricots look more orange than they truly were. Unar took a small leaf-bowl of seed porridge and a strip of smoked monkey meat and went to sit by herself on the edge of one of the terraces.

“Can I join you?” one of the handsome new Gardeners asked her.

“No,” Unar answered brusquely; the man half scrambled away before he could settle down beside her. She needed to think. Not chatter with new arrivals. Her magic was still weak. How would she trick the Gate into letting her out, into thinking she was a seed blowing on the wind?

She would have to open it, walk through it, but how to get the key? The Gatekeeper carried the key, but there was no Gatekeeper right now, was there? They couldn’t have had time to choose a new one yet. Some other Servant must have temporarily picked up the lantern. Unar would have to wait and see who came to lock the Gate at dusk.

She slipped out amongst the slaves, ducking behind bushes when fellow Gardeners came past. She dashed furtively over bridges, so swiftly they were left swaying crazily behind her.

The Gate had a thicket of black-trunked tree ferns growing behind it. Unar concealed herself behind the luminous, lime-green fronds until the bobbing of a lantern in the gloom betrayed the lone Servant’s approach.

It was Aoun.

Unar’s mad plan to somehow pickpocket the key away from the Servant died instantly. She showed herself in the centre of the path before Aoun could reach the wide-open Garden entrance.

“You should be at the loquat grove,” he said, but Unar thought she detected an amused quirk at the corners of his mouth. She hadn’t cared about his mouth before. In fact, the sight of it stuffed with fish flesh should have been enough to turn her off it forever. But now she noticed the fullness of his lower lip and the thinness of his upper one, the long lines connecting it to his nose, and the way his stubble grew between the lines, and outside of them, but not on them.

Stupid things to notice.

“I should be with you and Oos in the Temple,” she said. “It isn’t fair.”

“That’s why you’re waiting here to ambush me? You want me to intercede for you somehow?”

“No! I don’t need you! That is … I need you to lend me the key to the Gate.”

Aoun’s eyes bulged.

“You need me to lend you the key?”

“So I can get past the wards. The Gate looks innocent, doesn’t it? It looks like just anybody could walk out. But not the slaves. And not me.”

“You chose this. We both did. Where do you want to go?”

“To Odel’s emergent.”

“The Temple of a rival god? No, Unar!”

“Listen, Aoun. My sister fell because my parents didn’t go there. I want to go and say a prayer for her. Your parents went there for you. They went there and gave gifts to the Protector of Children. They kept you safe.”

In the year of Aoun’s birth, the king of Ehkisland had ordered all the citizens of that niche to reserve their tributes solely for Ehkis. The goddess Ehkis’s incarnation had not been found, the rains were late, the trees were dying, and the king’s subjects were forbidden to waste their worship on other gods and goddesses. All efforts must be focused on bringing the rains.

Aoun’s parents had defied the king and been executed for that defiance, but their final act had protected him.

“They kept me safe. My brother wasn’t so lucky,” he said. His right hand, holding the upraised lantern by its bronze handle, tried to creep across to his left shoulder, but the sway of the lantern made the candlelight flicker and his hand stilled. “Odel’s power kept us from falling, but it didn’t stop him from drowning.”

Executed for refusing to pay tribute to Ehkis. And after they had died, one of their sons had drowned in a flood caused by excessive tributes to the rain goddess. There was no justice outside Ilan’s niche. Aoun was crazy to think that obedience would keep him safe when disobedience was sometimes imperative.

“You lived,” Unar said. “You didn’t drown. You didn’t fall. Even orphaned. Even alone. Please let me out. Just this once. I’m asking you respectfully. I didn’t try to hit you over the head and steal the key.”

Aoun rubbed his temple with his left hand ruefully.

“The key is magical, Unar. There is no physical key. You know that the Garden rewards those who are true to themselves, and it’s in me to be law-abiding since my brother died. I’ve learned my family’s lesson. Don’t defy the goddesses and gods.” His face was open. Earnest. He rattled the lantern a little. “Servant Eilif determined that I was best suited to carry the secret of the key. It was my first lesson today.”

“Oh,” she said, feeling stupid.

He tilted his head and considered her for a long silent moment.

“Go on, then,” he said at last. “I’ve opened it for you. Go through.”

“What?”

“Go through. Go to Odel’s Temple. Say a prayer for your sister. It’s far away. You won’t be back until a few hours before dawn. I’ll come back to open the Gate for you.”

“Oh. You don’t have to do that. I can climb back in.” Getting out required Unar’s knack of magical disguise, because the wards were designed to keep slaves, Servants, and Gardeners safely inside. Getting in, however, required only that a person be innocent of the three crimes that the wards probed memories to find.