Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(21)

Unar took the last dirty rack from Ylly’s hands, swapping it for the clean one she held. Was Ylly hiding in the shadows because she was crying? Oos had always liked to be held when she cried. When she’d been separated from her silver bells, there’d been plenty of crying and holding involved. But Unar rarely wanted to be touched when she was upset. And Ylly didn’t sound upset.

She sounded resigned. Distant.

“I’ve been so wrong,” Unar said. “I’ve ignored slaves. I’ve failed to see them.”

“They’ve seen you. They’ve feared you. I still fear you, even now.”

Unar wanted to pull Ylly by the wrist out of the shadow, but Ylly had spent a lifetime being forced to do things she didn’t want to do. She wasn’t Oos.

“You’re brave. You’ve taught me much about slaves.”

Ylly took a few slow steps to set the rack to drip with the others. She shook her head.

“No. I’ve taught you about myself. You’ve learned a little bit about a woman called Ylly. That’s all. There are no slaves. There are no citizens. Only the living and the dead.”

Unlike Unar, Ylly couldn’t hide in the bamboo thickets and doze during the day. Sleep deprivation was making her say things that didn’t make sense, Unar decided uneasily. She changed the subject.

“Do you know how to swim, Ylly?”

“No.”

“I must learn.” Unar tried not to think of fish. Slimy fish and spiny fish, moving in darkness, in water she couldn’t see through. “If I don’t learn to swim, I’ll never learn the magic of the Servants.”

Ylly snatched up the drying cloth at Unar’s feet, betraying anger.

“Do you think to earn my trust by giving me power over you?” Her voice stayed calm. “By confessing to wrongdoings? Nobody listens to a slave. Nobody rewards a slave for betraying her betters.”

“What can I give you, then?” Unar asked, surprised. “What can I do to earn your trust?”

The cloth flew over the wet racks, and now it was Ylly’s turn to throw caution aside, stacking them together with a crash that brought a few sleepy whistles from the roosting birds.

“Protect my grandchild, only fourteen days old. The father is a thatcher who came nine months ago, wanting to be a Gardener. He was turned away, but on his way out, my daughter showed him the moss garden. If you want to earn my trust, take an offering to Odel’s Temple and whisper my granddaughter’s name.”

The moss garden. It was sheltered by small-leafed myrtles whose dark green foliage turned to buttercup, persimmon, and blood-tinged hues after the monsoon. Over the myrtle trees stood spiny plums whose jagged-edged fronds interlaced like flat fingers warming themselves over a fire.

The mosses made beds even softer than the silk lining Oos had sewn for Unar’s hammock. In that forever-warm, wind-sheltered hollow, water wicking into clothes hardly mattered.

It was the perfect place for conception, in the old days Oos had spoken of, when Servants served in other ways.

Unar shoved the image of Aoun’s muscled arms out of her thoughts.

“You didn’t think to mention this before,” she demanded of Ylly, “when I asked for directions to Odel’s Temple?”

“I didn’t think you would really go.”

“I went.” Unar threw her hands up in the air. “The chimera skin was all rotten!”

“Yes. You told me.”

“If I go there again, if I do as you ask, then what?”

“Then my daughter will do as I ask.” Ylly’s tone brooked no argument. “She’s an accomplished diver. Her work is to unclog the water-carriers. Otherwise, they fill with leaves and sticks. So do the bottoms of the pools that surround the Temple, and rot pollutes the water. She can teach you to swim.”

“Is this daughter the child of the king of Odelland? Why doesn’t your daughter help you with this awful work, this old woman’s work, which you’ve taken upon yourself?”

“I’m confined to the upper levels of the Garden,” Ylly explained. “Sawas is confined below. We haven’t spoken in fifteen years. Trained birds carry our messages.”

She set the last dry rack atop the others, bending her back to lift the entire stack. The work was done. Unar should have returned at once to her hammock, to try to get an hour or two of rest, but she drifted after the departing slave.

“And did a bird bring you a message to tell you your grandchild’s name, fourteen days ago when your daughter gave birth?”

Ylly stopped walking and turned so that Unar could see her smile deepening.

“Indeed. The child’s name is Ylly. My mother’s gift lives on, though we’re powerless to protect this latest namesake. You’ll see that she’s protected. You and Odel. I trust you to be truthful on this matter. And then Sawas will teach you to swim.”





TWELVE

TWO NEW moons later, the evening came when Unar had enough magic to fool the wards on the wall.

As she climbed, the light, inner touch of the magic reached her senses, smelling like turned earth and life but also a male presence, and she recognised that maintenance of the spell had been Aoun’s. The magic was as muscularly built and unadorned as his naked body had been the day of Audblayin’s death, and the feel of it set Unar’s heart fluttering, her nipples hardening, and her cheeks flushing; the deity’s dampening effect upon her urges had never fully returned, or perhaps it was simply her age and attainment of a woman’s full growth and capabilities.