Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(27)

“But of course we are few,” Hasbabsah said. “We are denied the light. We are denied the toucan’s share of the fruit of the great trees. We are prey to demons. We have no magic to keep our children from falling.”

Unar wished she hadn’t laughed.

“I’m sorry, Hasbabsah. I don’t blame you for coming to kill Audblayin. But she was gentle, wasn’t she? She was kind?”

Unar was only guessing. She had never met the goddess face-to-face.

“I did not come to kill Audblayin, Warmed One. I was captured in Odelland. I came to kill Odel, not knowing that his incarnation had not even been found, that the empty Temple was a trap.”

“Hasbabsah and my mother were taken together,” Ylly said, setting her basket of beans on the ground. “Luckily for us, as of today, she’s been assigned to the lower branches of the Temple to care for my new grandchild while Sawas is diving.”

“That is lucky,” Unar said. “I think Aoun knows I’ve been working with you at night. He said something about doing my own work, work assigned specifically to me.”

“That is the name of the Servant, the Gatekeeper, who told me this morning to go below,” Hasbabsah said. “He changed the mark in my mouth. Once I go down, I will not be able to come back up, Ylly.”

Ylly’s expression didn’t change. Unar began to step back, to withdraw so they could show their true feelings in private, but other Gardeners and slaves were around the next corner and she didn’t want to rouse suspicion.

“This is farewell, then,” Ylly said.

They embraced tightly.

“I thought that the Warmed One might go with you to the lower branches. She could meet Sawas. Perhaps watch her work for a little while.”

“And her allotted Gardener’s work?”

“Oh, that,” Unar said. Turning carelessly to the wall of vines, she reached out to pollinated seeds too small to see, her magic drawing them out from the husks of faded flowers into beans that were brilliant green and a hand-span across. “There. I’ve done it. Enjoy the picking, Ylly.”

“Hasbabsah will need your help on the descent, Warmed One,” Ylly said. “I beg you, however she grumbles, not to let her fall.”

Unar began to take the old woman’s arm, but Ylly’s hiss recalled to mind that any assistance was to occur once they were out of sight.

The slave’s loose, spotted skin abruptly reminded Unar of how her mother had looked, wasted by illness, on the day she’d come to demand compensation from the Garden for her runaway daughter. That was the first time Unar had climbed the walls of the Garden. She thought she’d recognised the source of the disturbance as a woman she’d hoped never to see again and was horrified to discover she was right.

I’m old, Mother had raged at the white-robed figure outside the Great Gate. I must have what I’m owed. You serve life. Do you want me to die? Because I will die, without silver, without children to do the work.

Unar had resisted the urge to answer in the affirmative. She’d leaned with one foot against the wooden wall, the other foot braced back against the trunk of a coconut palm, her hands slashed by the sharp edges of the fronds, her ears straining to hear the Servant’s reply. Anxiety had twisted her innards. She hadn’t been of age when she’d pledged herself to Audblayin. Was it possible that she’d be sent back?

Give me what I am owed! Mother had screeched.

And Unar remembered Isin and the broken lock. She said fiercely under her breath, You are the one who owes us, Mother. You are a murderer, and the Garden will never let you pass.

Yet the Servants who passed freely through the wards every day had pushed slaves to their deaths; how did that work? Unar had touched them with her magic to find out, and realised that just as the wards could be fooled by her insistence she was a seed, they could also be fooled by the magical sigils on the slaves’ tongues into thinking that aged humans were discarded refuse, no more significant to the goddess than the used leaf-plates tossed away once they were emptied of porridge.

“I won’t let her fall,” Unar told Ylly, grimly.

Delve as she might with her magic, though, she could neither figure out how the sigils were made, nor how they might be removed. She would have to ask Oos.





SIXTEEN

UNAR STOOD at the woody water’s edge.

There were no fish in this pool. These storage hollows, shaped in the clefts where the great branches of the tallowwood met the trunk, were the recipients of carved channels and leaf-nets designed to capture and divert as much rainwater from the lateral branches as possible. Underwater tunnels and tubes with various mechanisms inside them became frequently blocked by debris.

Sawas, submerged, was a darker brown shape against the brown bowl of water. It reflected the sky in some places, the smooth trunk and overhead Temple in others. The bastard child of an Odelland king popped her head out of the pool. She dumped two handfuls of soggy leaves on the edge, where they were swept up by another slave and taken away.

“So.” Hasbabsah sat on a blanket with the sleeping baby, not far from the edge. “Why does the Warmed One wish to learn to swim?”

Unar shivered. She didn’t wish to. Not really. She had no choice, if she was to grow in magical power.

“Hasbabsah!” Sawas said.

“It’s all right,” Unar said. “I’m not like them. I don’t toss old women from treetops.”