Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(28)

“I would like to see them try,” Hasbabsah grumbled. “I would take that Servant Eilif down to the forest floor with me.”

“Hasbabsah!”

“Down you go again, little duck. Let the Warmed One worry about me.” When Sawas had obediently dived again, the old slave indicated the baby on the blanket. “This one is fourth generation.”

“She’s pretty,” Unar said, keeping her distance. Babies didn’t really interest her, except for their potential to house the souls of gods. Their screams were high-pitched enough to split heads, and they couldn’t do or say anything interesting. A pet bear cub or a trained parrot was more entertaining. Isin had been different. Isin had been her own blood.

“She will never be a warrior,” Hasbabsah said, “up here in Canopy.”

Unar shrugged. “Can’t you teach her what she needs to know?” She hadn’t come to chat about the baby. She’d done her duty by it. Odel’s protection lay over it. “She’s got a good name, right? She’ll be able to go both up and down.”

It was a sop; baby Ylly was owned by the Garden, and even if someone tried to take her down, it was more likely she would stubbornly float, buoyed by the power of the god. Unar was trying to put a good face on the fact that names were the only inane influence slaves had over their children.

Sawas surfaced with another two handfuls of leaves and sticks. Her breasts, swollen with milk, bumped like clinked goblets on the surface while she pushed the little pile away from her.

“Only if her tongue carries the correct glyph,” Hasbabsah muttered, and Unar realised she was thinking of her own demotion, and that she might never see the elder Ylly again.

“Are we talking about tongues, now?” Sawas asked with a sparkle in her eyes. “I heard it was the handsome new Gatekeeper who changed yours, Hasbabsah. I wish he’d give me a kiss and change mine.”

“You have done enough harm by kissing, Sawas. Look at the child you unthinkingly brought into the world. Into a life of misery!”

“My life isn’t misery.” Sawas laughed. “What do you think of Servant Aoun, Warmed One?”

Unar felt the blood rush to her face.

“He was … is my friend,” she said. “Are the marks on your tongues truly changed by kissing?”

“They can be, if the man is an adept. Perhaps one day he’ll come to me. Sawas, he’ll say, I cannot live without you! He’ll kiss me and carry me up into the Garden proper. Perhaps Ylly will have a sister.”

“No!” Hasbabsah raged.

“I think I know why the Warmed One wishes to swim. So she can swim across the moat and spy on the Gatekeeper without clothes on, while he’s sleeping in the Temple. He has such fine, fleshy fruit. I would wake it with my marked tongue. I would take it between my thighs. It would reach so far up inside of me!”

“Sawas! One birthing was not enough to sting some sense into your empty head?”

Sawas turned lithely in the water and went under, bubbles of laughter trailing in her wake, while Unar stood, stock-still, trying not to picture Aoun’s so-called fine, fleshy fruit. She didn’t want to imagine it reaching up inside of her. It was indeed bigger than others she’d seen. She knew that, like monkey’s parts, men’s grew bigger in preparation for mating. That was a slightly stomach-turning thought. She had sworn to Audblayin not to try it, and she didn’t want to try it.

A kiss, though. That would be safe. A kiss would break no oaths. Being held by Aoun might not be too much of a transgression, either. But Unar didn’t serve the love goddess, Oxor. This was Audblayin’s emergent.

“You spoke of Old Gods, Hasbabsah,” Unar said. She hoped her voice sounded normal. She hoped the old slave, behind her, couldn’t read her thoughts from her body language. Even if she had, who would she tell? Hasbabsah would never return to the upper levels of the Garden. It was a mean thought.

“I did speak of them, Warmed One.”

“You mentioned their bones. When I stole those chimera cloths from the princess of Odelland, there were broken bones inside of them.”

Unar had found more bits after she’d left the palace, and had shaken the old, yellowed fragments into the forest. They’d fallen quickly out of sight. Old bones weren’t what she’d wanted to give to Odel as tribute. The chimera skin was the prize.

Or so she had thought.

“Chimera skin keeps its magic for many hundreds of years,” Hasbabsah said quietly. “I know the cloths you speak of. I was there when my mistress hid them under the floor. The cloth shields magic-imbued objects from one another. She did not want them interfering with the bone-magic of the bed.”

“The platform? That was bone? It was too big.”

“It was a neck bone of the Old Gods.”

“How could something so big be raised from Floor without any enemies noticing?”

“You are young. Understorians do not always raid Canopy. In hungry times, they trade. In prosperous times, they buy back captured slaves. That bed was once part of a Floorian place of worship. Understorians carried it up to Canopy, to purchase the lives of their loved ones.”

Unar was astonished.

“I’ve never heard of slaves being bought back.”

“These are not times of prosperity.”

“You must have hoped. When you were first captured. You must have hoped they’d bring something like that floating bed and buy you back with it.”