Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(29)

“I still hope it,” Hasbabsah said.

The baby woke.

“Come, Sawas,” Hasbabsah called as the young mother surfaced again. “It is feeding time for baby Ylly.” She put her little finger into the baby’s mouth to mollify it for a moment. “There are no spells to stop the menstrual cycles of slaves. The Garden can always use more hands. How convenient for them that we multiply.”





SEVENTEEN

THAT NIGHT, Unar climbed down to the pool for her first lesson.

It was different in darkness. She couldn’t see its depths. Shapes she thought looked like fish in the moonlight were the long, shining leaves of neighbouring trees.

“Sawas?” she whispered as loudly as she dared.

Streams of dirty wash water falling from the edges of the Garden splashed into hollows that were lined with the purifying pith of fiveways fruit. The pith strained and sweetened the water before it joined the main pool. Unar paced along the path. Somewhere below her, a baby cried.

The slaves slept in small hollows in the branches. Some of them would have smoke holes bored through to the branch-top paths, but Unar couldn’t smell any smoke. It was a mild winter and a still evening.

“Sawas,” she whispered again.

“I’m here, Warmed One,” Sawas said cheerfully, scrambling up from underneath onto the path. “Let’s go to the pool.”

She had something like a wooden turtle shell on her back. When they reached the water, where an Airak-lit brazier was reflected, blue-white and blazing, Unar saw that the shell was a shallow, smooth, baby’s sleeping-bowl, one that could be rocked with a foot to settle a bundled child. Sawas set her clothes beside it.

“Are you cold?” Sawas asked. “Are you going to swim with your clothes on? They won’t keep you warm, and they’ll grow heavy. It’s dangerous.”

“Aren’t you going to show me some swimming movements first? Can’t I practice the movements? Build the correct muscles?”

“You can’t build the correct muscles without the resistance of the water.”

Unar took her clothes off. There was nobody to see her but Sawas. Had Aoun looked at her, the day she’d woken in the Temple? Or on the day of Audblayin’s death? Or had he only looked forward, towards the Temple? She should’ve only looked at the Temple, too. Maybe then she’d be a Servant, like him.

“Hold the bowl with both hands,” Sawas said. “It floats. It’ll hold you up. Don’t let go. The first action you must practice is kicking. Don’t use your magic.”

Unar’s skin crawled as she slid into the cool water. She gritted her teeth to stop from reaching for the power and found that her body did float without it, after a fashion; feet deep down and flailing, her back bent and her eyes upwards, clutching the wooden bowl to her chest.

“Your teeth are chattering,” Sawas observed, laughing. “You must be cold. Look what happens to you, away from sunlight. Gardeners must be a little bit like lizards. You can only move about in the heat of the day.”

“It’s nothing like that,” Unar said. “I feel like I’m falling!”

Sawas swam around her in circles.

“Everybody is falling,” she said. “Everybody grows old and dies and is born again. The water will catch you. The water will hold you up.”

Unar waited. She floated. The fear ebbed from her.

“I don’t like fish,” she said at last, to break the silence.

“I’ve never tasted one,” Sawas replied.





EIGHTEEN

IN THE morning, Unar had barely started work when Ylly flew out of nowhere at her.

“They’ve taken her away to sell,” Ylly sobbed, her arms wrapped around Unar’s knees. “Sawas and the baby. They must have seen you. She’s being punished because of you!”

“Quiet, slave!” Unar hissed, in case anyone was close by, but a quick flick of her magic showed they were alone by the watercress beds. “Nobody saw me with Sawas, Ylly.”

Ylly’s whole body quaked.

“Hasbabsah sent me a bird with a message. At daybreak, a Servant went below to grow a new room in Sawas’s hollow. A separate sleeping room for the baby. Sawas and the Servant spoke. Hasbabsah couldn’t overhear them. But then the Servant took Sawas and baby Ylly away, out of the Garden, in the direction of the market. Where else could they be going?”

“Maybe the Servant needed a slave to carry her basket?”

“Then why take the baby?”

Ylly was frantic. Unar didn’t know what to say to calm her. Her magic warned her that others were coming.

“Don’t shake me,” she said. “If anybody sees you, they’ll sell you as well. Listen, you said that Hasbabsah couldn’t be sold because she knew the secrets of the Garden. Doesn’t Sawas know any secrets?”

“No! She’s always stayed below!” Ylly released Unar and crumpled to the earth, burying her face in her hands.

“I’ll find out what’s happening,” Unar said in a low voice. “Oos will tell me. My friend. You remember her. She’s a Servant, now.”

Ylly shook her head.

“Your friend,” she repeated huskily, hopelessly, “she was the Servant who took my daughter and granddaughter away. Oos, the vizier’s daughter.”