Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(31)

“I must have a son this time,” Wife-of-Epatut said to Unar, who had sensed her coming and met her at the Gate. “Please, Gardener. Lead me to the Temple.”

Unar tried to take the basket, but Wife-of-Epatut resisted.

“I must carry the offering,” she said. “I must show my humility to Audblayin. I couldn’t carry the last child that she gave to me. The fault must be mine.”

She was a wide-built woman with an unblemished brow, colourful silks woven into her hair to advertise her trade, and a bosom that caused the front of her gown to fall a foot-length in front of the rest of her body.

“It’s not your fault,” Unar said. She tried to think of a way to ask about Sawas, about baby Ylly, but Wife-of-Epatut’s protuberant, pain-filled, expectant eyes, turned in the direction of the Temple, and she began to lead the way towards the shallow ford where penitents crossed the fish-filled moat.

Unar glared at the water that she wasn’t allowed to trespass through as Wife-of-Epatut waded awkwardly onward, struggling under the weight of the basket. Aoun came out of the egg-shaped Temple to meet her. He looked even taller than the last time Unar had seen him, and there was two days’ growth along his jaw as though he’d been too busy with his new and very important training to take the time to shave.

Wife-of-Epatut allowed him to take the basket.

As night fell, Unar stayed standing by the ford. She should have retreated to the loquat grove, but she didn’t care about being reprimanded. Aoun emerged, carrying his Gatekeeper’s lantern. He walked across the surface of the water without sinking, his magic more luminous than the lantern. Unar hadn’t seen any of the Servants do such a thing before. His sandals were dry.

“Go to bed, Gardener,” he said wearily.

She fell in beside him.

“Have you helped her?” Unar wanted to know. “Have you guaranteed a son to her, who dropped one daughter and miscarried another?”

“We’ve done nothing yet. Wife-of-Epatut gives tribute. She prays to Audblayin.”

“Where is Audblayin?”

“It doesn’t matter where. She hears our prayers.”

“He hears them, you mean. He hears them, even though he’s a screaming infant. That’s ridiculous. We both know he hears nothing until he comes of age.”

“What do you want, Unar?”

“Show me what you’re going to do to Wife-of-Epatut. How is it that you make a woman more fertile? Is it the same as plants? How is it that you choose the baby’s sex?”

“That’s for Servants to know.”

Unar shot a sideways glance at him as they walked, but his expression was blank. She couldn’t tell if his word choice reflected her rudeness to Oos in the grass plot.

“Unless somebody pushes Servant Eilif off the edge of the Garden, I will never be a Servant!”

“Is that something you have considered? Pushing Servant Eilif off the edge of the Garden?”

“Of course not.”

He hesitated within arm’s reach of the Gate. “Go to bed, Unar. Go on.”

She left him, fuming, but she didn’t go to bed. Instead, she crept back to her old listening post in the pomegranate bushes, directly across the moat from the treatment room where Oos had once cured her tiredness.

There were voices. Wife-of-Epatut’s voice. The words were indiscernible, but the sounds drifted out of the round, open windows in the white egg of the Temple.

Unar stripped off her robe, leaving her loincloth and her breast-bindings in place. She was too angry to care about fish or drowning. She was going to see, at last, the Servants’ way. She would be tutored whether her tutors wanted her or not.

The water was icy, as it hadn’t been during daylight. So high, and exposed to winds that normally broke against the green roof of Canopy, it was probably the coldest water in all the land; it was rumoured to have frozen, once, many centuries ago, when Audblayin had fallen to Floor but not been killed, so that he was the farthest he could be from the Temple and not have his spirit returned to a body that was closer.

Unar tried to think of a seed in warm earth. It was spring, after all. She convinced her body that it wasn’t cold. Using a fraction of her magic, she summoned a raft of watercress to hold on to and floated across, not high and dry as Aoun had done, but neck-deep and gasping.

When she reached the little island, she crouched on the tiny ledge of rotted leaves under the window, arms around her knees, shivering and listening.

“I’m so afraid, Servant Eilif,” Wife-of-Epatut said. “And I’m tired of being afraid of my husband’s wrath. But if this doesn’t work, I don’t think I could bear to try again.”

“It will work,” Eilif said comfortingly. “Lie down, please.”

There were sounds of clothes being shifted and feet shuffling. Unar forced her frigid body to uncurl. She had to look through the window if she was to see with eyes of power the procedure that Eilif was about to perform.

When she peered over the edge of the open window, Eilif stood there, waiting calmly. Her eyes met Unar’s. Her hood and cloak blocked Unar’s view of anyone else in the room.

Unar’s rage died. She felt like crying, again.

“Wait only a moment, Wife-of-Epatut,” Eilif said without turning. Without blinking. “My assistants must see to a troublesome weed that is growing by this window. Go.”