Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(32)

The unseen assistants left the room, but Unar knew who they were even before she saw them wading in the muck, one hand each on the outer wall of the Temple, the other holding their robes away from the rotted leaves that their sandals sank into. She thought about running away from them, but it would only have postponed her punishment.

“Oh, Unar,” Oos said, lip trembling in the light that came from the window.

Aoun said nothing.

They slung her arms over their shoulders so that she was between them. It seemed like a group embrace until their combined magic groped around inside of her, seized hers like a weed, and pulled it out by the roots.

Unar did cry, then. She had no strength to speak or to stand. Those she had once called friends supported her weight between them. They walked across the moat without sinking, carrying her all the way to the loquat grove, and laid her down in her hammock. The lorikeets roused, but none of the other Gardeners so much as raised their heads.

She was still crying long after they left her alone.





TWENTY

BLOSSOMS RAINED on Unar’s bent back that spring.

As the season drew to a close, the first stirring of her magic sprouted up again. She’d spent those months on her knees, weeding the orchid garden, and the sensation was strange enough for her to cradle her midriff, mouth open in surprise and relief. She had wondered if it would ever return, so deep and dark had the empty places seemed.

There was nobody for her to share her excitement with. Nobody to tell. As the weather warmed, Ylly still accepted her help in silence. The other Gardeners had given up trying to get to know her, both in response to her brusqueness and in the full knowledge that she had been drained as punishment for trying to spy on Temple proceedings.

It was just enough magic for her to unlock the Gate.

For the first time in a long time, Unar left the Garden.

Her first thought was to find the House of Epatut, to check that Sawas and baby Ylly weren’t being ill-used. Maybe if she brought news of them to old Ylly, she’d be forgiven.

But she didn’t know where it was, and she didn’t want to draw attention to herself by asking for directions from strangers. Her second thought was to practice swimming by herself. She couldn’t do it in the moat, and she couldn’t do it in the Garden pools without the slaves seeing.

Ehkisland. The home of the rain goddess received more rain than any other part of Canopy. There were hundreds of pools, claimed by no one.

Unar crossed the border at the Falling Fig.

She found a suitably desolate pool just as a light rain began to fall. It wasn’t quite yet time for the summer monsoon, but many dry-season shops and dwellings had been shuttered in anticipation. Some of the drizzle penetrated past the leafy roof over the pool, but most collected on the leaves and fell, slightly delayed, as fat drips, heavy with dust and dead insects.

Very little light came down from the high paths lit by the lightning god, but it was enough that Unar could see the complex and hypnotising patterns formed by the drops. Tiny fish and frogs came to eat the dead insects. Unar made herself look at them with determination.

Eilif had sensed her approach because of her magic. She must learn to swim without it. She was not beaten, would never be beaten.

Unar disrobed, keeping her loincloth and breast bindings as before. She put her toe in the water.

“She’s not in that one,” an oddly familiar voice said.

Without her magic and without proximity to the Garden, people could creep up on her unawares, but this man, she suspected, could creep up on anyone he wanted to. She looked up and around for him but didn’t withdraw her toe.

“It’s you,” she said steadily. “Edax. The Bodyguard who doesn’t sleep.”

He walked, upside down, along the underside of a branch too small to form a safe path in its own right. Talons didn’t need to dig into the bark. In his own niche, he walked where he wanted. His long black hair hung like moss. The tear-scores on his cheeks bunched as he smiled, turning his brown skin to polished tigereye.

Upside down, the effect of his bared teeth was gruesome.

“It’s you,” he said. “The little Gardener who wanders away from safe places.”

“Doesn’t the blood rush to your head?”

“No. This is part of my gift from the goddess. There is no up or down underwater.”

“Can you fly, then?”

“Oh, no. I may be owl-footed, but I have no wings. Flying is for the Bodyguard of Orin, Queen of Birds, and the Bodyguard of Audblayin, Waker of Senses.”

“I never saw him fly,” Unar said scornfully. “Probably because he was too fat.”

“Was he fat, then?”

“Oh, yes.”

Edax laughed in his low, rich voice. He was much older than Aoun and his face more expressive. His nose was sharper, his cheekbones were more prominent, and he had a shorter, squarer jaw. When he walked to the tree trunk, set his bare bird-foot against it, and pressed, hard, as though realigning himself horizontally, the weapons at his belt and over his shoulders swung vertical, popping out of his clothes like uncurling creepers.

He strode down the trunk, set himself upright on the path beside her and approached with interest. She tried not to look at his feet. They were the only part of him she didn’t like, because girls should not be attracted to birds, but the rest of him was so attractive.