Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(33)

“What are you searching for in the bottom of the pool, Gardener? More new life on the brink of death?”

“Who says I’m searching for anything?”

“Many things fall in. Heavy things. Valuable things. Coins. Jewels. Very few can dive deep enough to find them.”

“I’m not diving for treasure. I’m learning to swim.”

“Where’s your teacher?”

Unar started to say that she had none, but then her mood darkened.

“They took her away from me,” she said. “She was a slave.”

“I can teach you.”

“I’m not allowed to learn the powers of other goddesses and gods.”

“It’s not magic.” He put his warm hand on her bare shoulder and stroked down her spine. “It’s only movement. A thrilling kind of movement. A secret kind.”

Unar grew heated at his touch, in the place, low in her belly, where her magic should have been; she met his laughing eyes and wondered if he was still talking about swimming. She wanted to learn from him but felt too much at a disadvantage here, in Ehkisland, where his powers worked but hers didn’t.

“If it’s not magic,” she said, “you can teach me in Understorey.”

“There’s a pool close by the barrier,” he said without hesitation. “These final few weeks of spring are weeks of relative safety. When the monsoon begins and rivers run down the great trees, the enemy warriors of Understorey are confined to their dwellings. They’ll already be confined, in anticipation. But we couldn’t stay there for very long at one time, or we’d risk being barred from Canopy forever.”

“Would you miss your goddess so very much?”

“She’d miss me. Three men tried to drown her today.”

“Did they?” Unar turned so his hand fell away from her lower back. She’d liked having it there. Oos must be right about her oaths. If they hadn’t broken by now, when she went with Edax below the barrier again, they would surely tear in two. She’d crack like an egg full of blood.

“I needed only to keep the men under,” he said, “after they realised she couldn’t be drowned. They tried to let go of her. To give up their attempted murder. I pulled them down and fixed them by their foot bones to the bottom, next to all the others who have tried to harm her. Their finger bones wave in the current like water-weeds.”

“They do?” Unar was fascinated. “In which pool?”

“Not this one,” Edax said. “In the great fig-pool where my goddess dreams. In Ehkis’s emergent, the Temple of the Bringer of Rain. But that’s not where we’ll go.”





TWENTY-ONE

“I CAN’T help you work tonight, Ylly,” Unar said, two weeks later.

She had to shout to be heard over the roaring wind and rumbling of the storm. This wild night belonged to Ehkis and to Airak. The monsoon was very close. The Gardeners wouldn’t know for sure until the storm broke. If the rain stopped when morning came, then this storm was but a precursor, and the true storm was still to come. If it didn’t stop after a day, they could be almost certain it would continue for five months. Unar didn’t even bother to try to stay dry. She’d left her sandals behind at her hammock, along with her waterproof leaf-jacket. It didn’t matter. The driving rain was blood-warm.

Ylly said nothing. She’d said nothing since the day Sawas was taken away from the Garden. Unar pressed her seed porridge portion into the older woman’s hands.

“Take my supper. You’re losing weight. I’ll help you again tomorrow.”

Ylly took the porridge and turned away.

Unar dashed across the bridge, not worried about being seen. Who but Ylly would be out in this weather? She went to the Gate, locked hours before, and early, by Aoun, and pushed it open a body’s width, boring a hole through the lock with her magic and sealing it again behind her with the rich scent of thirsty soil thick in her nostrils.

The water above her, below her, to both sides of her, made her feel like raising her arms, winglike, and swimming through the air. She laughed with the joy of it as she flitted over the slippery, winding paths towards Ehkisland.

When she came to the lowest branch over the Understorian border, with the pool she and Edax practiced in yawning black and tantalising below, she laid her wet red tunic and green trousers over the peeling bark and stretched her arms above her head.

“Wait for me, Audblayin,” she said. “Keep your gifts until my return.”

She dived smoothly, several body lengths, down into the pool. Somewhere in midair, she lost her magic, but she was used to that sensation now. It would be there when she came back up to get her clothes.

Thunder seemed to shake the great trees. The myrtle pool quivered, hissing where rain sheeted into it. Unar swam confidently to the edge. She hardly needed Edax now. Only there was something about his gaze on her, about his wiry arms and clever fingers, that drew her back again.

She climbed out of the pool, stood in the warm rain, and waited for him.

For the longest time, he didn’t come. A twinge of worry twisted her gut. Had an attempt on the goddess killed Edax instead? Perhaps he’d forgotten this night was a lesson night.

Hands landed lightly on the wet crown of her head, and she looked up, getting rain in her eyes. Edax hung from a branch by his talons, above and behind her. When she turned to him, their lips were level. His hands were at the back of her head now, pressing her forward, so that their mouths met.