Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(37)

They hung, and spun, growing gradually still.

“What is the net attached to, Hasbabsah?” Unar asked.

“Probably a plank inserted into the bark of the tree. One of us should climb up to it, check that it is secure, and then pull the others up, one at a time.”

“Oos is on top,” Unar said.

“You’re the stronger climber, Warmed … Unar,” Ylly said.

Silence. Ylly had never been free, yet she had eagerly and instantly grasped their alterations in status.

Unar shivered. Silence, and the darkness, were much deeper here than they had been on any of her forays into Understorey. Of course. She was much, much further down this time. The air was heavier. Mustier. It held more murky memories. The smells of fish and mud, human sweat, wet bark, rot, and crushed fungi were less separable.

“Let me untie the bark-ropes,” Unar said.

“Will you let a slave tell you what to do?” Oos demanded.

“They aren’t slaves here, Oos. This is their home. Their markings are gone. We’re their guests.”

“Mine is not gone,” Hasbabsah grumbled.

“Guests?” Oos protested. “I see neither hearths nor homes!”

“My home was in Nessa,” Hasbabsah said. “It lies below the edge of Odelland. But there can be no leaping between trunks in the monsoon. No crossings from tree to tree, and we cannot stay here for a hundred and fifty days and nights. It may be we will have no choice but to try to return to the Temple.”

“I think there are enough fish here for us to eat for a hundred and fifty days and nights,” Unar said, shrugging to get them away from her neck as her fingers struggled with knots made impossible to untie by the great strain they’d been under. “Be still, everyone. I need to take out my bore-knife. I don’t want to cut the net by accident.”

Everybody went limp and silent again, except for the barkskippers, who plipped, plopped, and flopped desperately. Unar strove to ignore the feel of the fish; it was so dark she couldn’t even see what colour they were. She used her bore-knife to slit the knots by touch and managed to resheathe it without cutting herself.

“Oos, we need to change places.”

“Yes, why not?” Oos answered sharply. “It’s what you’ve been trying to do ever since I was chosen to be a Servant and you were not.”

They struggled, crushed together, to turn over, as if they were a single body. Finally, Unar wrestled Oos underneath her. She scrambled upwards, stepping on already-bruised arms and legs, towards the top of the net.

“I may have to cut it,” she said.

“There should be a solid ring of metal at the top,” Hasbabsah said.

When Unar found it, it was barely the circumference of her hips. She had to breathe out to wriggle through it, and then she was glad for the blackness as her toes rested on the ring. She couldn’t feel dizzy with no indication of the distance to fall.

She could hardly fear for the fate of the net when she couldn’t see how sturdily it was woven. The rope was rough in the palms of her hands. Difficult to climb without magic. There were no knots in it.

“Audblayin keep me,” she murmured.

“Don’t you speak her name!” Oos shouted furiously.

“His name,” Unar said.

She drew herself slowly and steadily upwards.

Before long, the burn in her muscles turned to warnings; her grip would fail fairly soon. She was light, but the rope was wet and her knees couldn’t gain purchase. They couldn’t take any of her weight to give her arms and hands a rest.

She wondered gloomily if there was any plank at all. What if the fisherman who had set the trap was a Canopian, and the rope went hundreds and hundreds of paces up into the sky? But there was an occasional glowworm on the great trunk, and something black made a silhouette against them.

Then her hand knocked the underside of good, solid wood, and she whooped as she looped her legs around it and hung there for a moment. Feeling returned to her blistered hands. Once she was upright, crouching on top of the planks, she explored the landing with her feet and elbows. It was three body lengths long, with a coating of something on top like decomposed leaves, which suggested it had been in place for a while. Where it met the trunk of the tallowwood, there was no vibration.

“It seems strong,” she called down to the others. “Driven in deep. Who’ll come next?”

Oos came next, followed by Ylly. When the three of them were sitting, side by side, on the plank, they helped each other to haul the net up, with Hasbabsah still caught in it with the fish.

“Shall I cut her out?” Unar asked.

“We’ll lose the fish,” Ylly said.

“I’m not hungry,” Oos said petulantly.

“Dayhunters come to the smell of decomposing fish,” Hasbabsah said.

Unar cut up the net, throwing it and the fish in the direction of the river, which was ten or twenty paces around the trunk from where they sat; it was difficult to judge from the sound of it, the fineness of the spray and, again, from the absence of glowworms.

“Will we even see the daylight from down here?” Unar demanded.

“Yes.” Hasbabsah sounded exhausted. “And it is daylight we must wait for. We can go nowhere in the dark.”





TWENTY-FIVE

WITH DAYLIGHT and the part-clearing of storm clouds came the realisation that the coating on the plank was not decomposed leaves.