Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(40)
Unar brushed him as she passed. His thin, stick-body was completely unyielding; even his belly was hard with muscle. It was like brushing past a sapling. She stared at the rushing water of the vertical river. The ability to swim wouldn’t protect her if she slipped from the platform and was washed down to Floor.
She seized the platform railing and dragged herself through the flow. Her feet left the floor. The weight of water was like hammers on her head. She kicked, hard, and found the platform again, propelling herself towards the tree trunk just as her fingers lost their grip.
The tree trunk was hollowed away. She fell, gasping like a landed fish, into a room lit only by luminous fungi.
Men’s boots and cloaks hung from hooks in the circular wall. Shelves held sacks and woven items unidentifiable in the gloom. Wet underclothes were draped over a drying rack, and Unar hesitated before plunging into the black corridor that was apparently the only way for her to go—were there hairy, naked Understorian warriors inside? Esse had said that they would stay with him until the rain stopped, but how many fellow trappers, fishers, and hunters shared his quarters?
She couldn’t use her magic to find out. The place where it had been no longer felt hollow. It felt like nothing, like before she’d felt the seed inside her for the first time. Unar knew that if she tried to enter Canopy, the border would throw her back as violently as the princess’s curtains had.
Before she could start towards the corridor, Oos and Hasbabsah crashed into her back. They sprawled together on the floor; it was unpolished, and splinters found their way into Unar’s face. She stumbled into a pile of sacks and sat there, trying to work the wood out from under her skin, swearing until she remembered Edax’s tear-shaped scars and became distracted by wondering if their making had been painful for him to endure.
“I think I will just sleep here,” Hasbabsah wheezed, staying where she was, facedown on the floor.
Ylly exploded out of the curtain of river water, spluttering and shaking.
Esse came after her with his arms full of boards. He narrowly skirted the slumped shape of Hasbabsah and leaned the boards against the shelves, shaking his short, dark hair like a wet tapir. He helped the groaning old slave to her feet and led her down the corridor without a word.
At the end of it, he opened a door to a second room filled with heat and light. It smelled powerfully of spices and smoked fish.
Unar was irresistibly drawn with the others, single file, towards it.
“Have we leave to sit at your table?” Hasbabsah asked.
“Our table is yours while the bucket fills,” said a deeper, heartier voice than Esse’s.
When Unar reached the doorway, she saw a stone hearth bigger than a slave’s bedroom. It dominated the far wall. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen so much precious stone in one place. Perhaps they had traded it from Floor. This big room was as dry, open, and bright as the first space had been dark, cramped, and dank. A bored chimney carried away the fragrant smoke from the fire, but not before it passed through three tiers of gutted river fish on iron spits. Crates of dried broadleaves sat to the left of the hearth; dried, wrapped meat portions filled cloth sacks to the right. There were embroidered hangings on either side of the hearth, too, that might have been decorative or covered entryways to other corridors.
In the centre of the room, a coarse cross-section of quandong wood served as a table, its surface broad enough to host a demon sacrifice. The slab held dark, dried blood in its crevices, as though it had been used for butchering before.
Two men sat at the table, at the point farthest from the fire. Thankfully, neither was completely naked; they wore short waist-wraps and nothing else. One was an enormous, red-haired brute with a beard and pale arms patterned with inked beasts. The other was small with a smooth chin, yellow hair, and clear eyes the colour of clouds.
“I said that our table is yours,” the brute repeated in a gentler voice, and Hasbabsah sank into a four-legged chair by the fire with a relieved groan. Ylly went to stand slightly behind her, her back to the flames, shaking her wet hair and looking wary.
Oos gripped Unar’s hand tightly. They stood, rigid, by the door as Esse closed it behind them.
“Some ugly-looking fish you have caught, Esse,” said the yellow-haired man, his expression curious.
“Don’t kill us,” Oos blurted at once. “We can pay you. Just these two slaves for now, but later, when you take us back to Canopy, we’ll pay more.”
“I see no slaves here.” The yellow-haired man looked amused.
“Don’t skin us alive. Don’t throw us to demons. The goddess we serve—”
“Girl child,” Hasbabsah interrupted, “these three brothers have offered us all monsoon-right by asking that we sit at their table. You answer them with insult. They have pledged to share food and water with you until the monsoon is ended. It means that if food runs low before the rains stop, we will all starve together before they throw you to the demons.”
“Your gods and goddesses have no power here,” Esse said, opening a bag of fresh fish before the fire.
“I’ve made no pledge not to throw her to the demons,” Ylly said.
“We will not run low on food,” the deep-voiced, red-haired man boomed, leaning back from his crumb-covered, empty plate. “Introductions are in order. But not before all are seated.”
He turned unblinking brown eyes on Unar and Oos until they shuffled, still hand in hand, over to an empty pair of stools. Then he stared at Ylly until she sat down, too.