Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(73)
The notion that she still owned the energy to somehow get her breeches down and urinate off the edge also faded. She’d let loose, uncaring, and the seat of her pants had felt warm for a moment. Eventually, the relentless monsoon had washed the warmth away.
Now songbirds flew down from the bright treetops, entering into the tiny windows of the dovecote. The death-lamps of Airak burned steadily, neither flickering nor waning, though they seemed dimmer as cloud-scattered daylight infiltrated as far as it ever would in Understorey, where the sun never warmed anyone.
Contrary to what Kirrik had said about fasting, cooking smells and men’s voices came from the closed door of the dovecote. More tiny birds fluttered down, wet and bedraggled, to enter the windows, and some of them left, again, flying up towards the light.
At last, the heavy door swung back and Frog’s big eyes peered out at Unar and Kirrik.
“The Master says you may enter and break your fast. But be quiet. ’E is upstairs. Sleepin’.”
Core Kirrik passed the umbrella to Frog and swept immediately past Unar, through the open door. It took Unar’s fogged mind a few more moments to absorb what was happening. She still didn’t move until Frog took her hand and tugged.
“This way.”
“I did what she told me,” Unar said, too loudly, but the world was weird and tilting. “I passed the test.”
“That was not the test,” Frog said. Unar felt as though she’d been flattened by a broken bough. That was terrible news. And the world was tilting even more. Unar lost her balance. Stumbled through the doorway. Her hands and knees found polished floor in place of rough, wet bark.
She had tumbled into a cloakroom. Lit by an Airak-lamp of the nondeadly variety. Unar slowly raised her head to see not only heavy fur cowls and rows of strange boots with separated toes, but unfamiliar weapons with spikes and multiple curving blades.
“Let me help you up, Outer,” said a voice like a belling ox, and Unar realised that one of those pairs of boots was occupied. A man’s broad black hand was extended towards her.
Somebody else from Canopy. Somebody else who has fallen.
“Warmed One,” Unar gasped, grasping the hand, and as it drew her to her feet, she absorbed the rich layers of embroidered silk that covered the man from neck to knees, the way his priceless outer coat was cut off at the elbows to leave his forearms bare, and the scar-like seams where his climbing spines were hidden.
“My One Forest name is Sikakis,” he said. There was grey in his black hair and beard, but his grip was strong and his dark eyes unwavering. “I was Acis, once, a prince of Airakland, but those days are far behind me.”
“You will leave Core Sikakis alone,” Kirrik snapped, unseen, from beyond the cloakroom. “He has no time for you, Nameless. Come here!”
Unar went, stumbling a little. The floor was uneven where the five branches beneath joined one another. Kirrik waited in a room with a round table and sixteen chairs around it, none of them occupied. In the centre of the table, the blue-white light of another lantern overpowered the yellow light from a hearth fire on the right-hand side. To the left-hand side, a writing desk was covered in scrawled-on parchments and the droppings of tiny birds, who sat on rows of perches pecking grain from wooden feeders. Shelves on every wall held leather-bound books, stacks or rolls of skins and paper, and row upon row of stoppered ink bottles and feather quills.
“Is this a library?” Unar asked, bewildered. “A school?” She had expected more weapons. Space for fighting men to train. Cooks to feed the warriors and seamstresses to repair their armour. From the outside, it was a large building.
She had expected something similar to, but on a grander scale than, the three hunters’ abode. Nets, traps, and stored supplies. Was this how the Master and his servants would seek justice? How they would kill the new gods and bring back the old ones? With only one old prince and his black-skirted hag, one clever child and an army of pink parrots and blue wrens to do his bidding? No wonder he had sent Frog to fetch a fallen Gardener.
And no matter how she thought on it, Unar couldn’t see a way for the Master to kill deities who were almost instantly reincarnated. Kill them all at once, and the Old Gods will return, Hasbabsah had said, but gods didn’t stay dead. Everyone knew that.
The Master was mad. But even madmen had tricks that could be learned.
“You are wetting the carpet, Nameless. Stay away from the writings. Stand by the fire.”
Unar obeyed, still uncoordinated and aching. Three pale Understorian men—so there are a few more fighters—came from beyond the bird room, glancing at Unar and dismissing her before saluting Kirrik with their fists to the left side of their chests.
“We will not fail, Core Kirrik,” one of them said.
“So Core Sikakis has already assured me,” Kirrik said drily. “Follow him, now. The Old Gods’ blessings go with you.”
“Shall I quench the lamp for them, Core Kirrik?” Frog asked. Kirrik lifted a finger in assent, and Frog hurried after the men.
Kirrik stared at Unar for what seemed like a long time.
“Well. I suppose I must feed you if the Master’s orders are that you are to be fed. Clearly you are in no condition to feed yourself. Everyone knows Canopians are weak, but I hadn’t expected this.”
You called me strong, Unar thought, not realising she’d spoken aloud until Kirrik answered her impatiently.