Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(74)

“Your magic is strong. Your body is pathetic. A weak body cannot sustain even the strongest magic for very long.”

Kirrik’s expression changed then. Unar was so tired she wasn’t sure what she was seeing. Was it lust? Was it the hunger with which Oos had looked on Unar’s bare breasts, all those endless hours and days and years ago in the Garden when Unar had expected to become a Servant of Audblayin?

Before she could be sure, Kirrik’s face closed over again. She opened a brown earthen pot and took out some speckled, grainy bread. Another jar held a bright blue jam that Unar didn’t recognise; at some point she found the jam-smeared slice in a bowl before her and tasted it, sour and strong.

“You will sleep by the fire for now,” Kirrik said. “The Master will not be pleased if you become ill.”

“Frog,” Unar said. She meant to say, Frog can heal me, if I become ill, but then she remembered that it was her own power that Frog used, and perhaps if she became ill, Frog would not be able to use it. Frog said love was needed for healing. And Frog’s advice was never to love.

Frog’s lying. She’s good at it. She’s cunning.

Yet Unar actually had no idea what Frog’s magic was capable of; for all she knew, Frog had shown her a lie when she had shown her by magic that they shared a blood mother and a blood father.

“Yes, yes. You will see Frog the Outer again soon.”

Kirrik stripped away Unar’s clothes. She hung them on the fire screens to dry. Unar, who had no way of knowing if more strangers would come out of the corridors, did not resist. Couldn’t resist. The strange expression on Kirrik’s face returned. Perhaps it was envy. Perhaps the pale woman wished her skin were darker, sun-warmed; perhaps she wished for Unar’s youth.

No, she had called Unar’s body pathetic. It couldn’t be that.

“Go to sleep, Nameless,” Kirrik said.

*

WHEN UNAR woke, she couldn’t be sure how much time had passed. The great dovecote, sheathed in the sound of rain, was quiet but for the flutters, pecks, and toenail clicks of birds. The fire had been banked, and there was no sign of Core Kirrik.

Unar went to the side table where the brown earthen pot rested and was disappointed to discover there was no more bread. A scroll on the writing desk caught her eye, and she unrolled it.

Her parents had rarely allowed her to go to the school, and she’d never learned letters, but the page had some ink drawings on it, not just the tooth marks she knew were words. A black human silhouette with a silver-blue halo around her head was linked by fine lines to three more silhouettes. One had a silver-blue orb hovering above his palm. One had silver-blue tears tracked down his cheeks.

The third figure had owl feet and was linked by another tenuous ink line to a recently drawn figure with a green leaf growing out of her mouth. Tooth-mark letters covered both sides of the line, still powdery with paperbark residue from being blotted.

“Can you read, Nameless?” Kirrik asked from right behind Unar, and she jumped, letting the scroll roll up of its own accord.

“No, Core Kirrik.”

Kirrik’s lip curled.

“Pity. You could have helped with the correspondence. You are too old to learn letters.”

“I’m not too old to learn anything.”

“You appear too old to learn to hold your tongue. I have had enough of your whining, Nameless. It will not do. From now on, you will speak when spoken to, is that understood?”

“Yes, Core Kirrik.” Unar gave the scroll a last, regretful look. The Master, the apparent leader of these One Forest people, must be writing letters to Canopy to try and set up a meeting of gods such as Kirrik had described. Probably demanding to know why Canopians could pass freely through the barrier and return while Understorians could not.

Servant Eilif surely would have answered thus: that Understorians were monsters, violent and simple, fit only for slavery. That they must be kept out of Canopy for the same reason that demons were kept out, to protect the civilised people of the city. Unar knew this to be untrue, and if she knew it, then the gods must know it, too. Perhaps Servant Eilif would also say, as Unar had once believed, that Understorians had their own supernatural protectors. But that was also wrong—the dark parts of the forest held no gods, only their old bones. There must be another reason.

Yet Audblayin would not meet, or correspond, with someone like Core Kirrik. The Servants would not allow it. Maybe that was why Unar was important to One Forest. She would be the link between those above and those below the barrier. Core Sikakis, though he had been a prince of Airakland, clearly had no wish to return to Canopy. That had to be why they were willing to teach her what they knew.

“Why do you think you are here, Nameless?” Kirrik asked, catching the glance at the scroll, seeming to read Unar’s thoughts a second time.

“To be used, Core Kirrik.”

Kirrik’s laughter, this time, was so wild, beautiful, and powerful that it was all Unar could do not to grasp it and weave it into something, anything. Yet at the same time, she recognised that nothing of Audblayin could be fashioned from Kirrik’s voice. Branches could not be brought to life. Seeds could not grow. Unar could gain no inkling from the sensation of it of what Kirrik’s magic was good for.

“Perfect,” Kirrik said. “How perfect you are. And gifted, as Frog promised you would be. Even considering the bone, you travelled here quickly. I will use you, Nameless. It has been a long time since I had a Canopian adept of my own to use. Greatly preferable to lurking by the border and snatching whatever song or speech I could.”