Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(8)

The scent of loquat nectar in fuzzy, still-furled flowers and the sound of snoring drew Unar along the dirt path towards the hammocks. Layered, petal-like eaves of the Gardener’s Gathering pavilion sheltered the sleepers from light rain without blocking afternoon sunlight. Streams of water, diverted from the pavilion’s peak over the edge of the Garden nearby, connected the higher platform with one of the pools below. Oos said she hated the waterfalls, because they made her need to pee, but Unar appreciated their ability to mask murmured midnight conversations.

Midnight was well behind her now. She’d spent an hour planting, and her mind was numb, all the magic bled out of her by the task of germinating the gap-axe seeds. In hindsight, it had been a little ambitious, but Unar was accustomed to having a deeper well to draw on than most.

“Did you find the baby?” Oos asked sleepily, invisibly enfolded in her hammock, as Unar tried to climb into the one beside it.

“No.”

Unar’s arms felt like logs. She slipped back to the turf, rested a moment, and then tried again to drag herself, headfirst, into the hammock.

“It was good of you to join the search, Unar.”

“It was stupid of me,” Unar said, her voice muffled by blankets. “Nobody lives who falls.”

“Did you go into Understorey?”

“Yes.”

Oos caught her breath reverently.

“What was it like?”

“Dark.” Unar struggled to turn over, to lie on her back and look through the gap of her cocoon at the underside of the red-painted roof. The hammocks came from Ukakland, where the insect god imbued them with the ability to repel night invaders, but the soft silk lining was something Oos had sewn for her. “The rain was mostly stopped. The moonlight too.”

“Did you meet anybody? Any wild slaves?”

“I met a liar. His name was Edax.”

Oos guffawed.

“He was a liar if he said his name was Edax. That’s the name of the Bringer of Rain’s Bodyguard. Nobody else is allowed to take that name.”

Unar was taken aback by the instant recognition, but she had no energy to ask questions. What did she care, or need to know, about neighbouring gods and their Servants, anyway? Her place was here in the Garden. As a Gardener, she could sense struggling life and strengthen it. Soon enough she would be a Servant and germinate more than just plants; she would help to kindle human life. When she finally became the Bodyguard, the only one to have direct contact with the deity who stayed inside the egg-shaped Temple at all times, she would be able to ask: Had her sister, Isin, been reborn?

For just as the death god dreamed the names of those who passed into the ether, Audblayin dreamed the names of those who returned to be born again.

Oos, in contrast, hadn’t come to the Garden with ambition. She was fifteen years old. Only a year younger than Unar, she was delighted, like a child, by flowers, the feel of soil, and the sight of fish swimming. The daughter of a king’s vizier, she had an extensive knowledge of politics, astronomy, and religion. She’d come to the Garden in pursuit of beauty.

Unar’s mother was an axe maker, her father a fuel finder. Both were stricken, which meant they were free, but just barely. They didn’t own houses, like citizens. They were certainly not internoders, who owned whole sections of trunk between two branches, nor were they crowns, who owned the tops of entire trees. They were neither royalty nor gods.

They still should have found the food somewhere. Somehow. They should have paid tribute to the god Odel, the Protector of Children, so that Isin could live.

Unar would find Isin. New body or old. They would be together again.

As she relaxed in the hammock, she let images of her family’s hovel surround her. Unar’s earliest memory was of a cramped room: a wooden hollow all yellow lamplight and sooty shadow. The rocking and the creaking of the tree sometimes seemed to possess Mother. Her rocking and creaking with baby Isin in the chair moved in time with the great tree, as if their unity was something that might calm the tree in the storm. Little Unar knew that agreeing with Mother, mirroring her, sometimes calmed Mother.

Perhaps Mother thought rocking and creaking would calm the rocking, creaking room. Unar, blanket-wrapped, had crouched by the kettle and ashes a few paces away, mesmerised by the baby’s bright eyes and the puzzlement on the small, unformed face. Isin’s doughy cheek slumped against Mother’s right shoulder like dropped, unfired clay.

Baby’s puzzlement deepened. She vomited a splash of white breast milk onto Mother’s dark shawl. Then her little furrowed brow relaxed. All was well with her. She might as well have laughed with relief. Unar had laughed.

Is something funny? Mother shouted. Are you laughing at me? Here. Take her.

Unar took Isin while Mother rinsed the corner of her shawl in a bucket. Isin’s head wobbled and her inturned, useless feet fell out of her wrap, dragging near the rough, splintered floor. Unar was five years old, almost six, barely tall enough to hold her sister out of the dust. They stared at each other until Isin went cross-eyed and Unar had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing again.

We’ll laugh together, she thought. When you’re big enough. We’ll laugh at all the funny things.

A few months later, though, Isin had fallen, and Unar felt like she would never laugh again.

Oos’s voice, insistent, brought Unar back from her dark recollections.