Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(80)

I won’t ask what happened to Marram. I will stay. I will learn.

“Did you sleep well, Nameless the Outer?”

That chill. That inhuman quality.

“Yes, Core Kirrik.”

“You have not used Audblayin’s powers. You make no move to strike me, though you know what vines can do. Can you be trusted to meet the Master now, Nameless?”

Unar crawled in an awkward scrabble to kiss the hem of Kirrik’s skirts.

“If you think I should, Core Kirrik.”

Kirrik laughed.

“Yes, I think you should. Come inside. Follow me.”

Unar went on hands and knees after her, as far as the long, dark corridor, where she used her hands against the walls to gain her feet and stagger after Kirrik towards the blocked spiral staircase.

Today, there was no barrier.

Kirrik led Unar up the stairs to the second storey of the dovecote. Unar kept her eyes lowered; surely they would be met by the sight of a carpet even finer than the ones below. The upper apartment must be spacious and luxurious, if the Master lived here all alone. In the time since Unar had arrived, she didn’t think he had left it.

Or maybe he was a monster in shape as well as deed. Maybe he lived in a morgue, surrounded by the body parts of men butchered to feed him.

Unar wanted to laugh. She and Frog would have to leave Kirrik as soon as possible, and the humour came from knowing Frog must’ve had the same thoughts on arrival at the three hunters’ home. Yet Frog hadn’t hesitated when Unar precipitated their early departure. She’d had a plan. Unar would have to formulate a plan, too, in case she was forced to flee before learning what she needed to know, gaining what she needed to gain.

Spines. A way to pass through the barrier. A way to guard my own strength. Three things. Then I’ll take Frog and go.

Then she saw what was in the single, long room that filled the second storey. Packed into turpentine shavings like clothing being protected from pests were the bodies of men. Some were bundled for cold weather or wet, and some, like Marram, nearly naked. His wounds were healed, and the flesh of his chewed leg regrown, and he lay, supine, as if sleeping, though his chest didn’t rise or fall. His bone amulet was missing.

Hundreds of men, as many as two or three Canopian kings might command, stored as thoughtlessly as Esse stored coils of rope. Waiting.

Where’s the Master? Unar almost asked before remembering she must speak only when spoken to. Keeping her eyes lowered, she stared at Marram.

“Touch him,” Kirrik commanded. Unar put her hand obediently to Marram’s wrist and found it warm, but with no pulse. Wait. She felt a single, slow beat. The youngest of the hunters slept as a tree bear sleeps through the monsoon. Kirrik hadn’t killed him, after all.

One less warrior, Frog had said, when the time comes.

But Frog and Unar knew the three brothers had gone into exile because they wouldn’t fight against Canopy. Upon waking, Marram would refuse to serve and would die as quickly then as he would’ve before the dovecote, if Frog hadn’t intervened for Unar’s sake.

Four things. Four things I need before I can leave. Spines. A way through the barrier. Magical defences. The spell to wake Marram. I can’t leave him behind.

“You look tired, Nameless,” Kirrik said, smiling unpleasantly. “Will you not lie down beside him and rest?”

“Core Kirrik, will I wake again, if I do?”

Was the room enchanted, or perhaps the wood shavings? Unar could have extended her magical senses to find out, if she dared. Her throat remained raw from the strangling vines and still stung from the kiss of Frog’s knife, however, and she didn’t know what would trigger Kirrik’s cruelty.

“I can wake any of them, at any time,” Kirrik said, “but of course you are not a block of fish fat, to store with my other supplies for war. You will be my trained chimera, unless I find that you cannot be tamed.”

“I can be tamed, Core Kirrik,” Unar said, horrified to hear a whine in her voice she hadn’t put there intentionally. “I can.”

“We will see,” Kirrik said, gliding away back down the spiral stairs.

Unar looked down at Marram.

“I can,” she said again.

I don’t care about Floorians, Understorians, or Canopians. But I won’t leave him.

“What was that, Nameless? Did you say something?”

Kirrik had halted with her hand on the banister.

“No, Core Kirrik. Only … what about the Master? Where is he?”

“Where, indeed.” Kirrik’s mouth opened wide with glee. She howled with a flaying laughter, the sound of which penetrated Unar’s magical senses, dissolving her body and tossing the soul that remained up and down on the waves of it. Realisation struck Unar: Kirrik was a woman somehow fused with a demon. The soul of the chimera, accustomed to floating nearby while the desouled fleshy shell transformed, was bound to Kirrik’s soul, keeping it in this bodily plane even when she was fatally wounded. Teacher Eann’s lesson, previously disbelieved, popped into Unar’s head. A female chimera lays two eggs into her own mouth, then transforms into a male. During the transformation, the creature’s soul hovers; it does not go into the ether. It waits until its new body is ready to receive it again.

Kirrik’s laughter cut off. Unar returned to herself.

“You are the Master,” she whispered. “Your skill is that you cannot be killed.”