Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(81)

Attacking you will do no good. Your soul will wait until your body is healed, ready to receive it again.

“Return to your chores, Nameless. There will be no more standing watch. The enemy I saw approaching has been turned to a harmless thread in the carpet beneath my feet. Work hard and learn fast. The time will come when you will be a thread or a tool, and while tools are oiled to keep them sharp, carpets are beaten.”

“Yes, Core Kirrik.”

There can be no half measures. I must destroy your body so completely that your half-demon soul can never return to it.





FORTY-SEVEN

UNAR WAS allowed to use her magic in small ways.

With the blindfold off, she healed the messenger birds when they were injured. She coaxed eggs out of even the smallest of them, bringing tears of laughter to Kirrik’s cold eyes. She made bread from replicated grain and grated fresh-grown aerial-tubers to make porridge. The nonmagical tasks of washing and darning clothes returned some of her old calluses to her hands.

With the blindfold on, she brought great rivers of power into Kirrik’s grasp. She poured her breath into not only the ear bone, but also a cracked tooth and a tailbone as long as her arm. All of them for outcomes that pleased Kirrik; Unar was not permitted to see.

“The bones work best for different purposes,” Frog whispered as Unar used a fragment of broken jaw to sprout seeds for the birds.

Unar nodded grudgingly. The hints Frog slipped to her when Kirrik was out of the room usually made sense. “I felt that. The ear bone is best as a simple amplifier. The tooth works best for splitting and breaking. The tailbone for balance and for healing.”

Frog would not, or could not, answer her questions about breaking through the barrier, but she had healed all of Unar’s sores with Kirrik’s permission. They hadn’t given back the clothes she’d arrived in, but put her instead in loose skirts and shirts with long sleeves that covered her hands and fell to the floor. Unar recognised their function. They were garments unsuited to climbing.

“So,” Frog said softly, with a rare smile, “not so dank and dunderheaded as I thought.”

“The men that went from here, fourteen days ago, with Core Sikakis. Are they bringing back a bone? Or a god?”

Frog’s smile faded.

“You should not—”

“I know. I shouldn’t ask questions. Only remember what I am told.”

Frog swallowed. She looked over her shoulder. Core Kirrik had gone up onto the flat roof to release two birds that were too big for the tiny windows.

“They went to find a claw of the Old God whose essence was stolen by Airak. They say it will work as the lamps do, only the lightnin’ can be directed, and it will not harm the one who holds it. They call it Tyran’s Talon.”

“Who was—”

“You must never say the name of one of the Old Gods,” Frog interrupted, her eyes bulging slightly as if startled by how much she had said. “Core Kirrik would feed me to piranhas if she even guessed that you knew it. Promise me you will not say it, not ever!”

“I promise,” Unar said, but she suspected the name held power; more power than singing the names of the gods and goddesses of Canopy. Could it be her path through the barrier? Or the secret of stealing the power of another? Tyran. The god whose essence was stolen by Airak.

She wished that she knew how to read, for Kirrik might have all of the Old Gods’ names listed somewhere, and if they were forbidden, then they must be a danger to Frog’s mistress somehow. Unar wished she had asked Hasbabsah. The old slave seemed to have known all sorts of things, but it was too late now.

“This tooth, that’s best for splitting and breaking,” Unar murmured. “Couldn’t it be used for war? Couldn’t it be used for breaking a person’s bones into tiny pieces?”

“One person,” Frog admitted. “You could focus its power on a single enemy. It would be time-consumin’. You would be defenceless while you did it. Other soldiers might slay you.” She glanced sharply at Unar. “You must not attack Core Kirrik, Un—I mean, Nameless.”

Unar threw up her hands. The motion, she hoped, concealed the fact that she had slipped the Old God’s tooth into a pocket of her black skirt, wrapped in her blindfold to keep Kirrik from sensing it.

“Why do you keep accusing me?”

“I am not accusin’. I know. You want to kill ’er, but you would not like what would happen if you tried.”

“She told me she can’t be killed. I believe her.” She can’t be killed by an ordinary person, but I’m not ordinary. “I don’t need to kill her.” Only to make Audblayin safe from her.

“Good.”

Kirrik threw open the door to the corridor.

“Enough of that. Men are coming. Four of them. They will need feeding. Go to the kitchen, Nameless.”

Unar was trusted enough to boil oil and cook long slices of aerial-tuber for Kirrik and her frequent visitors without supervision. Men and women came to relay reports or receive instructions, all of them wet, muddy, and injured, and went away again with repaired weapons and full bags of food supplies. Their wounds couldn’t be healed, since Unar didn’t love them.

One day, Kirrik had said, laughing, you will love me enough to heal me, Nameless the Outer.

Once, a boy had been brought to have his snake spines put in. Unar hadn’t been allowed to watch, but she’d spotted the leather bag in which the live snakes were stored, hanging by a rope from a roof beam, and some of the women brought identical leather bags with them when they came.