Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(82)
Unar exited the kitchen, balancing four plates of fried tuber, to find that Core Sikakis and his three pale henchmen had returned. They glanced at her as she passed the room where they slung personal belongings, stoppered gourds of drink, feathered talismans, and fire starters onto their bunks. Then they followed her back to the writing room and sat down at the table.
“Will you take bia?” Unar asked as she put plates in front of them.
“No,” Sikakis said, inclining his head in apparent thanks at the offer. Two weeks of new growth around the edges of the previously neat beard had shaped a sharp doorway around the bemused set of his lips. His eyes were bloodshot.
“You do not have it,” Kirrik surmised.
“One who walks in the grace of Airak does not have it,” Sikakis agreed between bites of fried tuber. “As you guessed, the Talon is kept in the Earth-House of Hundar. It’s unguarded during the monsoon, but only because the entire structure is flooded. We are all swimmers, but even Garrag could barely set his fingers to the lintel of the gate before being driven back to the surface to take a breath.”
The man he had indicated, robed in linen with long arms and hands like plates, lifted his eyes from his fried tuber long enough to mutter, “Magic is needed, Core Kirrik.”
“But not the magic of Audblayin,” Sikakis added, glancing at Unar.
Unar froze in place, petrified by the treacherous thoughts whirling in her head.
Kirrik needs Edax.
“You need the magic of Ehkis,” she heard herself say distantly. “You need a Servant of the Bringer of Rain.”
“The Servants of Ehkis can’t be pushed from the roads of Canopy.” Sikakis argued. “They stick to branches like snakes. Our people in Canopy would have no chance to get near them, much less shake them down here for us to gather like fruit. Ehkis’s adepts do not stay in her emergent, either. How would we find one to snare?”
Kirrik massaged her forehead. Her eyes, when they fell on Unar, glittered. “Nameless, you show improvement, but you are not yet one of us.”
“With respect, what do you mean, Core Kirrik?” Sikakis asked her.
“Nameless has associated in the past with one called Edax, the rain goddess’s Bodyguard. She has boasted about his ability to stay underwater for extended periods, without the use of magic.”
“I haven’t boasted—” Unar said.
“Now she seeks to trade.”
“Dank,” Frog mouthed from her place behind Kirrik, holding a pitcher of water. “Dunderhead!”
“What kind of trade?” When Kirrik didn’t answer, Sikakis turned to Unar. “Well, Nameless? What are your demands?”
Unar first looked at Kirrik and then back at Sikakis.
This was a trap. She couldn’t reveal her ambitions.
Or an opportunity. Maybe the only one she would have.
“I want the spines of a warrior,” she said. “I want every question about magic answered that I care to ask. I want my sister’s custody, to go where I please, when I please. Core Kirrik will show me how to overcome attempts to steal my magic. There must be a way. When she wishes a magical task to be completed, she’ll ask me, and I’ll decide whether to comply. Everyone here will call me by my name, Unar, which my mother gave to me.” Unar addressed her final lines to Frog as much as to Kirrik. “She was not much of a mother, but she gave me life, and she gave life to my sister, who is mine to protect now. Not yours.”
Kirrik stared at her with disdain.
“Core Sikakis has listened to you. Now you will listen to me. Do you really think I will let a Canopian child wreck my home with magic she can barely control on the chance that she can deliver a live Bodyguard of renowned alertness and agility? How do you propose to call him? Do you claim to be loved by the formidable Edax, Bodyguard of Ehkis?”
“You pretend to scorn the idea of love,” Unar said, “but even blindfolded, I see what’s between you and Core Sikakis. I served the Waker of Senses, the Giver of Life. The prince has been your lover, and these three men are your sons, though not by him.” Frog’s chin jerked slightly, but Sikakis and the three men showed no change in expression. “You’ve had quite a few children for a woman who claims there is safety in hate. If you hate them and they hate you, why are they here? They have no connection to the gods for you to manipulate.”
Kirrik showed no sign that Unar’s discovery of her relationship to the men around the table disturbed her. Perhaps she truly didn’t care for her own kin. Perhaps she was like Wife-of-Uranun, and weighed other humans purely by their potential uses. Yet she’d adopted Frog and cared for her, teaching her to deploy stolen magic, when Frog had admitted she was no adept, with no inborn gift of her own.
“Frog the Outer,” Kirrik said, “whom you will never remove from my side, by the by, has told me of a Servant of the Garden, higher in rank than a mere Gardener, who also survived your fall. You are not the only source of Audblayin’s gifts that I can use.”
Oos. Leave Oos out of this.
“She may be higher in rank, but she is weaker. And it’s Ehkis’s gifts you need right now.”
“Core Kirrik,” Sikakis said, “with respect, Nameless’s demands are reasonable. Besides the one about dividing you from your body servant. You were going to teach her the ways of a sorceress, anyway. You were going to give her spines. If we’re able to fetch the object before the monsoon ends, much may be accomplished.”