Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(83)

Nobody spoke for a long while. One of Kirrik’s sons cleaned the last crumbs off his plate. Kirrik stared at Unar without blinking.

“Bring me the leather bag,” she said at last over her shoulder to Frog. “The one with the snakes inside.”

Unar hid her triumph. The bag with the snakes. They were giving her spines. She had won.

As soon as Unar had a means of climbing and control over her own power, she’d lead the escape with Marram and Frog, too, no matter what her fool sister wanted. She’d warn Oos. Perhaps even fetch her along the way. Return her to Canopy, to safety. May Ehkis drown Core Kirrik and One Forest like she’d drowned Aoun’s brother.

Frog looked at Unar. She looked at Kirrik. “Core Kirrik.”

“What is it? We have already determined that you will stay with me, Frog the Outer. You are not part of the bargain.”

“It is not that, Core Kirrik. I have been watchin’ my sister very closely. Forgive me, Unar. You have no intention of betrayin’ that Bodyguard, Edax. You wish only to observe how to break through the barrier. Once that happens, you will return to the Garden. Findin’ the reincarnation of Audblayin is your only care.”

Unar would rather her sister had stabbed her.

Kirrik frowned at Unar.

“This is disappointing news, if true, Nameless. Despite all you have learned, despite the whole of the city having cast you out forever, why you would still defend your own humiliation and utter subordination?”

Unar didn’t answer. She swallowed the lump in her throat and waited for what was inevitable. Kirrik might decide that she couldn’t be her trained chimera after all. She’d use Unar all up, at once, to wreak destruction on one of the emergents, in the hope that other adepts would fall down like rain.

Remembering Odel’s Bodyguard, Unar managed to smile at Kirrik. Maybe whoever she brought down would make even more trouble for Kirrik than Unar had. Whatever happened, Kirrik would be no closer to her goal. She would not capture thirteen gods. The Old Ones would not return. They’d never return.

Her vision blurred with tears. Frog had betrayed her. Frog loved Unar’s tormentor more than she loved her own flesh and blood. Wife-of-Uranun had been Frog’s flesh and blood, too, but Frog had showed no emotion when admitting that their mother was dead.

Our mother fell, Unar. She was not with child, nor will ever be again.

In that moment, Unar was gripped by the certainty that Frog had been behind their mother’s death.

“I forgive you, Isin,” Unar said. “The debt between us is cancelled. I loved Mother too much to see she was a monster at first. You love this woman, who is as a mother to you, too much to see the monster in—”

But Unar couldn’t finish the sentence without her words being snatched away. Frog stole her voice. Vines grew up and across the floor, binding Unar’s wrists to the back of one of the chairs. Oh, yes. Frog was a fast learner.

“Do you still wish me to fetch the snakes, Core Kirrik?” Frog asked earnestly in her childish voice.

Oh, Isin. You advised me not to love. I thought you loved me, and you must, or you couldn’t have healed me, but not nearly as much as you loved the pleasure, the power you knew I would give her.

“Yes,” Kirrik said.

“Frog the Outer is loyal,” Sikakis said as Frog left the room. “You will give Nameless the spines, knowing her intent?”

Kirrik steepled her fingers.

“Nameless will keep her word, regardless of intent. She will bring us Edax, Bodyguard of Ehkis. But she will do it from below the barrier. She will lure him down. You will go with her, Sikakis.”

“As you say.” Sikakis inclined his head. “And if she cannot bring him? If she cannot lure him?”

Kirrik’s smile tightened.

“Then we must return to the great tree that is Audblayin’s emergent. We must take captive the Servant of Audblayin that Frog spoke of. With Nameless and her friend, we can bringing down the emergent. It is hundreds of paces across, but they can do it, I think, with the tooth to help tear it apart. If they tear it in the right place, and lengthen it as it falls, the crown of it will reach here and my woken warriors will be waiting. Not just one Servant for me to keep, but all thirteen of them, with some twenty-eight Gardeners as well, and no goddess to help them escape back to Canopy.”

Unar saw it in her mind’s eye: Kirrik destroying the Garden. Forcing Unar to bring down her own Temple and die in the process. The building at the heart of the moat cracking like a real egg. Moat water, bulrushes, and rainbow-coloured fish falling. Loquat trees, leaves down, naked roots skyward. The Gates off their hinges and Aoun’s bronze lantern lighting the destruction.

Aoun. Kirrik would use him. Thirteen Servants, one to bring down each of the other Temples, with twenty-eight Gardeners to hand as well. Kirrik might even succeed, with that number of adepts under her thumb.

Edax, you showed me a thing that Audblayin had hidden from me. You showed me that life comes, not just from Audblayin, but from fire between two willing pieces of kindling. But I lied to myself when I thought I didn’t care for what it was that I left behind. Aoun. The Garden. Audblayin.

“I can bring Edax to you, Core Kirrik, Core Sikakis,” Unar said. I already agreed to it; your threats aren’t necessary. “They stick like snakes, you said. You said nobody can get close. I can, and without leaving Understorey.”