Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(85)

Good, Unar thought angrily.

She ate another spoon of tasteless porridge, resisting the urge to rub her forehead again.

“So … so you hate me, too, Frog?” Hate me and love me, because you healed me.

“Just a little bit. Just enough.”

“Like I had to hate Oos, just a little bit. I stole her power.”

“Because she had what you wanted.”

True enough.

“What did I have that you wanted?”

Unar expected Frog to answer, A real mother and father.

“The gift,” Frog said, eyes gleaming. “If I had it, we would not need you. It would just be the two of us. Core Kirrik and me. That is the treasure our parents gave you. Not your dank name.”

“The gift? Is that why she doesn’t care about those three sons of hers? Because they were born without the gift? Or is it because of her other son, the one who hated her, who ran away? How can you love her, Isin?”

How can you love her so much more than you love me?

“Dunderhead! She does not care about them because it is dangerous to care. I will tell you somethin’, and then maybe you will stop makin’ stupid assumptions about me.” Frog gestured with her chin towards the closed door of the dovecote and lowered her voice. “Core Kirrik had a daughter too, once. Before she had any of ’er four sons. That daughter was gifted, and Core Kirrik loved ’er, but bein’ close to a sorceress means bein’ burned by the flames. She killed ’er own daughter. By mistake, but it could not be undone. I do not want Core Kirrik to love me. Why would I wanna end up dead? If you love me, and you learn from ’er, you could kill me, too. So stop it.”

“What do you want, if you don’t want her to love you?”

Frog’s smile echoed that of the woman in the black skirts. The woman who had accidentally killed her own daughter and deliberately driven away a hate-filled son. The woman who did not love.

“I want revenge.”

*

THEY LET Unar back in at nightfall.

Core Kirrik sat at her desk, writing, seemingly oblivious. Sleepy birds perched above and around her. The men’s voices rumbled in the corridor, though the door to their bunkroom was shut.

“Dry off by the fire,” Frog said. “Change your clothes if you must. Hang your wet things by your bunk. Then go and make supper.”

“No,” Unar said. “Things have changed. My obeying your orders was before. This is now. We have an arrangement. I’m not your slave anymore.”

Kirrik didn’t look up from her work.

“You never were,” Frog said. “You jumped out of the Garden to save a slave who held ’er tongue for seventy years, and you could not even hold yours for two weeks. Not even for me.”

She went into the corridor and Unar followed her, furious. She had held her tongue. This past fortnight she’d let Kirrik treat her like dirt, when Unar was the one with the power. Unar was the one who deserved respect and obedience.

“Aren’t you coming to watch me? I might poison the supper.”

“Go ahead. You poison everythin’. Our parents’ hearts, so they didn’t want more daughters. Audblayin’s Garden. You were the poison in the home of the three hunters, and you are the poison between my mother and me.” Frog slammed the door again, this time to the bunk room they were supposed to share.

She’s still a child, Unar reminded herself, and she’s wrong. Wife-of-Uranun wanting Frog to fall had nothing to do with her. The Garden wasn’t poisoned, it was healthy and strong. Its strength would only increase when Unar returned with Audblayin. As for the three hunters, she had begged Marram not to follow. But she couldn’t help feeling uneasy about Frog’s heated words.

And Frog called Core Kirrik her mother. She does want to be loved, no matter how she denies it.

Instead of going to the kitchen, Unar went up the stairs, alone, without a lantern. Now that the Master deception was over, the barrier wasn’t needed. Marram was where Kirrik had put him, sleeping the sleep of the almost dead, surrounded by Understorian warriors. All of them had the spines.

I’ll wager none of you screamed, Unar thought, ashamed.

She used the quietest possible sound, the tiniest wheeze of her breath, to send a filament of magic into Marram’s chest. There was no injury there for her to find. Nothing for her to pull, to draw his waking mind back into his body.

Well, she’d gotten some information out of Frog by pandering to her vanity. She could do it again. Frog would tell her what she needed to know. Unar moved away from Marram, examining the next man, and the next man. They were all the same. There was nothing to find. It seemed a healthy sleep, except for the interminable slowness of their beating hearts and all-but-absent breath.

The next rag-shrouded figure seemed a little small for a warrior. When Unar probed the body, she gasped. Beneath the swathe of cloth lay the gangling form of a girl about the same age as Frog. When the thread of magic touched her, it vanished.

“She is Ilan,” Kirrik said softly, and Unar spun on her heel. “Protector of Kings.”

“How have you done this?” Unar cried. “How have you captured a goddess and kept her secret?”

Kirrik made no retort about Unar only speaking when spoken to. Instead, she gently stroked Unar’s forearm, sending pain through Unar’s spines.