Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(86)

“Her body is a girl’s body,” Kirrik said. “I was able to put her to sleep with all the rest. It is eighteen years since the old incarnation of Ilan died, only eight since I captured this one. She was not self-aware. Her powers had not manifested.”

“Her Servants must be frantic not to have found her.”

Kirrik smiled.

“They have started starving themselves to atone. Other Servants will take their place, and may those fools starve, too, for all the good it will do them.”

“Is this how you’ll do it, then? Capture them one by one, and keep them here, until you can kill them all at once? Between sunrise and sunset of a single day, is it? Does she dream? Are her powers manifest now? How do you know she won’t wake?”

Kirrik waved a dismissive hand.

“She cannot age, and so she cannot manifest her powers. While she sleeps here, the strength of kings’ rule fades. Disorder and injustice reign. It will help to keep them from organising against us when the time comes.”

Unar stared at the sleeping goddess and felt afraid for Audblayin. Kirrik must not be allowed to find him first while he was vulnerable.

“Try to wake her,” Kirrik commanded, and Unar jerked with surprise.

“What do you mean?”

“Try to wake her, I said. You gaze at her. You wish you could wake her and age her with your ability to manipulate the stuff of life. You wish to watch her destroy me. Is it not so?”

Unar blinked.

“Core Kirrik, you’ve given me these.” She raised her forearms where the spines were still extended, ragged and bloody as though she had used them to kill. “I will give you what I promised.”

“Frog tells me that your face heats when you mention this man, Edax, Bodyguard of Ehkis. She says you will never betray him.”

Unar remembered the upside-down kissing. The animal sounds she had made in Edax’s expert hands. She remembered how careless he had sounded, telling her about the foot bones of would-be assassins he had fastened to the bottom of a fig-tree lake, careless of anything and everything but the need to keep his goddess safe.

She looked at the small form of the child on the floor.

I will keep my god safe.

“There is a place,” she said, “where we used to meet.”

*

THE BROAD myrtle branches that had formed the rim of the pool spilled water like thin sheets of crystal.

Unar gazed at the place that had seemed safe to her while she dallied with Ehkis’s Bodyguard. She and Edax had met after dark. This was the first time she’d seen the myrtle pool during the day.

Trapped fragments of scarce, grey light from the clouds above Canopy gave body to the vertical river. It twisted like a woman’s waist seen through a window. The air was cooler, perfumed by summer blooms and fresh foliage.

Sounds Unar had half forgotten wove in and around the fall of water. Monkeys howling. The too-woo, too-woo of amorous fruit doves. Silvereyes pip-pip-pipping. Lorikeet trills, bowerbird wheezes, and the high-pitched chatter of fantails. Toucans croaking and manakins warbling, birds of paradise stuttering and catbirds screeching.

“You swam here?” Core Sikakis shouted into Unar’s ear over the animals and the roar of rain and river.

“It was smaller,” Unar shouted back. Streams from Canopy pounded the pool in five places, feeding the surge that fell from the lowest edge. The patter of fresh droplets, small sticks, dead leaves, fruit, and insects was relentless.

Three and a half months of the monsoon were past. There were one-and-a-half still to come. Ehkis was at the height of her power. The tributes and prayers to her this year must have been mighty. Last year’s monsoon had been feeble in comparison.

“What makes you think he’ll come? Won’t he have heard you’re dead? Your own people confirmed your fall.”

Kirrik had shown Unar a note she hadn’t been able to read. Apparently it was news that Servant Eilif had announced Unar’s demise, along with the deaths of Oos, Ylly, and Hasbabsah. Eilif had raised a new Gardener, a new Servant, and had purchased four new slaves in the face of Wife-of-Epatut’s refusal to return Sawas and baby Ylly to the Garden.

If not for the pronouncement of names that Kirrik couldn’t otherwise have known, Unar might not have believed her. Who was sending messages to Kirrik from inside Audblayinland? Sawas had mentioned birds, and the slaves were taught to read and write so they could tally the produce of the Garden, keep track of the tributes, and maintain calendars for planning and planting, but Unar didn’t think it could be Sawas.

“It’s just a feeling I have,” she told Core Sikakis, looking up at him. Here, Edax and Unar had broken the rules together, and she also had a feeling Sikakis knew much more than she about breaking rules. By Frog’s account, the former prince had found out about his family’s rise to power in a carelessly shelved volume of secret histories. He’d gone to the Temple of the lightning god and demanded that Airak open up his section of the barrier to allow Understorians to come into the sun.

Then he’d been forced to flee for his life before his father’s soldiers could murder him; he’d fled into Kirrik’s cold embrace. Unar made a face at the thought.

“The barrier is close here,” Sikakis said. Unar knew, but said nothing. “Core Kirrik asked me to stay out of sight. This friend of yours may be skittish if he sees you’re not alone. You know what to do, but know this also. If you try to run, we will bring you down.”