Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(90)

“I have to help her,” Unar said. “I have to help her, to win my freedom and save Audblayin.”

“The moment you stop helping her,” Edax said, meeting her eyes at last with his pain-emptied ones, “you’ll become her. If you want to save Audblayin, you’d better cut your own throat with those spines, before they heal and you become a fit shell for her black soul to crawl into. The gift goes with the body. Only godhood goes with the soul.”

Unar didn’t understand him. She stood, mystified, while Frog and Sikakis returned to untie Edax from the bunk.

“Keep up, Unar,” Sikakis grunted as he dragged Edax down the corridor.

Outside the dovecote, the sun was almost down. The grey cloud-light seen high above in tiny patches between the trees had turned bruise-yellow, and the blue-white lanterns that kept demons away were too low on their branches to light the surface of the water in the pool. There, raindrops made small gilded circles before fading so that Unar couldn’t see them at all.

“Put the Bodyguard in the water,” Kirrik ordered, and Sikakis moved to comply.

Edax came to life, thrashing, straining for the edge again. There was fear in his eyes that Unar had never seen before, and it was contagious. She turned to go inside, but Kirrik’s hand flashed out and seized a handful of her shirt.

“Stay. There is a thing about Bodyguards that you do not know. Every one of them has a private means of communication with his mistress. For the rain goddess, whenever she is immersed in water, her Bodyguard feels whatever she feels. It is so he can sense that she is safe while she sleeps. Most often, she feels nothing. She is rarely wakened at the bottom of her lake. What fool would disturb her rest?”

Sikakis wrestled Edax over the edge of the pool. Once he was in it, Kirrik motioned for Unar to spin again. Unar’s knuckles whitened on the ear bone, but she didn’t raise it to her lips.

“What are you—”

Kirrik seized her words and the rim of the water-filled pool began to grow closed, stopping just short of a complete seal, holding Edax by his neck in the water. He lifted his desperate gaze to Unar.

“Jump,” he said. “Jump, now!”

“What my little birds have discovered,” Kirrik went on, smirking, “is that this bond between goddess and Bodyguard goes both ways. When he is immersed in water, in her element, in turn, the Lady Ehkis feels what he feels. Did he tell you she was ignorant of his little excursions? Did he tell you so while he took you under the water, so that she could share in all those delicious sensations?”

“No,” Unar said. They hadn’t been together underwater. Only in the open air. But Aforis stared in horror at Edax.

“Jump, little Gardener,” Edax said again, clearly. “Please!”

Unar remained still. She refused to abandon Audblayin, but she couldn’t see any other way to stop what was about to happen. Kirrik planned to reach through Edax to harm his goddess. He wanted Unar to sacrifice herself to protect Ehkis. Just as Unar had sacrificed him to try to protect Audblayin. If Unar jumped, Kirrik wouldn’t be able to use her.

“You are talking to the wrong tool,” Kirrik informed him, just as Frog seized Aforis’s power. Aforis’s lips moved, making no sound as he attempted to speak to Edax, and Frog did something to the water that Edax was trapped in.

Edax gritted his teeth. An agonised sound still escaped him. Unar heard the muffled thuds of his clawed feet kicking the inside of the wooden vessel. He twisted, and the skin of his neck tore and bled. Aforis shouted in dismay, but the louder his objections, the more power Frog had to use.

It wasn’t until Unar saw the steam rising that she realised Frog was boiling Edax alive. Trying to hurt him so badly he would agree to be their tool. Trying to hurt his goddess so badly that he would agree to be their tool.

“Sing,” Kirrik shrieked at him. “Sing, wake your bones, agree to fetch the Talon for me, and your goddess will feel no more pain.”

Clouds of steam erupted around Edax. Aforis clawed at his own face in an attempt to hold the sound of his involuntary shouts inside himself, to keep Frog from using them. Unar found herself screaming, too, though nobody bothered to use her screams. Her magic couldn’t be used for boiling water. Only the magic of the lightning god was good for that. When the steam cleared, Edax’s eyes were glazed and his head lolled to one side.

The rain stopped. There could have been no surer sign that the rain goddess had endured a terrible hurt. Edax was not resting. He was not unconscious.

“You killed him,” Kirrik cried, and whirled to strike Frog, hard, across the face.

“Not I, Core Kirrik,” Frog protested, sprawled on the path, nursing her cheek. “There was a surge from the prisoner, I lost control for a moment, and ’e—”

Kirrik struck Aforis, too, though he was not thrown to the ground by the force of it. Nor did he grin at her, or show any sign of triumph. His shoulders heaved, but Unar thought he was crying, not laughing.

She might have been crying, too. Was it tears, or rain? No, the rain was stopped. It stopped. Is the goddess dead, too? Is that how closely they are connected? Her face felt hot, but maybe that was the steam, the heat from the human cauldron.

Cut your own throat with those spines. Before they heal. A fit shell for her black soul.

At last, she admitted to herself what Edax had been trying to tell her. Kirrik would never reveal how to get through the barrier or how to keep her power to herself. The spines she had given Unar were intended for her own use; Unar was her backup body, spare parts, a vessel to hold her soul when her present body became too old or injured.