Crossroads of Canopy (Titan's Forest #1)(91)

Frog’s multiple warnings about attacking Kirrik flashed through her mind. You want to kill ’er, but you would not like what would happen if you tried. Unar put her hand into her pocket and squeezed the tooth through the chimera-cloth blindfold. Now was the time. Unar could break every bone in Kirrik’s body. Destroy her. Rend that body beyond healing.

But Kirrik would take my body. Push my soul into the ether. Wear my face and lull my friends into lowering their defences. It’s no use. I stole this bone-breaking weapon for nothing.

“What is your plan, now, Core Kirrik?” Sikakis asked in a low, troubled voice.

“My plan, Core Sikakis? My plan?”

“The monsoon is over.” Sikakis gestured in the direction of the empty sky. “You’ve weakened the rain goddess. Your informers spoke true. You could take advantage of this. No Canopian army will be prepared for an assault more than a month early. They’ll be dozing in their barracks. Of course, we’re also unprepared. It will take time to train the men you have to work in units, to gather and secrete in strategic places the supplies they’ll need to sustain repeated assaults. And we don’t have the Talon.”

Kirrik stared at him, mouth open and chest heaving, the umbrella cast aside, her fingers crooking like claws and her spines extended from their sheathes, quivering.

“We still have these two,” Frog pointed out shakily. “The man got the better of me, but ’e is a sharper weapon than any old bone, if Kirrik wields ’im. If the rain goddess is injured, let us go and capture ’er right now!”

“We should wait,” Sikakis said. “Consolidate our new gains. Explore our—”

“I am tired of waiting,” Kirrik screamed suddenly. She seized Unar, turning her, kicking her in the back of her knees to force her down. “Frog, where is the blindfold?”

Frog’s tiny hands dipped into the pocket in Unar’s skirts. They pulled out the chimera-skin cloth and unwrapped, not the powerful tooth of the Old God that Unar had stashed there, but the useless amulet that Marram had been wearing when he arrived at the dovecote.

“Did you think I did not see you take it?” Frog whispered. “I took it back. So dank, Unar.”

“Give it to me!” Kirrik snatched the blindfold from Frog, letting the amulet fall; it snagged by its cord on the rough bark of the branch. As soon as the chimera cloth tightened over Unar’s eyes, the residue of the magic that had killed Edax became invisible to her. Kirrik’s spittle flecked her ear. “Play as you have never played before, tool.”

Unar had not jumped to her death. She had no choice but to play. Whatever it was that took shape in Kirrik’s hands, she couldn’t see it. She couldn’t sense it. Only feel the powerful flicker of her weightless mote-self, between hot and cold, up and down, swiftly accelerating heartbeat and silence. Perhaps Kirrik was killing everyone around her. Perhaps she was killing no one.

Perhaps she was waking all the warriors in her house, preparing for war.





FIFTY

EACH OF Unar’s laboured breaths felt as if it might be her last.

As the vestiges of her strength ebbed, Unar’s weightless motes coalesced into a body again. She lay facedown on the wide branch, her left hand embracing the bark, her right hand holding the ear bone to her lips. Kirrik’s bare foot, with all her weight behind it, pressed between Unar’s shoulder blades. Her skirts slid through Unar’s hair and over her shoulders.

“More,” someone exhorted. “More!”

She is killing me. This is what it is like to be used up. To be drained to death.

Another heave of her chest. Another rush of power through the bone flute and Unar’s body flying apart. Sounds of something enormous breaking. The whole world split in two by lightning and water. But neither were Unar’s domain. It was a monster’s spine that was breaking. Or maybe Unar’s own spine, ground beneath Kirrik’s hate.

She can’t kill me. She needs my body. Edax said so.

The forest roared as though a thunderhead had turned to stone and fallen on it.

“She did it.” Frog’s small, frightened voice. “It is finished. Core Kirrik, she is finished. Please, let ’er go.”

Frog loves me.

Weight lifted. Small hands dragged at the blindfold. Unar had no energy for opening her eyes. Her body felt like it would stay limp, forever. She didn’t want to know what she had done.

“Let her go.” Kirrik’s voice was mocking. “Very well. Rest here awhile, Nameless.” No more pretence about calling Unar by her name. “Recover your strength. And have no fear for Audblayin, I will fetch her for you. You want to know where she is? Not long before you came to us, a slave and her child were sent from the Garden to the House of Epatut. That child is your reincarnated goddess. If only you poor fools had known.”

Impossible. Unar wheezed. She hadn’t the strength to lift her head.. Audblayin is not a goddess. Not this time. “Audblayin is young. Too young for you to find.”

He is a boy child. He must be a boy child, if I am to guard him. That’s why I was given the gift. That’s why Audblayin called to me, waking my powers in my parents’ home, before I knelt beneath the night-yew.

“Birth screams hold a powerful magic.” The mocking voice floated closer. “I heard them, in my future-searching, and I saw the mother’s face.”