It was Leaper’s turn to repeat Unar’s words, more slowly and with emphasis.
“You think,” he said.
“I’m almost sure.” Unar said. “Now listen, Leaper, you must promise me one thing before I do this.”
“A payment now?” His brow furrowed with confusion. “After everything else you’ve done for nothing?”
“You must promise to take that winged one and her soul far away from Canopy. Hunger’s bargain, to stay out of sight, is about more than just keeping Canopians safe from her habit of snacking on humans and her physical propensity to destruction. She’d be an irresistible temptation to any with sorcerous knowledge.”
“You mean the kind of knowledge Kirrik had.”
“Yes. Listen. Kirrik’s power came from merging her soul with a chimera’s. Our gods’ and goddesses’ immortality, their ability to pin memories—knowledge—to their souls instead of their bodies—comes from merging their souls with pieces of the soul of that titan. Hunger is smaller than a titan. But she’s greater than a chimera. And the barrier is to keep chimeras out. The other demons are mundane and don’t matter. Promise me you’ll fly her away from here, as soon as you can.”
“I promise,” Leaper said, and with a jolt of Frog’s memory saw Unar as a laughing child, holding his baby self up out of a shabby crib, her bright-eyed face full of love and grand intentions.
The old Unar, standing in the cottage with him, sighed.
“Then I’ll do it. If you’re agreed, Ylly?”
“Go ahead, Godfinder. I’ve prepared myself,” Ylly said, using Nirrin’s words but with more excitement than trepidation. “I can help you, Unar. I remember when Audblayin brought Nirrin’s soul back into her body, after Kirrik had used it for so long. I know something about moving souls in and out of bodies. All of Audblayin’s power will flow to you, everything but the maintenance of the wards around the Garden and the power that keeps Leaper from sleeping. All of it, I swear, only let me guide you.”
They seized each other’s hands and gripped tightly. Leaper wanted to talk more. Things were moving too fast. He didn’t think they’d properly considered the consequences of failure.
But since when have I ever properly considered the consequences of failure?
Magic roared up around them, ripping through Leaper from the inside of his nostrils, out. The smell of crushed tallowwood leaves, which he’d thought was a single smell, separated into a hundred smells like a blinding rainbow of a hundred inconceivable colours. The worms in the earth under the roots of the great tree, the fish eggs gestating in the pools formed by its boughs, and the embryos inside sleepy possums digesting its leaves all smashed into his awareness and then peeled away again, leaving him lonelier than he’d thought it was possible to feel, even though he wasn’t alone, because Hunger’s awareness was still there, waiting.
“Ilik,” Leaper said. Like the word of a spell, it severed him immediately from the danger.
“Leaper,” Ylly breathed, letting go of Unar’s hands and throwing her arms around her little brother. “Leaper, it worked. I’m free. I’m free!”
He hugged her back, marvelling at how much he’d missed her without even knowing.
“Don’t leave, Ylly,” Unar said tiredly. When Ylly had let go of her hands, she’d staggered, and now she leaned heavily against the wall. “Don’t let them see you, or they won’t believe you’re not a goddess anymore. I want you to go, right now, and crouch down in the fireplace, behind the screen. Leaper and I will go out to face the Servants of the Garden.”
Ylly obeyed, one-fourteenth of a titan suddenly reverted to her uncertain, Understorian, mortal self.
“What exactly are you going to tell them?” Leaper asked at Unar’s back, but she was already opening the door.
She’d taken two steps before Audblayin’s Gatekeeper confronted her. Leaper had never seen Aoun so discomposed. His stance was wide and unsteady. His nostrils were flared. He showed his teeth. His fingers crushed the lantern’s handle as though it were the only thing holding him connected to the world.
“You killed her?” he roared in Unar’s face, bending over so that they were eye to eye. Behind Aoun, Nirrin gasped. Of course. Nirrin isn’t connected to Audblayin anymore. Only the Gatekeeper, still her Servant, could sense his deity’s death.
“Isn’t that why you said nothing when she sent me to Airakland, Aoun?” Unar replied in a low, weary voice. “She knew that I was dangerous. Didn’t you? Didn’t you know that I’d kill her one day?”
Aoun roared again, wordlessly, and swung the heavy Gatekeeper’s lantern. It connected with Unar’s temple, glass breaking, metal and skull crunching. The blow swung both of them around, so that Unar’s back was to the edge of the platform.
Her eyes glazed. Blood running down her face, she reached blindly for Aoun’s face and didn’t find it in the moment before her body spasmed, then went rigid.
Unar tipped backwards, away from Aoun.
She fell, dead, from the Gate of the Garden, down to the depths of Floor.
THIRTY-SIX
LEAPER HURLED himself recklessly toward the edge.
It was too late. Unar was gone. Aforis seized him beneath the arms from behind. Dragged him back.
“Be careful,” he bellowed in Leaper’s ear. “Leapael, your spines are gone!”
“My mother is gone,” Leaper babbled before he knew what he was saying; Unar hadn’t been his mother; he’d had three perfectly good mothers; but they had been the mothers of his Understorian self. The Godfinder had been his mother in the sun. He wanted to throw Aoun after her. Aoun, who had been her friend and who had now murdered her for no good reason.
But Aoun breathed like a man on the brink of drowning who had resurfaced. He stared into the space where Unar had been, and Leaper relived the careless moment in which Unar had admitted to killing the goddess of new life.
“A regrettable action,” Aforis said, holding Leaper tightly, regarding the Gatekeeper critically. “Now not only have you deprived yourself of a Godfinder for locating Audblayin’s new incarnation, but you’ve committed murder and can no longer enter the Garden.”
Aoun sat, drew his knees to his chest, and buried his face in his hands.
Leaper, abruptly crushed by guilt at how distantly he’d always treated Aforis, and how ungratefully, clutched at his mentor and buried his face in layers of bearskin.
“She saved my life, Aforis,” he gasped. “She took care of Ilik while the curse kept me from returning. She came to find me. You both did.”
“Come along,” Aforis said gruffly. “Leave your oversized domesticated demon here for now. The goddess you serve has perished, but is your bond with her still strong? Are you still Bodyguard?”
Leaper tested the connection. Nodded.
“Then we’ll take Nirrin to her new master, her new family, in Airakland. You have family waiting in Airakland, too.”
Family.
Unar had been part of his family. But how could he blame Aoun for assuming Unar had attacked Audblayin, when Leaper himself had so recently assumed she would attack Atwith? Unar had always been unpredictable. Dangerous. Old stories whispered by Leaper’s mothers when they thought he was asleep, of dark deeds in Unar’s past, had given her an aura she’d never been able to shake.
“I have to change my clothes,” Leaper said. “I can’t go to Airakland wearing a skirt of bones taken from the death god.” He let go of Aforis, still shaking.
Nirrin shook, too.
“Audblayin trusted her,” the ex-Bodyguard said hollowly. “I trusted her. We all did. Her second-to-last act was to sever me from my goddess, so that I couldn’t even feel it when she died. How can I go with you? How can I trust you?”
“Can’t you feel it?” Leaper whispered. “Can’t you see the metal bars in the sky? Airak’s calling you. You have to go to him.”
“Airak will have seen the winged one,” Aforis said. “But he can’t turn his great spyglass towards Audblayinland. He can only watc
h the sky. We’ll tell him the truth. That the traitor Unar, once called the Godfinder, tricked Nirrin into changing her allegiance, the better to strike the goddess down undefended. The Gatekeeper has meted out justice. It’s finished.”
Leaper had once counted himself a fine liar, yet he couldn’t imagine naming Unar a traitor in the Temple of Airak.
Nirrin sheathed her weapons. She shook her head.
“Bernreb’s clothes,” she said to Leaper. “I think he left some behind in the cottage. All is as he left it. Besides the glider droppings.”
Leaper went back inside the door and closed it behind him. Only moments ago, he’d performed the almost identical action with Ylly and Unar beside him. The lantern still rested on the floor.
He went to the fireplace, where Ylly crouched in the gloom.
“Aoun killed Unar,” he said huskily.
“Oh, no. No, Leaper!”
“The plan worked. They all thought Unar killed you. We’re going to Airakland. Aforis, Nirrin, and I. You’re going to Airakland, too, but not with us, and not to the Temple. They’re all in shock right now, but soon enough they’ll come in here looking for Audblayin’s body. You have to go through my thieves’ lantern to Unar’s farm. It works both ways now that both lanterns are in Canopy. A bit of a squeeze, but it might as well be an open door.”
“Leaper, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean for that to happen. I didn’t think—”
“Unar did.” Leaper smiled despite himself. “Mother knew what would happen. She did it anyway.”
“You called her your mother.” It was said half questioningly, half in wonder.
“She’s your mother too now. Dead in childbirth, freeing you from Audblayin, delivering you to a new life.” Leaper shook his head. “Ylly, when you get to the farm, Ilik and her newborn son will be there. She’s in hiding from the king. If she sees you, she’ll think you’re Audblayin. She’ll be terrified. Please tell her that she’s safe. Please tell her I’ll be there in about five days.”
“I will. I promise.”
Ylly knelt by the lantern and reached for the light. On her first try, she cut herself on the broken glass and snatched her hand back. Sucking on her bleeding finger, knocking the offending shard away with the wadded-up hem of her robe, she tried again, and on the second attempt the magic grasped her.
It sucked her into the blue-white light the same way that the souls of Canopy had been sucked into Atwith’s chest.
Leaper’s instinct was to immediately pack it away into his carrysack, but he needed the light if he was to find Middle-Father’s old clothes. Nirrin had been Bodyguard for ten years, and so anything left behind by Bernreb had been at the mercy of moths and monkeys since then. Leaper hadn’t seen his middle-father in all that time, but from memory the father who shared his blood had gone as scantily clad as possible at all times, objecting to the heavy, formal tunic and long split skirt that denoted a deity’s Bodyguard.
One of the white tunics, with the sleeves hacked off, was folded in a musty drawer. It was Bernreb’s size, made for broader shoulders than Leaper’s. Beneath it was a green split skirt, which had once been lengthy before it, too, had fallen victim to a sharp pair of cloth shears.
Leaper dressed slowly. All the energy of his revival seemed to have drained away. It could have been grief. It could have been apprehension at the thought of having to face Airak, having to conceal his connection to a winged one from one-fourteenth of a titan. While also dealing with Aforis’s inevitable confusion once the man fell asleep again, aged backwards another day, and forgot everything that had happened at the Gate.
Or it could have been Audblayin’s death. She was his source of power now. The source of his eternal alertness.
A shadow blocking the lantern and a soft sound behind him made him turn from the chest of drawers. He found himself gazing at a baby, cradled at chest height in a woman’s arms, yawning with a toothless mouth as small and brown as a split, ripe fig. The baby’s closed eyes were curved darker lines in a soft dark face. The brows were no more than guessed shadows. Curled brown fingers poking out from peach and pink wrappings were smaller than any fingers had a right to be.
Leaper lifted his gaze. His eyes found Ilik’s eyes.
“The cloth,” he said stupidly. “It’s got Odel’s mark around the edge. Odel’s colours.”
“Your sister Imeris left it behind,” Ilik said. “The Godfinder told me it was a gift to Imeris from Odel himself. Before that, it was a tribute from Imeris’s birth mother, a silk weaver of the House of Epatut.”
“That cloth has lived as many strange and separate lives as we have.”
“I haven’t been to Odelland myself yet. I haven’t paid tribute to the Protector of Children, but I will go. Perhaps even to pay him back with his own cloth.”
Leaper swallowed, with difficulty, around a lump in his throat.
“Ilik, is this our baby?”
“Yes.” Her brown eyes were deep and wide. They held him firmly in his human body, even though he could feel the curious hands of Servants and Gardeners touching Hunger’s crouching, statue-like mound, tugging at her leaf-scales, exclaiming at their inability to pluck them.
“What have you called him?” Tadpole? Middle-Mother had laughingly suggested. Snake Egg. Millipede. Fishy.
“His name is Builder.”
Builder. First the trouble swallowing. Now he couldn’t breathe. It was as if his neck were broken all over again. Builder, son of Leaper. He cleared his throat with care. Looked at Ilik properly, noting the thinness of her cheeks and the hollowness under her eyes, the fullness of her bosom, the amorphous blob of her short, unstyled hair, and her cracked, unlacquered fingernails. He couldn’t reproach her for faking her death, even though it could have gotten him killed. Builder’s life was more important. Builder was everything.
Builder.
“What kind of name is that, Ilik? It’s not a Canopian name. It’s not an Understorian name. It’s not even a name used among Crocodile-Riders.”
“Neither is—”
“Airak’s teeth, I wish you had—”
“Forgive me, Leaper, I couldn’t risk—”
They kissed, carefully and with only their lips touching, their chins forming a vaulted Temple ceiling over the sacred altar of their child.
“Don’t wake him,” Ilik whispered into Leaper’s mouth, her eyes still closed. Leaper pulled back, grinning.
“You don’t wake him.” Then his smile faded. “And don’t pay any tribute to Odel, either. We’re not staying long. Where he’s going, he won’t need that kind of protection.”
Ilik’s smile faded, too, mirroring his, and she drew the sleeping baby back a step.
“What do you mean, we’re not staying long? I knew you’d come up with some mad plan—”
“It’s not mad, Ilik, please, let me put it to you! Short of threatening the woman I love best in the world with the pitiful thread of lightning I’d only humiliate myself trying to call unassisted in Audblayinland, there’s nothing I can do to force you to do anything you don’t want to do. And I promise not to try. There isn’t time for me to tell you everything that’s happened to me or to describe every place I’ve been, but there is one place I’d very much like to describe to you.”
She relaxed from the balls of her feet back down, flat-footed, to the wooden floor.
“Tell me,” she said guardedly.
“There’s the ruin of a circular city, made of stone, in the mountains. On foot from Canopy, the journey is something like fifty days. There was a talking demon there, who devoured the city’s people, but now I hold the demon’s leash. I saw clock gears bigger than houses, Ilik. Water-powered machines. Incredible things made by people, by hand, without magic. If we took enough forest folk with us, we could bring that city back to life again. You could get the water flowing. The machines working. You could restart the clocks.”
She pressed her lips tightly together. Stared through him, he supposed, at the city of Time. Builder b
egan grunting and stretching. Small noises quickly turned to outraged, tiny screeches.
Aforis will wonder what I’m doing. What’s taking so long.
“I need time to think about it,” Ilik said finally, shifting Builder’s weight from one arm to the other.
“Good idea,” Leaper said. “Go back though the lantern. I’ll be in Airakland in five days.” He kissed her good-bye. Tried to kiss Builder, too, but the boy twisted and Leaper’s lips missed.
By the time Ilik had squeezed herself and the shrieking baby back through in a blaze of blue-white light, Aforis had thrown the cottage door open. I need to hide the light!
All the older man found in the bedroom was Leaper tightening the laces of his carrysack. The bedsheet-covered lantern was stuffed in the fireplace where Ylly had hidden. If Leaper took the lantern with him to confront Airak, there was a good chance it would be repossessed by the Temple, and he’d be needing it later.
“Are you ready?” Aforis asked, squinting into the gloom.
“As ready as I’ll ever be.” Leaper hurried to join him.
Outside, Nirrin and Aoun were as he’d left them. The bone skirt clacked in Leaper’s hands.
“My new master,” Nirrin asked Leaper, staring at the skirt. “Is he kind?”
“No,” Leaper answered, feeling sick. Unar had died to free Ylly, but at the added cost of trapping Nirrin, who had spent years in the ether while her body was Kirrik’s helpless puppet. “If not for Unar’s healing, I’d show you the terrible scars my master inflicted on me.”
If you return, Airak had said, when you return, you, or another with gifts equal to yours, will serve me with your whole heart. You, or that other, will swear your oaths a second time and be more deeply and tightly bound by them than any of my Servants has ever been bound before.
It was as if Airak had known Nirrin would be the one returning to serve him, not Leaper. But how could that be?
As they departed the platform before the Gate, Aforis took the bone skirt from Leaper and turned back to the deflated Gatekeeper, Aoun. Aoun, who was now denied the Garden. The very same Servant who, less than an hour before, had been the staunchest Gatekeeper the Garden had ever known.
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