“No.”
“I didn’t think so. Canopy is not your home.”
* * *
IT WAS nightfall when Imeris pounded on the door of the House of Epatut.
On either side of the entry, the armed guards watched her but made no move to restrain her. Epi’s pale child-slave unbarred and opened the door, her timid face turned blue by the blaze of Airak’s lanterns.
“Can I help you, citizen?” the girl asked.
“I am no citizen,” Imeris said harshly. “I need to see the master and mistress of the House.”
“Master Epatut is away in Ukakland. Master Epi hasn’t returned home.”
“Let me in. I must speak with Igish.”
“I’m here, Imeris,” Wife-of-Epatut said, bringing an upraised oil lantern to the door. “Come inside. It’s late.”
When her eyes locked with Imeris’s, she sucked in a sharp, hissing breath.
She knew.
“No,” she whispered, sounding exactly as Imeris had sounded at the sight of Odel.
“Your son, Epi, challenged me to a footrace, and I accepted,” Imeris said, sparing herself no part of the blame in the telling. “I told him I would marry him if he won the race. At the quarter mark, I was winning. Instruments of Orin fell upon me; I fought them off. Epi was distracted by the fight.”
“No.”
“He lost concentration. He stepped wrong, straight off the edge. He fell.”
Igish did not cry or scream. Her protuberant eyes glazed with grief. In silence, moving stiffly as if every joint suddenly ached, she turned away and walked into the House. Imeris moved to follow, glancing hopelessly, questioningly at the girl for a moment, who shrugged in response to the unasked question: Am I still welcome in the House?
But Igish had told her to come inside, so in she went, around a sharp corner, and through a vestibule containing a smoke-curtain, past the gallery of stuffed birds, and into the great feast hall where the portrait of Audblayin hung by the head of the table.
Imeris wasn’t able to follow Igish any further then, for the mistress of the House went to her bedroom and barred the door.
Imeris stood before it, biting her lip. Then she went back to the feast hall.
“Please,” she asked the girl, “may I have something to eat and drink?”
The trembling, pasty slave freely shed tears that Igish had not.
“Is Master Epi really dead?”
“He fell. I saw it.”
“But you fell. Once.”
“True. I was lucky.” Imeris sat on one of the heavy, throne-like dining chairs. She traced the seams along both her forearms with her fingers. Glanced across at the girl, who should have had spines as her birthright. Epi could not free this younger slave now, as payment for his training. She would stay here forever, the mark of the House of Epatut on her tongue until she died.
“He had … there is … Master Epi had another chest of snow,” the girl offered mournfully.
Imeris laughed, low and sad.
“What is your name?”
“Haftfah. I was named after my—”
“After your mother,” Imeris said. Whom you will not see again, so long as the barrier between Canopy and Understorey survives.
Haftfah nodded.
“Leave the snow, Haftfah. I will have water and fish, if there is any.”
“There is, citiz—Hunter Imeris.”
After she’d eaten, drunk, and relieved herself, Imeris curled up to sleep on a pile of tapestries beside the cot that Igish had told her had once been hers.
She dreamed of Aurilon, naked and long-clawed, the bark in her hair replaced by a crown of lotus flowers. Aurilon’s back remained marked like a Crocodile-Rider’s, but it was a chimera she rode through the empty tunnels of Odel’s Temple. Tallow candles flickered in niches that had not been there in life. The chimera’s eyes glowed.
Imeris sensed it was the curse-chimera. The one that had been waiting to take Aurilon’s soul along with it into the ether. A man stood silently beside them, cheeks streaked with red, wearing only a skirt of bones. It was Aoun, the Gatekeeper of the Garden.
Watch your back, Imeris, Aurilon advised. Spend your life wisely.
Aoun waved his hand, and the candles went out, plunging the dream into darkness.
FORTY-SIX
IMERIS STAYED seven days and nights in the House of Epatut.
Igish didn’t say a word the entire time. When Haftfah, who was bright as brass, brought a filled inkwell and freshly trimmed quill, Wife-of-Epatut wrote a message on parchment. Her hand shook so much that the writing was barely legible. A paid runner took it to Ukakland to inform Epatut that his heir had fallen.
Epatut returned four days later in a rage at Imeris, with no gesture of kindness or consolation to spare for his wife. He cursed the day Imeris had been born. He lamented that the chimera had saved her. He cursed his own blood that flowed through her veins.
Imeris returned a blank stare to him. Though he ordered her out of his House, she didn’t leave. Though he ordered the slaves not to feed her, she helped herself whenever she was hungry. Epatut didn’t dare try to force her out himself, or risk the lives of his door guards by instructing them to remove her. She realised it wasn’t blind submission to authority that had made her obey Oldest-Father but true love and respect, neither of which she held for Epatut.
She had hoped to be some kind of comfort to Igish, but as the sun set on the seventh day, she accepted she could delay her travel to Ulellinland no longer. She had to retrieve Oldest-Father’s amulet and help Daggad and Sorros to complete the soul trap.
“I wish fate had been kinder to you,” she told Igish, trussing her tools tightly in anticipation of departure. “I wish there were something I could do.”
Igish, lying motionless on her mattress, gazed through Imeris and made no response.
* * *
ULELLIN’S EMERGENT gleamed in the moonlight.
Smooth, dark windowleaves shivered in the breeze.
Imeris watched the northern approach to the charred, semirebuilt Temple of Ulellin for a time. She wasn’t tired. She’d slept the day away at the lodge, stuck to the side of the purple-leafed penda where she’d once suspected Oniwak of lurking.
He couldn’t lurk anywhere any longer. Orin had done him in. The vengeful goddess would likewise do for Imeris if she had the chance, but at least Ibbin was protected by Odel.
Late-leaving worshippers trailed out of the place where Ulellin had spoken Leaper’s curse. Imeris wasn’t sure she was safe from Ulellin. The goddess of wind and leaves had let them all go in the aftermath of the slaying of Orin’s creature but on further reflection might have changed her mind.
Curse Orin and Ulellin and their senseless, selfish ways. I do not need them. I will go to Understorey as Audblayin bids me, and curse Audblayin, too.
She ran lightly down the penda path to the windowleaf-wrapped floodgum, secured a pulley to the tree, and threaded one end of her longest rope through it. She secured that end of the rope to her harness and let the other end fall loosely out of its coils to dangle below. Using one metal hook against the dangling section of rope to smooth her journey and a crimp-like tool in the other to slow her when needed, she dropped as speedily and recklessly below the barrier into Understorey as she had dropped down into Floor by her fathers’ sides, a seeming eternity ago.
On the wrong side of the tree for finding Oldest-Father’s grave, she nonetheless knew the level she wanted at once.
There was something about the air. Perhaps the constant breezes set blowing by the wind goddess made her able to judge the depth by the stillness. In any other tree, she would have had to pull out her tools and begin making herself some walking planks.
In this one, all she had to do was climb around, crab-like, with the juicy windowleaf stems offering easy hand- and footholds. Her sense that she was in the right place was confirmed when she saw the blue glow of the lantern Leaper had stolen, still fixed to the alcove with his
axe.
Below it, an empty hole gaped where Oldest-Father’s body had been imprisoned by Kirrik.
Imeris could hardly believe what she was seeing. She climbed back up to the lantern, pulled the axe free, and juggled the lantern into place where the wide wound in windowleaf trunks had been gored by some keen Understorian blade.
The lantern showed bloodstains and some half-rotted harness that Imeris recognised.
This is where he was.
Holding the lantern stupidly out from the trunk, she looked down, as if she might be able to see all the way to Floor and discover whether Oldest-Father’s bones were there or if his remains had been stolen along with the protective amulet that she needed.
The amulet that was no longer there.
Imeris knew she shouldn’t do it, but she did anyway; she climbed into the hole. She imagined the thick trunks crowding in, squeezing the life out of her. Curled around the cold, bright lantern, she wept yet again for Oldest-Father. Then she wept for herself.
How am I to finish the soul trap without the amulet?
Imeris left the lantern in the hole. She wiped her tears away. Borrowing one of Leaper’s better ideas, she caught the loose end of the rope and tied it to a thick section of windowleaf trunk. The adze she’d intended to use on Oldest-Father’s grave gleamed in the light of the lantern.
She cut the section of windowleaf trunk free. It was only slightly heavier than she was, so she rose at a slow, even pace which gave her plenty of time to think.
I shall have to beg Audblayin for the fertility amulet back. I need good lies to tell to her. Or else I need to use my own protective amulet.
She couldn’t think of any convincing-sounding lies.
* * *
IMERIS STOPPED several afternoons later at the House of Epatut, intent on bidding her grieving birth mother farewell forever.
The day had been one constant shower. Faded grey winter bark was beginning to peel from the tree. Small streams seeped into the cracks, turning the skin-soft, new pink bark wound-red. The wet, clustered husks of last season’s gobletfruit glinted like chandeliers against the clouds, one droplet hanging from the pointed tip of each brown ridge.
When Igish opened her front door, her bright countenance was not that of a grieving mother.
“Mighty Hunter-child,” she exclaimed, clapping her hands delightedly together. “Imeris, Slayer of Monsters! Come inside at once. Apologies, but your worthy father has unfortunately absented himself. I shall make us some tea.”
Imeris stared at her.
“Where is Haftfah?” she asked. Igish, who had already begun leading Imeris into the House, hesitated halfway through the smoke-curtain.
“Who?”
“The slave girl.”
“Oh.” One hand waved carelessly through the smoke. “I freed her. She has gone to join her mother in Dul.”
Imeris looked to her left at one of the door guards. She looked to her right, at the other guard.
“Has grief driven Wife-of-Epatut mad?” she whispered to them, but they returned her scrutiny with blank expressions and minute shrugs. “How long has she been alone? When was Haftfah freed? When did Epatut leave?”
Of course, they did not accept her as a daughter of the House and made no reply.
Imeris gave them a final glare before going inside. Water dripping from her hair and clothes hissed in the brazier as she stepped through the smoke-curtain. The usual smouldering green gobletfruit leaves had been placed on top of what looked like a charred log, and the scent of it was sharp and as repellent to Imeris as she supposed it was to insects.
Strangely, Igish neither led her to the changing closet and offered a dry robe, nor indicated that Imeris should stay back from the expensive carpets laid on the floor beyond the hall. Instead, she took a turn into the sitting room she reserved for wealthy patrons and called, “Come and sit in here, daughter dear!”
Imeris went, dripping all the way.
“I did not know the girl’s mother was from Dul,” Imeris said in the doorway of the sitting room. “I did not know you knew the names of the villages of Understorey.”
“Strange that umbrellas are not more popular here,” Igish said, ignoring Imeris’s remark, sprawling belly down, feet up, on the silk-upholstered couch that was normally reserved for Epatut. “Short of good leather, I imagine. Too many people in Canopy, not enough room left for the animals.”
“You will find plenty of animals in Orinland,” Imeris answered tightly, and did not sit down. It wasn’t bad enough that she had failed Oldest-Father, killed Horroh, watched her fellow Hunters be absorbed by a monster, and later helped slay them. Fate had decided that bringing a curse down on Leaper, goading Orin into an attack that had killed Aurilon instead, and then being responsible for her cousin’s fall, were not enough for her to bear.
Now she must stare into the face of a birth mother so changed by trauma that she was unrecognisable.
“Have you lived here long?” Igish asked brightly.
“I do not live here, Birth Mother. I have come to say good-bye before my sister Audblayin seals me away below the barrier forever.”
“Why would she do that? Have you done something wrong? You are famous. You are adored. You are one of us.”
“I am not one of you.” I can never be. Hunter or not. “And I am sad to see you are not yourself. Good-bye, Birth Mother.”
Igish bounded to her feet, her bulging eyes frenzied.
“But the ti! We must have ti! Am I to truly lose you below the barrier a second time and you will not stay for ti?”
“I do not want any, thank you. I am not thirsty.”
“Why are you in such a hurry?” Igish advanced towards her. “Are you going to the Garden?”
“Yes.” Imeris backed away slowly, but her host kept pace.
“How can you go inside the Gate when you are a Hunter, when you have killed? The wards there are stronger than they have been for hundreds of years. Does that amulet you wear help you to get inside?”
“No,” Imeris said, frowning. “I will not go inside. My sister will come out to see me.”
Igish’s mouth snapped shut and her head jerked up. She stopped where she was at the edge of the carpet, her eyes narrowed to contemplative slits. For a moment, Imeris dared hope she was coming to her senses.
“Igish?” she asked softly.
Wife-of-Epatut stood like a statue, silent.
“Birth Mother,” Imeris went on, “I am so sorry about your Epi. I wish I had not raced him. I wish I could undo what happened. I wish that Odel had the power to protect everyone in Canopy from falling.”
“Odel,” Igish repeated in a weird, flat tone. “Audblayin. Ehkis. Oxor. Airak. Ulellin. Ukak. Atwith. Ilan. Esh. Orin. Irof. Akkad. Each of them with one-thirteenth of Canopy’s power and wasting it against one another. What if they would use it only for the common good? What if they would meet, make peace, and work together? They could protect everyone from Canopy to Floor.”
Imeris licked her lips. It was her turn to stay silent. Igish had never spoken like this before. Imeris had accepted that Wife-of-Epatut’s indifference to the plight of anyone not a citizen was a blindness instilled by her upbringing and had forgiven her for it.
To suggest that all the goddesses and gods meet and resolve their differences? Impossible.
“You would be one of us then,” Igish went on, “because there would be no us and them. We would all be one. One forest.”
“They will not,” Imeris said haltingly. “They cannot—”
“They can. They are lazy. They are selfish. Audblayin is your sister. Convince her.”
“To dissolve the barrier? I have tried!”
“She wishes to protect the people of Canopy from demons? You are a Hunter. Tell her you will protect the House of Epatut.” Igish mimed a knife thrust. “Tell her that all the warriors of Understorey, and all the students of Loftfol, will stop being enemies of the goddesses and gods and protect the people instead.”
>
Imeris imagined it for one joyful moment.
“I cannot convince her,” she said, but as she said it she remembered convincing Audblayin to lend her the fertility amulet. She was the one who had convinced Loftfol to make peace. Perhaps she was more like Leaper than she knew. Perhaps, at the very least, she could convince the deities of Canopy to gather and speak to one another. She could stop any further disasters like the wasteful, accidental death of Aurilon.
“I will dress you for your audience,” Igish said, tugging Imeris by the hand in the direction of her bedroom.
* * *
WRAPPED IN enough silk to dress four women, Imeris presented herself at the Gate.
It stood open. The Gatekeeper, Aoun, was there, robed in white as usual, watching over the departure of supplicants in the moments before the Gate closed at dusk. The people passed through the invisible wards with dreamy smiles or frustrated frowns on their faces, which told who had been successful in their requests and who was returning home with bad news.
Imeris did not mention the dream in which Aoun had appeared blood-streaked in a skirt of bones. Wife-of-Epatut, silent and with downcast eyes, stood a pace behind and beside her. Imeris could not understand the sudden shyness. Her birth mother had been to the Garden many times before, when she’d still hoped to have another child of her own body.
“Gatekeeper,” Imeris said, “I wonder if you might fetch my sister. I wish to say good-bye. My middle-father does not seem to be here, or I would ask him to call her.”
“Hunter,” Aoun said with a bow of his head, “Wife-of-Epatut. The Bodyguard of Audblayin lies wounded in the king’s palace. There was an attack on this, his dwelling, by the goddess Orin.”
Imeris felt cold. Her heart shook her whole body with each beat.
“Tell me he is alive,” she gasped.
Aoun smiled apologetically.
“He will be fine. He was wounded by a pair of panthers, though he killed them in the end. Your sister had him taken to Eshland for his broken bones to be healed. She would have come out of the Garden to heal him, but he insisted she stay behind the Gate. Bernreb will rest in the palace until he’s fully recovered. He can’t come into the Garden, and my wards can’t protect him while he’s outside of it.”
Echoes of Understorey Page 35