“What are you doing in Ehkisland?” she demanded, but she knew. Oh, she knew. What else was the Servant doing here, below the barrier, but meeting a lover? One who couldn’t be trusted not to take advantage of his powers?
She realised, quick as lightning, that Core Kirrik would be as pleased, perhaps more pleased, by the power of the lightning god in her hands.
“We were meant to meet,” she said, taking a step towards him. Some providence has spared me the pain of betraying Edax. Whatever god or goddess has done this, I thank you, from the bottom of my heart. “What is your name?”
“Aforis,” the man said warily, taking a step back. “But I’ve no intention of sharing him with a woman. Tell him—”
“Tell me what?” Edax said, all dexterity and strength, upside down with his owl feet gripping a rope. He was as she remembered him. The tear-shaped scars on his cheeks. The smile-lines around his eyes. Only, it was strange seeing the long sleeves of his robe. Men in Understorey didn’t cover their forearms.
Unar lost her breath in an exhale like the aftermath of a punch. She was not to be spared, after all. She felt glad of the ridiculous long sleeves of her shirt. Her spines couldn’t be seen.
“Little Gardener,” Edax said, his brows raised, only he was upside down, so they were lowered. “You’re alive.”
“Devastated by my death, were you?” Unar said crossly, forgetting her traitor’s errand for a moment.
“Your heart wasn’t set on me. I knew it as I took you. You wanted me for teaching, as I recall.”
“Come here,” she shouted. Come here so I can drag you down. “Come and talk to me properly, the right way up.”
He dropped lightly to his taloned feet. But he didn’t go to her. He went to Aforis, kissed him, and murmured, “I’m sorry.”
Unar went to them, looked each of them in the eyes in turn, and said, “I’m sorry, too.”
But the words made no sound. Vines leaped up around the three of them. Twisting. Binding. Edax might have torn free, in the first instant, if he hadn’t seemed entranced by her sorrow and regret. While he hesitated, trying to read the emotion in her eyes, the trap closed. His puzzled expression turned to alarm.
“What—”
Three of them, trussed together, fell, but not far. Nets grown almost instantly between branches delivered all three of them to Core Kirrik’s men. Unar didn’t hate Edax, nor Aforis, but it didn’t matter that she couldn’t steal their shouts from them, for they had no notion of using the sound themselves.
As Sikakis pulled her free and put the ear bone in her hand, she almost didn’t use it. Almost. Edax and Aforis might be without magic, but they still had the power of their flesh, and might have been a match for Sikakis if not for her. Aforis seemed astonished at the sight of Sikakis, squinting at him in the last of the daylight.
“Prince Acis?” he said as Unar caused the vines to coil tightly around his wrists, trapping them behind him. “How can it be?”
“Never call me that,” Sikakis answered, stuffing rags into the prisoner’s mouth. “That is no longer my name.”
Edax looked shrewdly at Unar. His eyes went from the seams in Sikakis’s forearms to the long sleeves that she wore.
“And you, little Gardener?” he said. “Have you taken a One Forest name?”
Unar could only mutely shake her head, the beginnings of tears in her eyes.
* * *
KIRRIK EMERGED to quench the lantern.
It was hours before dawn, but Unar didn’t think the Master, the Mistress, the ruler of the dovecote, whatever she called herself today, had been sleeping. Kirrik moved slowly and carefully along the path from the doorway of the dovecote with the rod in her hands, the bowl of the instrument hovering before her. Before she could lower it over the lantern, she took in the sight of the two prisoners and breathed deeply with satisfaction, as though inhaling the smell of a delicious feast.
“Nameless the … Unar … kept her word,” Sikakis said.
“So it would seem.”
“Will you quench the lantern? We are tired.”
Kirrik stared at Aforis. She seemed not to have heard what Sikakis said.
“Push him through,” she said. “Push him to me, through the light.”
Sikakis exchanged glances with Garrag, the long-armed swimmer, who had the prisoners’ charge. Sikakis nodded. Garrag shrugged. He pushed Aforis into the circle of blue-white light.
Spears of white, so bright they left afterimages in Unar’s eyes, struck from the lantern into Aforis’s chest. Unlike the branch, Aforis didn’t catch fire. He didn’t stop breathing, and he didn’t fall.
On his knees, he crawled through the light, being struck constantly as he went, until he passed out of the circle of light on the other side.
Unar saw his skeleton glowing, faintly. She felt the buoyancy of Understorian magic in use nearby.
“The surest way,” Kirrik said, smiling, “to wake the bones of a Servant of Airak. I could have used him while his bones slept, but he would not have been able to use any tools of amplification, and amplification he must have, if he is to strike down the armies of your father, Sikakis.”
“Yes, Core Kirrik,” Sikakis said gravely.
Kirrik licked her lips as she gazed down at Aforis. Gingerly, as though trying not to wake a sleeping demon, she removed the rags from his mouth and the gag that held them there.
“You may speak,” she told him.
Whatever he said, it made no sound. Lightning leaped from Kirrik’s fingers and she shrieked with glee. Edax made a low growl in his throat, and Kirrik’s greedy eyes came to rest on him.
“This one is to pass through the lantern light, too?” Garrag asked, shaking Edax’s shoulders, but Sikakis put out a hand across Garrag’s chest.
“No, Garrag,” he muttered. “This one would not survive the light.”
Even as he finished the sentence, Kirrik quenched the lantern and beckoned eagerly for the second prisoner.
“A Bodyguard of Ehkis,” she breathed. “I can feel the music of the monsoon in him, so close does his soul lie to that of his goddess. We must use him quickly, before she can replace him. Now, today. Frog the Outer will go with you. Her hate for this Bodyguard is strong. You must fetch the Talon at once, Sikakis.”
Sikakis gave a weary sigh. All the men were weary. They’d barely stopped to rest. Unar stared at the quenched lantern. It was her chance to seize Frog and run, while Kirrik was distracted by her prizes, but what about Marram? And the barrier? She bit her lip to keep from repeating what Sikakis had said, that she had done as she was bidden, and that her questions must be answered now, and as she tasted blood, Sikakis spoke.
“We’ve spent several days returning to you, Core Kirrik. How can you be sure Ehkis hasn’t already replaced him?”
Kirrik’s fingers laced around Edax’s throat, her thumbs pressing his windpipe.
“I am sure.”
Edax jerked defiantly out of her grip.
“And how,” Sikakis asked, “does one wake the bones of a Servant of the rain goddess?”
Kirrik put her fingers to her chin.
“If he can be made willing, he will sing for me. The right song will wake the bones of any disciple. If not, we will wake them with water and fire. Will you sing for me, Bodyguard of Ehkis?”
In reply, Edax threw himself off the edge of the platform.
“No!” Unar shouted. She saw Aforis’s lips shape the same denial, hearing nothing but Kirrik’s hiss; vines hauled Edax back up into the light by one owl foot, and lightning crackled over his skin. Kirrik let him writhe and scream for only a moment, but when the vines peeled away, Edax’s clothes were charred into bloody, raw seams.
Kirrik looked at Unar.
“Sing again, pretty bird,” she said. “I will allow you to heal him.”
Unar closed her eyes and sang.
FORTY-NINE
INSIDE THE dovecote, half a day later, Frog sat on the edge of her bunk, projecting the lie of the distracted child,
swinging her legs while practicing her letters.
Unar knew all her attention was on the two men, each bound to their respective bunks. If Aforis so much as reached for his own magic, Frog was instructed to give him a dose of it, and let Unar heal him afterwards if the punishment turned out to be too severe. As for Edax, he had until sundown to decide to sing for Core Kirrik. Unar didn’t know what would happen, then, but she was afraid for him.
“Edax. Please.”
He wouldn’t even look at her.
“You heal ’im better than anyone you healed before,” Frog said conversationally. “I thought Core Kirrik had killed ’im, that last time. With the hot coals and the poker.”
Unar flinched.
“I’ve brought food and water for them. Shall I call the men to untie them?”
“I do not need the men,” Frog said scathingly. “Untie them yourself. I promise not to let them hurt you.”
Frog would steal Unar’s magic, too, if it seemed like Unar might help Edax to escape. When Unar had asked Kirrik to fulfil her side of the bargain by answering her questions, Kirrik had laughed and said Unar could wait until Edax had retrieved the Talon.
Unar’s hands shook as she unlaced the leather bindings that held his wrists to the support post of the bunk above his. She tried to pull him into a sitting position, with his ankles still bound, but he resisted, and when she put a goblet of water into his hands, he threw it down.
“I don’t need water, Gardener,” he said. “I am the rain.”
“Feed the other one,” Frog sneered. “This one will die of pride.”
Aforis, whose failed escape attempt several hours ago had ended with him setting fire to his own internal organs, took the porridge and water with hands that shook even more than Unar’s.
“You think what she’s doing is right, then?” Unar asked Frog.
Frog sneered again.
“When you have lesser numbers, you must do things the other side has no need to do.”
“That doesn’t answer the question. This isn’t right, Isin.”
“You call me that when you want me to take extra notice of what you say. But when you say it, I hear only the wind. You speak to the dead. Maybe the dead will take notice of you. Maybe the god of the dead will hear you, loyal Canopian that you are.”
Was she a loyal Canopian? A loyal Canopian wouldn’t have attacked a Servant of Airak or the Bodyguard of Ehkis. Yet she’d done it so she might win free, to protect Audblayin. She had spines like an Understorian now, but being in the dovecote repulsed her. It was a place of pain, a container of suffering.
“I fell while trying to save a slave,” Unar pointed out.
“And now you are one. But at least you are a slave to the cause of justice.”
“She promised to tell me what I wanted to know.”
“I heard no such promise from ’er lips.”
Frog used Unar’s next words to tie the two men up again. She didn’t even look up from her ink and parchment.
“Go to Core Kirrik,” she said. “Tell ’er the Bodyguard will not change his mind.”
Unar looked at Edax again.
“Edax,” she said with the same hopelessness with which she had called out to Marram. “Please!”
She might as well have been talking to the dead. He didn’t understand what kind of a woman Kirrik was. Her cold ruthlessness. Just like Unar’s mother. The day little Unar had spilled the expensive lantern oil, kicked it over because she was chasing butterflies, she had begged Father not to tell his wife. Please, Father! Her short little arms had gone around his knees, to try to stop him from going to Left Fork, where a strike that Airak hadn’t prevented had killed one of the trees. Fuel-finders from all over would be going to take it apart, cutting charred homes away from under the feet of the families of the departed, but she hadn’t cared about that. She’d only cared about not being alone when Mother came home.
Uranun had looked down at her, she’d thought then, with the eyes of the dead. He’d taken one stride, breaking apart the grip of her little hands, and left without a word.
Here, now, Edax didn’t stir.
Unar went to Kirrik. Waited until the older woman finished placing the rolled parchment in the clutches of a small green parrot and sent it on its way. When Kirrik turned her ghastly, pale, mad expression on Unar, it was easy to imagine the wrathful Old Gods had taken possession of her woman’s body, that there was nothing of reason or compassion left at all.
“Frog says to tell you that the Bodyguard won’t change his mind.”
Kirrik steepled her fingers. She took the god’s ear bone from the table, unfolded her leather umbrella, and led Unar outside.
“Spin, my spider,” Kirrik said, and Unar blew on the bone flute.
Out of the path, a wooden barrel began taking shape. It was all of a piece and part of the living wood. Bodiless, Unar rode the wave of unheard melodies, yet at the same time, she smelled the tacky floodgum sap, as she would have when performing magic in the Garden, and was distracted by the combination, as though two opposite ends of her nature were finding a way to knit together. Almost as soon as the continuous walls of the barrel rose, rainwater began to fill it. Kirrik stopped when the vessel was chest-high and just as wide.
They stood together silently while water fell around them.
“Not fast enough,” Kirrik mused. “Fetch water in a bucket and fill it.”
Unar bowed her head and went inside. Rainwater from the dovecote’s flat roof was channelled into a holding tank behind the bathroom and kitchen. She trudged back and forth for an hour or two, filling a pair of buckets on a frame, carrying them on her shoulders and then tipping them into the new pool Kirrik had made.
When it was full to the brim, Kirrik sent Unar to fetch Frog, Sikakis, and the two prisoners. Frog and Sikakis took Aforis with them from the bunkroom first, leaving Edax alone with Unar for a brief interval.
“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 g
aze 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.
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