“I care,” Leaper said. “I don’t want to die.”
SIX
AIRAK CALLED his Shining One into the chamber.
Leaper waited, trembling under the weight of the glass, in pain.
Ousos entered by a smaller, rear door; the door Leaper used when returning from his more secretive forays into Canopy.
She was middle-aged. Stocky. Muscular beneath the fat. Her knotty, unkempt hair covered her shoulders, half white, half black. She carried two lanterns and half a dozen axes on her person at all times, and she slowly, idly chewed nothing with her greenish teeth when she wasn’t speaking. In the course of their lessons with her, during their Skywatcher days, the odd habit had driven Leaper and the other students to distraction.
She ducked her head in deference to the god.
“Yes, Holy One?” Ousos spoke with one side of her mouth, as if keeping her imaginary cud in the closed half. As always, she was difficult to understand without paying close attention. Leaper had once remarked to Ousos that she had not been chosen for the Hunt in which his sister, Imeris, had been chosen; the bruise Ousos had given him on the jaw with her axe handle had been easy enough to understand.
“Carry the lens, Ousos, if you would.” Airak took a step back from Leaper, to give his Shining One room to remove the glass burden from Leaper’s arms. Leaper cried out sharply as Ousos pulled it away from his ruined flesh; her hands were gloved in dayhunter leather, and she seemed not to feel the heat. “Come along, Leaper.”
Airak led them both out the rear door. The tunnel there ran down and around, coming out onto a nondescript, little-used branch road Leaper hadn’t really paid attention to before. It was half hidden in the shadow of a wider, parallel branch road running directly above it.
While the higher road was a branch originating from the Temple, the smaller, lower road was a yellowrain branch. It connected, even further down, to the trunk of a tree too narrow to be used for any real purpose; at least, that was what Leaper assumed. It was barely six or seven paces across. Any attempt to build in the little yellowrain sapling would surely end in disaster come the wind and rain of the monsoon.
Confused, his forearms throbbing, cracking and stiffening—I agreed to live, aren’t you going to let me go and get this seen to by a healer?—Leaper followed Airak and Ousos into the tree. He should have been warned by the fierce glow emanating from the open doorway.
Inside, the little yellowrain tree had been hollowed into a perfect cone, widest at the top and narrowest at a round opening within arm’s reach above Leaper’s head. He had to squint to look at it. Lightning flowed continuously through the hollow trunk. No, it wasn’t lightning. There was no smell of ozone. No sense of magic.
It was sunlight, magnified by a transparent glass shield shape high above them.
“Put the lens in place,” Airak instructed his Shining One. Ousos pushed the glass shield into a groove that ran around the rim of the aperture.
At once, the beam of light narrowed. It focused onto a place on the floor that, Leaper was now able to see, was set with green-veined marble.
“Holy One?” he asked tentatively, baffled as to what he was meant to see. All he could think of was that Airak, having scorched him with hot glass, now intended to set fire to him using this light-focusing torture mechanism.
“This is my seeing tree, Leaper,” Airak answered, putting his hand out to keep Leaper back from the dangerous beam of light. “Canopians are complacent. They buy my favour, but they forget to watch the sky. Danger comes from all directions. My seeing tree can’t be used in daylight, because of the sun. At night, however”—he jerked his chin to indicate the marble—“this stone opens. I go below, to the observing room. There, I can keep watch on my enemies, who stole my lanterns and fled with them into the sky.”
Ousos spat into the beam, showing what she thought of her master’s enemies. Her spit landed on the marble in the full glare of the sun and turned to steam within seconds.
“I don’t have prescient dreams.” Airak lowered his arm. “I can’t make prophecies. All I can do is watch, and when I can’t watch, set a watch on people and places of great importance.”
“Do you mean important people like Queen Ilik, Holy One?” Leaper struggled to ignore the pain, to think.
“Do you suppose nobody besides yourself was watching her?” Airak answered.
“Of course,” Leaper said. He shook his head. “She was watched. We both were.” Anger stirred in him again, that his master had watched his betrayal and said nothing. Had it been convenient, to have Leaper tied even more tightly to the palace? What had Airak planned to do if Ilik and Leaper eloped to Eshland?
But then his anger was diverted by the thrust of the god’s question.
Do you suppose nobody besides yourself was watching her?
Leaper’s seared arms demanded attention. He tried to focus.
“So?” Airak said expectantly. “My people guarded her. You guarded her. The king guarded her. How did she come to harm?”
“From below!” Leaper exclaimed. Once again, he found words trying to form in his mouth: a confession about the Crocodile-Riders he’d slighted, about the speaking-bone he’d stolen and the secret language he used with the queen. Once again, no words came out.
Airak inclined his head slightly, the silver prongs of his headdress lowering like the horns of an animal offering challenge.
“From below,” he agreed. “A strong barrier makes us complacent. Danger comes from all directions. Go to the healer. Have those burns salved and wrapped. Then meet me on the high platform of the Temple.”
Leaper quickly left his master and the little yellowrain tree behind.
Habit. Obedience. Pain. Indecision.
The healer took one look at Leaper’s burns and pursed her lips.
“I think that’s a little beyond salving,” she said. “If I don’t use the magic of another niche, it’s beyond saving. He wants you to remember the pain, but he doesn’t want the inconvenience of injury. The real question is, rejuvenation or justice?”
“I don’t understand what you’re asking,” Leaper admitted.
She loomed and looked down at him, piercingly.
“I have one medicine here,” she said, “from the realms of the birth goddess. I have another medicine from the realm of the goddess of justice. The former will heal you completely. But you could lose those climbing spines from Understorey that you treasure. Viper’s fangs, aren’t they? They’d be ejected in the healing process. The latter medicine will bring you justice. That is to say, if your wounds are more severe than you deserve, they will be reduced accordingly. If not, nothing will happen. Or they could be made worse.”
Leaper swallowed.
“Our master trained me to lie,” he said. “He made me lie. Not just to kings and queens but to goddesses and gods. I lied to him. Is he so different?”
“Lies? Is that all?” The healer raised an eyebrow.
“I … I was going to leave him. As I once left Audblayin, under whose auspices I was born.” No reason to leave him now. No danger that I’ll reoffend. He said he’d help me find Ilik’s killer. “He never stopped me. For ten years, he watched and waited, to test my loyalty. To teach me a lesson. I’ll take that medicine from the realm of justice.”
It was bitter, and only the deepest pain faded, but Leaper’s spines stayed fixed in the bones of his forearms. The healer assured him the salve would take care of the rest.
With time.
Leaper dragged himself up the final flight of winding stairs, supplied with salve and wattle leaves for washing, to the high platform of the Temple, to keep his appointment with the lightning god.
Airak waited there in full sun. His robes billowed, and his shadow fell over the polished floodgum like the gnomon of a sundial. Ousos flanked him, as did his tall, slender Bodyguard, Eliligras. The high platform, built around the jagged, blackened end of the tallest branch of the tallest tree in Canopy, swayed in the slightest breeze.
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br /> Leaper fought the desire to empty his already-empty stomach. His arms were numbed by the unguents of the healer, beneath bandages that reminded him of the assailant with the hook. If his wounds became infected, as that man’s had, he, too, could lose one hand, or both. Would that be justice?
“Holy One,” he said, kneeling on the edge of the marble bowl that was set into the floor of this platform. As with most platforms, they were crucibles for placing black sand or other raw materials to be transformed by lightning.
“Stand,” Airak said, and Leaper obeyed.
Around them, all of the forest and the lands beyond were visible. Past all of Canopy, over the northern horizon, lay the sea. To the south lay grasslands and the distant plateau. Leaper had avoided the high platform as much as possible during his service. Ulellin’s curse on him, he had believed, would prevent him from ever seeing those other lands. It was no use gazing at them and wondering. Better to gaze into the endless depths of Ilik’s eyes.
Now Ilik’s eyes were closed forever. Leaper looked into Airak’s mismatched ones. There was no curse that concerned him anymore. He was free.
Free to do exactly what he was ordered to do.
“King Icacis,” Airak said, “sent a messenger to the Temple as soon as his wife’s murder was discovered.”
“Yes, Holy One.” Leaper said stupidly. I pretended to be your response.
“He asked for a Servant to help hunt down her killer.”
“Yes.”
“I sent Eliligras.” Leaper’s eyes focused on the Bodyguard at that piece of information. Her hair was cut close to her head, half white and half black as usual but divided by a thin section dyed red. The shafts of the paired javelins shackled by her bony hand were stained red as well. “Eliligras arrived at the palace only moments after you left.”
“One who walks in the grace of Airak had no intention, Holy One, of—”
“Eliligras,” Airak interrupted sharply. “Place the thing you carry into the bowl at my feet.”
The thing that Eliligras unwrapped from her belt pouch and placed in the marble bowl was the crocodile mandible that had been used to cut Ilik’s throat.
Leaper swayed.
Or perhaps the platform swayed.
Or perhaps the whole world.
“Lightning,” Airak said, “doesn’t strike just anywhere. Lightning has an origin and a destination. Watch the skies, Leaper. Watch the land. For you, for the sake of what you’ve lost, I’ll connect this weapon with the place where it was last purchased. The place where it last changed hands. I will send you, as you wish, on a quest for revenge.”
“Yes, Holy One.” Anticipation made his legs tremble.
Or perhaps the platform did.
“In payment,” Airak said, relentless, “if you return, 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.”
“Yes, Holy One.”
“Take a step back. Watch the skies. Watch the land.”
Leaper did as he was commanded. Heart in his mouth, certainty in his mind, he turned a fraction towards the north.
North is where the Crocodile-Riders live. Airak will strike the heart of the forest, marking the guilty ones, fixing them like a grub under a bore-knife.
North.
Lightning sprang up from the bloody jawbone, which turned to ash in an instant.
It fountained upward, splitting the sky. It curved. It crackled. Stray filaments escaped, but there was no mistaking where the bulk of the deadly shaft descended.
Directly to the west. Far from the edge of the forest.
West.
Leaper was wrong about the Crocodile-Riders. He was wrong about everything.
“Gui,” Ousos remarked, and spat. “That filthy squeezing trader town.”
“Gui,” Airak agreed. “Leaper, you’ll use the storeroom lantern. Send a message to our factor in Gui, demanding not a delivery, but an escort. I don’t care how they feel about Canopians trespassing on their soil. If they’d rather we attacked Gui from here with more lightning strikes like that one, let them refuse.”
“Yes, Holy One.”
“Pack lightly for your journey. Arrange to meet your guide at the roots of this tree. And, Leaper. In addition to finding satisfaction for King Icacis, there is another task, from me. None of us felt any breach in the barrier that a Floorian killer could have used. Find out how it was done.”
“As you wish, Holy One.”
“You’ll go with him, Ousos,” Airak added. The Shining One’s eyes went wide with surprise before they narrowed at Leaper in apparent hatred.
“Yes, Holy One,” she said.
“Won’t you need her to make lanterns, Holy One?” Leaper blurted out, equally surprised.
“Maybe she’ll make better lanterns,” Airak said lightly, turning to go, “after a few moons in the Sneak Thief’s company. She has no divided loyalties, Leaper. Have a care that you do not betray me again.”
SEVEN
LEAPER STAYED, staring at the place where the lightning had landed, long after Airak and Eliligras had left.
The sun sank towards the west.
West.
Not north.
The weapon that killed her came from the west.
“Jump,” Ousos suggested, bumping roughly up beside him. Her shoulder was at the level of his elbow. “Quickest way to get down there.”
“We buy sand from Gui,” Leaper said, ignoring her spite. If the Crocodile-Riders were innocent, he had to work out a new connection between himself, the merchants of Gui, and the queen of Airakland.
Some motive that made sense. Some explanation whereby he would still be to blame, because he was always to blame, wasn’t he? The Temple wasn’t the only customer of the affable-seeming agents of Gui. Icacis’s palace did business with them, and no doubt there were other glass guilds or independent manufacturers, too. Leaper had used the Temple contact, Slehah, to bring him Tyran’s Talon, the bone that enhanced his lightning powers. Who else had bribed Slehah to break forest laws; where else did she owe her loyalty? Was it as simple, as coincidental, as a trade negotiation gone wrong?
“Sure are a quick one,” Ousos said, spitting.
He turned to face her. Loathing still distorted her nose and mouth.
“Why don’t you want to go?” he asked sarcastically. “Might be a good opportunity to knock me on the head with one of those axes.”
“I had a sister,” she said, greenish teeth showing as her lip curled. “She had bad dreams. When we were both little ones. Dreams so bad, she’d wake up choking. Imaginary hands at her throat. Odel couldn’t help. Ulellin couldn’t help. None of our immortal lords or ladies have the power to control dreams. ‘Try this dreamer’s ti from Gui, one of the market slaves says. Oh, it’s wonderful for dreams.’”
Leaper looked into her flinty eyes and didn’t dare say what he knew was coming.
“Killed her, didn’t it?” Ousos barked. “Not right away. Bit by bit. She needed more and more. More than what we could get in the market. Had to buy it direct, passed through the barrier, and they wanted a danger tax, didn’t they, those squeezing dick-fleas from Gui? Said they’d be killed by Rememberers, or Understorians, if they got caught in the trees or on the Floor.”
“I’m sorry,” Leaper said, though he didn’t feel sorry. She wasn’t real to him in that moment; less than a leaf shadow, with a shadow axe. Was Ilik trading something illegal through the barrier?
Ousos took a step back from him and dusted her hands off dramatically.
“I don’t buy from them of Gui. Won’t talk to them, even. M’Lord Airak knows that. He makes sure Eliligras or Aforis is always between them and me. Guess he knows some of them’ll need to die, this time.” She fondled her axes.
Leaper said nothing.
“Guess he knows you’re too much of a dick-fl
ea to do any killing,” Ousos added.
Leaper tried to recall if he’d ever spoken of his secret oath against violence to the lightning god.
It was after he’d summoned lightning to slay Orin’s monster during the great Hunt with Imeris. Only, the monster wasn’t born a monster. It was an amalgamation of Orin’s Servants, whom the goddess believed had betrayed her. As Leaper’s power had run over them and through them, Leaper had smelled their fear; not of death but of leaving loved ones behind forever. Of mouths sealed by boar bristles and blood that would never say things that needed to be said. He had smelled the scalps of newborns they would never bear and tasted the kisses of their dreams, and as the life had leached away from them, as the rot washed over their yearnings, he had known regret so deep and unbearable that his own next breath had come as a surprise to him.
Soon enough, the goddess Ulellin had come to lay a curse on him, temporarily distracting him from the horror of his deed. Yet it haunted him.
“I guess,” Ousos said, turning him forcibly around and giving him a little push towards the ladder, “we ought to get started. Send that message to the sand seller. Get your things together.”
“I guess we ought,” Leaper agreed, wrapping his elbows clumsily around the ladder edges, stopping and grimacing at the pain. He didn’t want to climb down. He wanted to catch his breath. The world was moving on, but Ilik had stopped as surely as her clock. Ousos was behind him, and he had to talk to her, but words deserted him until he called on his catalogue of identities and pictured the bold brilliance of the suntree, letting courtliness take over his tongue. “Shining One, I confess to weakness. You’re going to have to help one who walks in the grace of Airak to get down. Not only from the Temple, but from Canopy. Far be it for one who walks in Airak’s grace to question him, but I fail to understand why our Holy One hobbled me this way, when he intended all along that I should seek the queen’s murderer.”
Did the god intend all along that Leaper should fall in love with the queen? That his own inclination to break into the palace undetected would position him to be a superior spy?
Tides of the Titans Page 6
