“I went to Odel’s emergent,” Unar said. “I did what you asked.”
Ylly lowered her hands.
“My grandchild is safe?”
Unar took her hands and squeezed them.
“Your grandchild is so safe that the Servants combined couldn’t cast her down if they tried. I paid for her safety with five lengths of chimera skin cloth.”
Unar laughed again, remembering, and let Ylly go.
“How did you take such riches without the king seeing you?”
“I didn’t take the cloth from the king. I took it from the stupid old princess who murdered your mother. Her window still faces the setting sun. You serve the Garden now. I would have it that the Garden serves you.”
“Don’t say such things,” Ylly breathed. “Warmed One, you’ve kept your word, you’re great of heart, but you’re also young and made moon-mad by your anger at the friends who left you behind. The Garden serves Audblayin. They will come to find you if you don’t join them right away.”
Part of Unar wanted to recline in the hammock with her hands behind her head, smiling and waiting for them to come. Yet some wiser part of her set her pulling on the clean clothes Ylly had brought, rinsing her mouth and slicking her hair back with water from the waterfall, wandering down to the Temple to find her fellow Gardeners.
She still hadn’t bothered to learn their names, but she stood by a serious-looking, shaved-headed girl that she recognised from barrow-repair duty and tried to assume a similar expression of deep gravity. The girl had dirty hands. They all did. Obviously they’d been up and working for some hours before the soldiers had arrived.
Unar’s stomach growled.
Before she could sneak over to the blueberry bushes and stuff some of the ripe fruit into her mouth, the twenty-eight Gardeners were forming a single line, and the fourteen Servants were moving along it, led by Servant Eilif, who asked questions about who had seen what.
Unar lined up by the shaved-headed girl. Soon, she could see Oos, Aoun, and the five others who had been raised ahead of her. With her magic, she felt inside their bodies, seeking some identifying aspect of their magic, of their capability to reproduce, that would allow her to not only follow the movements of others in the Garden, but know exactly who they were. The shape and scent of Aoun’s magic, she recognised well enough, but what about Oos? Her femaleness felt like a pod bursting with peas under a tracery of Unar’s fingers, but the clothes-dye aroma seemed to disguise whatever else might have been beneath.
Somebody else’s magic cut off Unar’s breath and sense of smell at the same time, like fingers pinching her nostrils shut. She stifled a snort and withdrew.
“Impertinent!” Servant Eilif said, glowering. That one smelled of wormwood and fig fruit dried to dust.
Unar bowed deeply and said nothing, but Servant Eilif stood before her and didn’t move on down the line.
“The others say you’ve been slow to wake, Unar of the Garden. They say you’re barely coherent at breakfast, use your magic for tasks that can be accomplished by hand, and fall asleep during the day.”
“I haven’t slept well at night since Audblayin’s death.”
“Do you think yourself my equal?” the Servant thundered.
Unar couldn’t answer that question truthfully and avoid punishment. She remained bowed.
“Forgive me. I haven’t slept well since Audblayin’s death, Warmed One,” she repeated dully.
“Did you leave the Garden last night? Did you steal from the king of Odelland?”
Unar straightened and looked the white-haired Servant directly in the eye.
“I am no thief, Warmed One. I stole nothing. The Garden is my home. If I’d stolen from the king of Odelland, I’d still have been standing outside the Great Gates when the soldiers came.”
The old woman turned, looking for Aoun; she found him, and they shared a glance.
“The wards hold,” Aoun said mildly.
“And just as well,” Oos chimed in. “The Odelland king’s soldiers are mostly murderers. Some are rapists. A few are thieves. One who walks in the grace of Audblayin senses only one or two who could pass through the Gate, even if you invited them, Servant Eilif.”
“You must never invite out-of-niche soldiers into the Garden,” Eilif said. “Listen. All of you. Even our own king’s men should set foot inside the wall only as a last resort, should the wards fail and Understorian warriors breach our sanctuary. As for the Temple itself, it must remain pure at all costs. The Garden is for women, male Servants and Gardeners who have given themselves to Audblayin, and male slaves who have been given as tribute.”
“Yes, Servant Eilif,” Oos and the other Servants chorused, but Unar turned the stricture over in her mind. She could see no good reason for women being seen as safe. They were no less dangerous than men. She thought of Odel’s Bodyguard, the scarred woman who had taken her machete and bore-knife without her knowing.
“Our own king’s soldiers come at last,” Eilif said, turning abruptly away from Unar, heading for the Gates. In the absence of an explicit order to remain behind, Unar and the mass of Gardeners and slaves followed along behind her, crossing bridges and traipsing over stepping-stones, avoiding flowering groundcovers and fragile, brightly coloured fungi.
The Gates stood wide open with Odelland soldiers clearly visible on the other side. They wore scarlet leaf-skirts over leather loincloths, pale yellow bracers and shin guards, and lacquered breastplates studded with beetle carapaces over peach-coloured tunics that bordered on trespassing on their god’s reserved colour.
“Your people lack discipline in the absence of your goddess,” their leader called to Servant Eilif as she approached the invisible barrier.
“The person you are looking for,” Eilif said with conviction, “is not among my people. You have my oath. Now you must leave.”
“We’ll question your people ourselves.”
“Our king’s men are close.”
“You think one who walks in the grace of Odel cares about your king’s men? Your king is weak. The magic of this niche is faded. You’d better do as our king demands, or who will protect you in the raids when they come? You’ll be begging us for help.”
“The Garden will not admit anyone who has taken a life.”
“Is that so?”
“Try to step through the Gate.”
“Save your tricks for the raiders.”
“The Garden doesn’t admit thieves any more than it admits murderers. You could have saved yourselves the trip, soldiers of Odelland.”
“We’re not stupid, old woman.” The leader let his frustration show. “We learned as schoolboys in the leaf hut that the Garden Temple favours women, as the death god’s Temple favours men. But we have orders from our king. If we can’t get in, you’ll have to come out.”
“Look there,” Eilif said, but a scout had already rushed forward to tug at the lead soldier’s tunic.
On a barely visible branch path to the east, the brown-clad soldiers of Audblayinland advanced in an orderly centipede formation, moving two by two, left-handers with right-handers, so that weapons could be wielded on both sides. Citizens pressed themselves to trunks to keep out of their path, and children emerged from their hollowed-out houses to point and cheer.
“I won’t flee before fighters made inferior by their godlessness,” the leader said.
“Do not flee,” Eilif suggested. “Go to meet them. Tell them you’ve realised your error. That the Garden is incapable of sheltering thieves.”
It galled the man to do as she said, but Unar could imagine no alternative. The Odelland soldiers turned to leave, and the Gardeners fell into each other’s arms, soothing one another. Unar caught Aoun gazing flatly at her.
As their eyes met, her heart thudded. Had she ever thought he was too tall, that his jaw was too long, that his soulful eyes were too deep-set, too serious? He was stunning. Did he think the same about her? No, of course not. He was wondering if, despite the wards, despit
e everything, she really had stolen from the king of Odelland.
Insolently, knowing that nobody else was watching, she gave him a slow smile and the briefest, barest nod of her head.
FOURTEEN
UNAR LICKED the last of her seed porridge from its leaf-bowl.
She let the bowl fall off the edge of the Garden and washed her hands and mouth in an irrigation channel. With the sun setting, she turned towards the slave quarters, intending to find Ylly and claim her reward, her first swimming lesson, but a lofty figure in a white robe and red-and-green stole stepped out from behind the closest pavilion.
It was Aoun.
“Come with me, Gardener,” he said.
“As you wish, Warmed One,” Unar answered instantly. She followed him with foreboding across a series of bridges, wondering whether other Servants would be waiting at the Gate to expel her from the Garden forever.
There was nobody else at the Gate. Unar and Aoun stopped together by the black-trunked tree ferns, the fronds forming a tangled roof above their heads, staring at the empty space where soldiers had milled like angry ants that morning.
Unar’s skin prickled. She stood, poised, on the balls of her feet with her knees bent, smelling nightflower honey, the reek of bats, and the powder of moths. Would he simply and silently throw her through that empty space? He’d pushed her through it before, but her magic had been weak then. She would resist him, if he tried to cast her from the Garden.
“Watch,” he said.
“It’s too dark to see anything. Where’s your lantern?”
“Watch.”
There was nothing in the doorway and then there was a seed, the size of a human heart, formed from light that only a Gardener’s eyes could see. It throbbed like a heart, and with every pulse, it grew larger, sending out shoots above and roots below, until it filled the space between gateposts, smelling like rain.
Unar’s mouth was dry. He wasn’t casting her out. He was breaking the rules for her again, and Aoun did not break rules.
“The key,” she whispered. “I am dreaming.”
“You’re not dreaming.”
“Why have you shown me the key?”
“I’m showing you that the Gate is locked. Now, show me how to go through, Unar.”
“No! That is, I don’t know—”
“If you can discover a way through, our enemies might discover it, too. Show me, please.”
“So you can strengthen the wards?” Hope turned to dismay. For a whole minute, she’d thought he was helping her, training her, maybe a little in love with her. She thought he’d escaped from the anti-lust magic after all, but all he wanted was to strengthen the Garden, faithful as a fourth-generation slave. “So you can cage me?”
He laid his hand lightly on her shoulder, and she felt that she was melting. It wasn’t fair, that he could do this to her but not she to him.
“Pay attention. I’ve given you the key.”
She’d forgotten.
Of course. After what she had just seen, the Garden would never be closed to her again. Her emotions were in turmoil. Joy warred with terror; the ground scarcely seemed solid. Surely he couldn’t just show her the key. Maybe he still planned to throw her out afterwards.
“Am I not the enemy?” she asked. “I’ve rebelled against a king. Against the natural order.”
“My parents rebelled against that order.”
“And now you rebel against it?”
His hand fell away.
“No. We knelt together on the same day, Unar, but we aren’t alike in this. You know I came here to submit to their will. But you must learn greater discipline—”
“We aren’t alike? You showed me the key! That’s not allowed, is it?”
“I swore never to lock the Gate in front of anyone, except in the advent of Audblayin’s reincarnation, my own mortal wounding, or in defence of a Garden under imminent threat.”
“Is the Garden under imminent threat?”
“You’ve breached wards that have been impenetrable for four hundred years, Unar. I can’t imagine a true disciple of the Garden would ever do such a thing.”
She blinked back tears, wounded by his disapproval. Shouldn’t the fact that she had found a way through four-hundred-year-old defences prove to the Servants that she was fit to join them? Shouldn’t Aoun be awed? Full of praise instead of chastisement?
He was as stupid as the others. He could leap off the edge of the Garden for all she cared. Audblayin was reborn a man.
And I’m the only one fit to be his guardian.
“You want to go through?” she said at last. “You guessed that giving me the key would be the only way to convince me to show you. Very well. Your turn to pay attention.”
She could have done it gently. Instead, she lashed out with a whip-crack of power that tightened around his testicles, finding the seeds beneath his clothes, beneath his skin.
He carries new life, she said to the wards, while Aoun’s pupils dilated and his breathing quickened. Do you see them? Do you see that he is only a seed, blowing on the wind?
She gave him a push in the direction of the Gate. Aoun went awkwardly through the wards, bent at the waist, his legs wide apart, and groaned when he found himself on the other side.
Unar let go of him. Her anger died.
“Aoun,” she said, “I’m sorry.”
He tried to come back through at once, made inattentive by pain, and was repelled. Unar studied the structure of the seed at the centre of the lock, and saw instantly how to sow a piece of it inside Aoun, to grow it so that it filled him, so that the Gate would confuse his body with part of itself. She mentally traced the patterns with magic as they occurred to her, knowing from the rich earth smell in her nostrils that life-power was flowing through her and into them, half remembering the flowering that had brought her to the Garden four years ago, half making it her own, hardly noticing that what she did was visible to him, too.
When he came back through, he was still panting, open-mouthed. He stared at her the way he’d stared that morning when Servants and soldiers had been all around them hunting fruitlessly for the thief who served a deity.
“You could destroy everything,” he said. “All of it. You could unmake it. I could almost believe that you are the goddess reborn. Only banishment to Understorey could make you safe.”
“I am a Gardener,” Unar said stiffly. “We knelt together on the same day, Aoun.”
She was frightened into doing something else she hadn’t known she knew how to do, and that was to conceal her strength from him. She felt him probe for the leaves, branches, and glowing stem of it, until he was satisfied that opening the Gate for him had cost her most of her strength.
She wanted to feel his real hands on her, and not just the brush of his magic, but he stayed a respectful step back from her.
“You are a Gardener,” he agreed. “Make sure you don’t fall behind in your work. Your own work, assigned to you. Have an early night. Get some rest.”
For once, she didn’t dare disobey.
FIFTEEN
THE OLD slave woman, whose tasks Ylly had taken on, was called Hasbabsah.
They stood in the kitchen garden, with bean-covered trellises forming a labyrinth around them. The trellises caught every sparkle, every glint of full sun.
“Stand straight,” Unar said. “I can’t see your face.”
“I am standing as straight as I can, Warmed One,” Hasbabsah replied drily. She was puckered and toothless. Her balding head was spotted, and her toenails were like claws. Unar had never seen such an old slave.
She’d never thought to wonder why, before.
“Show me your arms.”
Hasbabsah pushed back the sleeves of her coarse winter robe. At intervals along the blades of her forearms, blunt bone-coloured nubs showed where her warrior’s climbing grafts had been snapped or filed off.
“Why do you attack us?”
“I have served for fifty years, Warmed One.”
> “No, I mean why do your people, Understorians like you, attack Canopy?”
“There are bones the size of the great trees in the soil of Floor, Warmed One, if you ever cared to dig to find them. They are the bones of the Old Gods, huge and fierce animals with the intellects of people. Before they were slain by the thirteen gods and goddesses of Canopy, they ruled us, all of us, wisely and well. Humankind was not divided into three. We were one.”
“What a disgusting notion,” Unar said, fascinated and repelled. “Do you seek revenge on our deities?”
“Some of the learned of Understorey believe that if the thirteen are cast down together, between sunrise and sunset of a single day, the Old Gods will rise again.”
Unar laughed.
“That can never happen. The most your attacks have ever achieved is to capture one god, and he was rescued by his Bodyguard. Understorians are too few.”
“But of course we are few,” Hasbabsah said. “We are denied the light. We are denied the toucan’s share of the fruit of the great trees. We are prey to demons. We have no magic to keep our children from falling.”
Unar wished she hadn’t laughed.
“I’m sorry, Hasbabsah. I don’t blame you for coming to kill Audblayin. But she was gentle, wasn’t she? She was kind?”
Unar was only guessing. She had never met the goddess face-to-face.
“I did not come to kill Audblayin, Warmed One. I was captured in Odelland. I came to kill Odel, not knowing that his incarnation had not even been found, that the empty Temple was a trap.”
“Hasbabsah and my mother were taken together,” Ylly said, setting her basket of beans on the ground. “Luckily for us, as of today, she’s been assigned to the lower branches of the Temple to care for my new grandchild while Sawas is diving.”
Crossroads of Canopy Page 8
