Crossroads of Canopy

by Thoraiya Dyer

  Unar’s face grew hot. Frog had admitted their mother was dead, back at the home of the three brothers. Unar hadn’t asked about the fate of their father.

  We’ll get another, Father had said when they discovered Isin was gone. Frog had done the same, finding another father for herself, before trying to kill that father and running away to find Core Kirrik and her Master.

  But Frog had slipped. Admitted there was a way through.

  “Roll him off while he is sleeping? When will you do that, Frog? When you go to Canopy?”

  “When it is time,” Frog grumbled, giving her customary grimace.

  “Time for what?”

  “Why are you using your voice for talkin’ rubbish while the Master is waitin’ for ’is supper? Show me you can manage a loaf of bread without burnin’ yourself before you ask for the way to unravel the greatest magical structure the world has ever seen!”

  Choking on her impatience, Unar picked up the single grain from the table.

  “The Master’s supper,” she said. “Will I be permitted to meet him at last, then? Will I carry the serving tray up that spiral staircase?”

  “No,” Frog said.

  Unar let the grain fall to the floor. She sighed and started to sing.

  * * *

  IN THE night, Unar served another watch with Core Kirrik.

  “Have you given thought to what you have learned so far, Nameless?” Kirrik asked, staring into the downpour yet again, her wide stance undaunted and her umbrella unmoving.

  “I have, actually. You asked me if there was anything for the goddess of rain to fear.”

  “And?”

  “I suppose, if there was an emergency that fell under another god’s jurisdiction, the people of Ehkis’s niche could be convinced to pray to someone else. To take their offerings from Ehkisland to other niches, other kingdoms. She might fear that. The loss of their faith and their tribute. Such an emergency might even be contrived. To turn her people against her.”

  “Yes. How? Think!”

  “Maybe … maybe if there was too much rain. Or maybe if the monsoon storms brought a lot of wind, or lightning. If it was wrecking people’s houses, they might pay tribute to the lightning god, instead. Or the wind goddess. To make it stop. Then Ehkis would be weak. Her section of the barrier might become weak. Or the monsoon might end early.”

  Unar waited for some indication that she was right before it struck her that she didn’t have to wait for confirmation; what she’d described was the same situation that had seen Aoun’s parents executed for disobeying the king of Ehkisland. No wonder Frog was always calling her slow.

  Core Kirrik glanced over her shoulder, and her laughter, this time, was low and delighted.

  “You see, Nameless? It does not take much to make a traitor of a Canopian. Oh, do not make that offended face at me. You are a traitor. To mortals, you are. To others like you, with only the … what word did you use?… misfortune … to be born below the barrier, you are a traitor. You consider your current disadvantage to be temporary. Your sister’s disadvantage too. You show loyalty to Canopy when it shows no loyalty to you.”

  Unar tried to make her flared nostrils relax, to make her jaw unclench.

  “That is better,” Core Kirrik remarked. “You can learn to hold your tongue, after all. I will reward you. Speak.”

  “If your Master hates Canopy so much,” Unar spluttered, “why take my sister in? Why protect her, when she has no patron deity whose powers you might use?”

  Kirrik massaged her brow with thumb and forefinger as though withdrawing reminiscences by hand.

  “The monsoon was just beginning when Frog the Outer came. She was soggy. Frightened. Furious. I guarded the paths then, as I do now. I could have allowed her to run into the light. Instead, I quenched the lantern. Allowed her to pass. A great, fat man, a village Headman, came snorting and pawing behind her. When the lantern killed him and he fell, Frog put her face in my skirts and shook. At first, I thought she was crying because the fat man was her father.” Kirrik smoothed those skirts, seeming to see Frog still crouched there. “But she was laughing.”

  “Why did you save her? And why did the Master agree to keep her?”

  “Once, the Master had a son. Taught him to hate. Hate is safety, for sorcerers and their sons. It was too much hate, in the end, and the son was driven away. But Frog reminded me of the Master’s son. Her gift is hate. Even those without magical gifts may have mundane ones. The Master knew from his future-searchings Frog would lead him to something he needed. Something he had been searching for.”

  “To what?” Unar was aghast. She didn’t understand the strange prohibition against affection shown first by Frog, now by Kirrik. She tried to think what Kirrik’s Master needed and had been searching for. The guess escaped her lips before she could stop it. “Bones.”

  Stolen bones, Frog had called them. Stolen from where? From whom? Did the Old Gods need them, if they were to rise again? Did the Floorians act as custodians of the bones? Unar still did not know what a bone woman was.

  “Hush,” Kirrik said.

  For a moment, she seemed to be straining to hear some distant music.

  Then she turned an odd, triumphant rictus on Unar. The ear bone that Unar had used before was in her outstretched hand.

  “Take this, now, Nameless. The danger we have been waiting for is here at last. Oh, and there is something else. You must wear this.” She dug in a damp, black pouch at her waist, drawing out a strip of colour-shifting fabric Unar recognised at once. “Chimera skin. While you wear the blindfold, you will not be able to magically perceive the patterns I will make of your power. You will breathe out into the bone flute. You will supply me with raw sound. Whenever I command you to spin, you will draw it like a spider drawing silk, but I will be the weaver.”

  “You want me to fight blindly?”

  “I will do the fighting. Are you afraid, Nameless?”

  Unar’s heart thudded. “Of course I am, Core Kirrik. You intend me to be. You won’t tell me what is coming.”

  “Put the blindfold on.”

  Unar obeyed. The chimera skin was light and supple. It didn’t hold water. It had no smell.

  “Tighter,” Kirrik said, pulling the knot painfully. Unar felt the wind of the abandoned umbrella falling, just as Frog’s voice came shrilly from the direction of the dovecote.

  “Marram! Stop!”

  Something crashed into the building, making the branch beneath Unar shake.

  He isn’t dead, Unar thought, dazed and indecisive. The ear bone was smooth and cold in her hands. Kirrik’s icy fingers sent a shiver down the back of her neck. Unar was bodily turned until she, too, faced the dovecote.

  “You will play when I squeeze my hand, Nameless,” Kirrik said, low and cutting.

  I must pass the test. I must stay with Frog. I must learn how to break through the barrier from this side.

  Yet she couldn’t let Kirrik kill Marram.

  FORTY-SIX

  “WHO ARE you, to come into my place without seeking guest-right?”

  Kirrik’s voice half deafened Unar. She flinched away but not too far, mincing steps where it seemed the other woman had stepped, not wanting to step off the edge of the path and break with the umbrella on the forest floor.

  Marram’s voice, when it came, sounded weary. It floated down from a height, as though he stood on the flat roof of the cylindrical dovecote.

  “The child you shelter, called Frog, is some sort of sorceress or Floorian bone woman. That Gardener you keep a prisoner was under my protection. I will have her back before I go.”

  “Will you? Where will you go, and how? It is the monsoon. You are at death’s door yourself. What safe refuge will you take her to?”

  Unar had no choice but to surreptitiously push up one edge of the blindfold so that she could see. She bit her tongue, hard, to keep from crying out. In the cold blue light of the death-lanterns, she saw dark, bruised stripes across Marram’s face, neck, and
chest. He stood, swaying, close to the edge of the roof, wearing a bone amulet she hadn’t noticed him wearing before.

  One of his arms was knotted with vines in a way that suggested his collarbone was broken. But the worst was the front of his left leg; some kind of creature had eaten away the flesh from knee to ankle, so that the shinbone where the spines were grafted was exposed to the air.

  Unar let the blindfold drop. Everything was black, but she could still imagine Marram there, a living corpse. Only the magic that maintained his grafted spines could be keeping him on his feet.

  “Marram, I’m safe here,” Unar called. “Please, go back.”

  Kirrik spun to face her.

  “I did not give you permission to speak, Nameless,” she said, and pushed Unar backwards. Little hands caught her as she stumbled. Frog had somehow crept around behind her.

  “Fly away, Marram!” Unar tried to scream, but no sound came out of her mouth, and Kirrik used her magic in some way that she couldn’t see. Vines grew around her, pulling her backwards by the throat. Frog moved away from her, and Unar found herself roped to the road, vines holding the ear bone against her mouth so that when she breathed out she couldn’t help but breathe into it. When she breathed through her nose, she felt Frog’s little hands again, this time pinching her nostrils shut.

  Marram made no sound. Was Kirrik choking him with vines, too? Unar tried to take control of her own gift, but something struck her in the place in her belly where her control came from, like a mother slapping a child’s hands away from a pot of honey, and the only thing she could think of to do, to deny her power to Kirrik, was hold her breath.

  Curse you, Core Kirrik. What’s happening?

  Trussed and blind, she listened to the blood pulse in her ears, straining for a hint of Marram’s movements, but Kirrik wasn’t even breathing hard, and Frog was silent, too.

  Unar couldn’t hold her breath forever.

  She twisted so her lips were to one side of the bone flute, though the vines cut off the blood flow to her head.

  “Frog,” she gasped, light-headed almost instantly, “he helped save you from the demon!”

  Then she had to relax back into position and her breath flowed through the bone, giving more of Audblayin’s life force to a woman who wanted to use it for death. How could it obey Kirrik? Why would it not obey Unar herself?

  “May I speak, Core Kirrik?” Frog said at last.

  “Speak.”

  “The man did ’elp me escape a dayhunter. ’E gave me food and shelter.”

  “How can that be? A fool such as this. He comes all but naked into the forest. It is obvious he has fallen from a height. Only the chance of vines in his path has saved him, and yet, instead of crawling home, he has come here, without so much as a pair of bracers to keep the spotted swarm at bay.”

  “Is that not courage, Core Kirrik? Could you not use ’im? Could you not put ’im with the others? Nameless the Outer can be used to heal and slow ’im. I am sure Audblayin’s power will work as well as Atwith’s, and she has affection for ’im. I would have slowed all of them, if only we had not left so suddenly.”

  Unar tried to follow the conversation, limp and useless in her outrage. Her breath was being stolen by a woman who would have been a slave in Canopy. Her own sister was helping that maggot-faced witch. Kirrik and Frog had been worried they couldn’t use her to kill enemies, but any green, living thing could be used to choke a person!

  Kirrik didn’t answer, not right away.

  “’E is almost dead, Core Kirrik,” Frog said softly. “Without air, ’e will not wake, and we will have one less warrior when the time comes. Better than any heightsman I ever saw, I swear.”

  “I will indulge you this one time, Frog the Outer,” Kirrik said tightly. “The next favour you ask had better be for me to cut your throat for disloyalty.”

  Unar struggled to understand the change in the dynamic between them. Only moments ago, Kirrik had been telling her how Frog reminded her of the Master’s son. How she had saved Frog’s life. Now there was a coldness about her, a bloodlessness, as though her body had been taken over by another. Or an act she had been making an effort to maintain, now unnecessary, had been dropped.

  “Yes, Core Kirrik.”

  Again, Unar’s breath transformed into some shape she couldn’t see.

  “Take him, then. Put him with the others. Take the bone flute from Nameless the Outer. The very sight of her angers me. It would not do to lose my temper and kill her accidentally. Let her sleep outside. Do not bring her food until she begs to obey.”

  “Yes, Core Kirrik.”

  Frog took the ear bone and the blindfold away. Unar couldn’t turn her head because of the vines still across her throat. She blinked away the rain that fell into her eyes. Kirrik had already gone back into the dovecote.

  “You are failing,” Frog hissed. “You must try harder!”

  Unar didn’t say anything. Words could be stolen and used against her. She gave as much of a nod as she was able. Frog pulled the knife at her belt and cut the snug vines around Unar’s throat. Yet she couldn’t do it without cutting Unar’s skin.

  “Core Kirrik told me not to heal you,” Frog muttered, “but say something, and I will close the wound.”

  You’ll close the wound? Not if you don’t love me!

  Unar would rather bleed than be faced again with the reality that her ability now belonged to these women. She shook her head, jerking her chin in the direction of the doorway, hoping that Frog would understand that Unar intended to obey.

  “So you are a little bit afraid of ’er,” Frog said. “Good. You should be. I am.”

  She went back inside, and Unar was alone.

  * * *

  WHEN MORNING came, the door opened.

  Unar watched black skirts approaching from her facedown sprawl on the wet walkway. She supposed she should beg to obey. She supposed she should beg for food. But she couldn’t even make herself feel hungry.

  Kirrik stared down at her.

  I won’t ask what happened to Marram. I will stay. I will learn.

  “Did you sleep well, Nameless the Outer?”

  That chill. That inhuman quality.

  “Yes, Core Kirrik.”

  “You have not used Audblayin’s powers. You make no move to strike me, though you know what vines can do. Can you be trusted to meet the Master now, Nameless?”

  Unar crawled in an awkward scrabble to kiss the hem of Kirrik’s skirts.

  “If you think I should, Core Kirrik.”

  Kirrik laughed.

  “Yes, I think you should. Come inside. Follow me.”

  Unar went on hands and knees after her, as far as the long, dark corridor, where she used her hands against the walls to gain her feet and stagger after Kirrik towards the blocked spiral staircase.

  Today, there was no barrier.

  Kirrik led Unar up the stairs to the second storey of the dovecote. Unar kept her eyes lowered; surely they would be met by the sight of a carpet even finer than the ones below. The upper apartment must be spacious and luxurious, if the Master lived here all alone. In the time since Unar had arrived, she didn’t think he had left it.

  Or maybe he was a monster in shape as well as deed. Maybe he lived in a morgue, surrounded by the body parts of men butchered to feed him.

  Unar wanted to laugh. She and Frog would have to leave Kirrik as soon as possible, and the humour came from knowing Frog must’ve had the same thoughts on arrival at the three hunters’ home. Yet Frog hadn’t hesitated when Unar precipitated their early departure. She’d had a plan. Unar would have to formulate a plan, too, in case she was forced to flee before learning what she needed to know, gaining what she needed to gain.

  Spines. A way to pass through the barrier. A way to guard my own strength. Three things. Then I’ll take Frog and go.

  Then she saw what was in the single, long room that filled the second storey. Packed into turpentine shavings like clothing being protected from pes
ts were the bodies of men. Some were bundled for cold weather or wet, and some, like Marram, nearly naked. His wounds were healed, and the flesh of his chewed leg regrown, and he lay, supine, as if sleeping, though his chest didn’t rise or fall. His bone amulet was missing.

  Hundreds of men, as many as two or three Canopian kings might command, stored as thoughtlessly as Esse stored coils of rope. Waiting.

  Where’s the Master? Unar almost asked before remembering she must speak only when spoken to. Keeping her eyes lowered, she stared at Marram.

  “Touch him,” Kirrik commanded. Unar put her hand obediently to Marram’s wrist and found it warm, but with no pulse. Wait. She felt a single, slow beat. The youngest of the hunters slept as a tree bear sleeps through the monsoon. Kirrik hadn’t killed him, after all.

  One less warrior, Frog had said, when the time comes.

  But Frog and Unar knew the three brothers had gone into exile because they wouldn’t fight against Canopy. Upon waking, Marram would refuse to serve and would die as quickly then as he would’ve before the dovecote, if Frog hadn’t intervened for Unar’s sake.

  Four things. Four things I need before I can leave. Spines. A way through the barrier. Magical defences. The spell to wake Marram. I can’t leave him behind.

  “You look tired, Nameless,” Kirrik said, smiling unpleasantly. “Will you not lie down beside him and rest?”

  “Core Kirrik, will I wake again, if I do?”

  Was the room enchanted, or perhaps the wood shavings? Unar could have extended her magical senses to find out, if she dared. Her throat remained raw from the strangling vines and still stung from the kiss of Frog’s knife, however, and she didn’t know what would trigger Kirrik’s cruelty.

  “I can wake any of them, at any time,” Kirrik said, “but of course you are not a block of fish fat, to store with my other supplies for war. You will be my trained chimera, unless I find that you cannot be tamed.”