Neither Oos nor Aoun had reacted with shock to the notion of throwing slaves to their deaths. Of course not.
“You’ve learned many things in just one day,” Unar observed, glaring at them in turn. “Many things that Gardeners aren’t permitted to know. You’ve changed. I don’t know you.”
“You know us,” Oos protested, and Unar pressed her momentary advantage.
“What’s this room for?” She waved her hands around at it. Here I am in the Temple at last, but not the way I wanted.
“The women who pay tribute, who come to have their fertility enhanced. They’re treated in the rooms.”
Worse. I’m in the room for noninitiates.
“Can I see where you sleep?” Unar sat up and swung her feet over the edge of the bed, struck by the fact her feet were clean. She was wearing a clean red robe. Who had changed her? Aoun? A thrill went through her before she realised it had to be Oos. The long sleeves had been taken in to fit Unar’s arms. Only a few quick stitches, but nobody else would have noticed or cared.
“I don’t—” Oos said breathlessly, darting a glance after the departed old woman, at the same time as Aoun rubbed his temple and said with exasperation, “No!”
A fantail flew into the room by the open door and departed by one of the round windows. Able to move freely where Unar was not.
“The women don’t mind the bird droppings?” she asked jealously.
“Birds are beloved of the goddess,” Oos said. She sat on the bed next to Unar and put her hand consolingly in the small of Unar’s back, as if Unar were a decrepit crone in need of support.
Unar knew about the beloved bloody birds. One day separated them, and Oos was already treating Unar like some empty-headed supplicant.
“Oh, great teacher!” Unar said. “Wiser than Eilif already!”
Oos’s chin jerked upwards.
“One who walks in the grace of Audblayin admits one’s nervousness about one’s ability to convey the desires of the goddess—”
“He’s a god, now,” Unar said, and Oos took her hand away as if burned.
“How can you know that?”
Oos and Aoun both stared at her as if she’d added her own shit to the neat piles of bird droppings.
“Trust me,” Unar said stubbornly. “I just know.”
ELEVEN
IN THE afternoon, Oos came out of the Temple to give the new Gardeners a lesson.
Unar would have gone to sleep early, but Aoun came to the loquat grove to tip her out of her hammock and tell her she was needed in the grass plot, that she must undo the blow she’d delivered to Oos’s confidence.
“I’m still recovering,” she answered, made hostile by guilt, sprawled on the ground and gazing up into his carob-brown irises, which gleamed under the pronounced shelf of his brow. Somehow, her hostility lessened. She didn’t want it to.
She wanted to make fun of him for turning out so hairy, not be made breathless by the sudden, masculine smell of him mingling with the perfume of the grove.
“You’re recovered,” he said calmly, offering his hand, which she didn’t take. “Oos saw to that.”
“I still don’t have any magic. It hasn’t grown back.”
“Have patience. Watch. Listen.”
“In the Temple, you were worried about me. You waited for me to wake up.”
For someone who had just advised patience, Unar found the manner in which Aoun lifted her by the shoulders and set her on her feet rather impatient.
“You don’t seem worried by how Oos will feel if you don’t bother going to her lesson.”
Remorse made Unar snap her jaws shut midyawn.
“Fine. I’m going.” She was of a mind to push him out of her way, but by the time she fixed her hair, found a jacket, gobbled the lumpy, cold, ant-infested seed-porridge portion she’d dumped in a branch-fork and filled a leaf-cup with water to gargle in, he was gone. Unar crossed five bridges to reach the grass plot, which graced one of the eastern arms of the Garden.
The exotic plot was filled with rare blue and bronze-coloured grasses from the places where Floor met the edge of the forest. A messy hedge of maroon guavas, interspersed with purple sugarcane thickets, formed a semicircle around the western boundary. A family of purple wrens peeped a warning as Unar stepped off the bridge. Maroon hummingbird hatchlings were almost too big for their falling-apart nest in the jacaranda tree that formed the centrepiece of the plot. It had flowered during the wet and would drop its lush, ferny leaves at the very end of the dry.
The other Gardeners clustered by the jacaranda, waiting in silence. Unar should have known all their names but didn’t. Oos had chided her for not knowing the intimate life histories of Servants who should have been her role models, but Unar didn’t care for role models; at least, she hadn’t until she’d met that Bodyguard of Odel’s.
What was her name?
“If you’re quite ready for the lesson to begin,” Oos said.
Oos stood at the focus of the loose semicircle of Gardeners, the snowy pistil to their bloody stamens. She’d procured a white hat-peak, complete with white ribbons, to lace into her white-beaded hair. She always wore hat-peaks, even in the shade, in the belief that it would keep her skin smooth and soft. Unar wouldn’t have been surprised to see Oos wearing one in the dark. She’d heard that at internoder balls, the dancers wore hats indoors.
“Sorry,” Unar said with as much sincerity as she could gather. Oos was her friend. She didn’t deserve to be punished for the stupidity of the other Servants. Unar didn’t really want to ruin her first day as a teacher.
“Today we’ll learn to determine,” Oos said, raising her voice to reach all of them, smoothing the perfect folds of her white robe, “whether a seed will give rise to a plant showing mostly the character of the plant that contributed the pollen, or the plant that contributed the ovum. In the case of self-pollination, we’ll still be able to predict indicators relevant to our interests, such as leaf blade length or the sweetness of fruit.”
And then Unar, who had fully intended to be attentive and courteous, found herself irritated beyond her ability to hide it.
She didn’t care about the sweetness of fruit, but she cared that the vizier’s daughter’s belaboured, noble-born speech had reasserted itself so strongly with her promotion.
O great teacher!
Oos’s fingers stilled on her robe. Her eyes narrowed, and Unar realised she had spoken out loud.
“One who walks in the grace of Audblayin begs your pardon, Gardener Unar. Perhaps you would like to teach the class.”
“Teaching is for Servants only.”
“Rightly so.” Oos’s arms, straight at her sides, clenched handfuls of her robe. “Do you have any other questions, child?”
Child.
Unar’s anger blazed up, as Oos had no doubt intended.