It is too much, the window said. That cloth can buy a thousand slaves.
“But never replace a specific one who has fallen. Slaves aren’t all the same! You could buy a thousand slaves and yet not find another like her. Read my thoughts. See my truth. I’m taking this cloth to protect a great-grandchild that the murdered woman is not alive to protect. I am no thief!”
You are no thief, the smoke conceded, parting.
Unar climbed through the window, triumphant, to begin her descent of the swaying, bird’s nest castle.
THIRTEEN
UNAR YAWNED as Ylly tried to wake her.
“Warmed One,” the older woman said urgently, “they’ve come to question you.”
Unar swayed in her hammock, resenting Ylly’s insistent hands almost as much as she resented the sunlight shafting through the loquat trees onto her upturned face.
“Who? Who has come to question me?”
“Soldiers from Odelland. They’ve been sent to every Temple in Canopy. They say something was stolen from the king that only a Servant of a deity could have stolen. Warmed One, what have you done?”
Unar’s mood changed from sullen to satisfied at once. She sat up in her hammock, gripped the edges of it, and gave a smug little laugh.
“Every Temple in Canopy? That king thinks he’s a cockerel, but he’s a dumpy, featherless duckling, and I’m the one who cooked him.”
Ylly’s eyes went wide and her hands covered her mouth. They were alone. In the Garden, her beloved Garden, with her magic renewed, Unar was capable of plotting the position of every man and woman within the walls. She sensed clusters of men by the Gate, heavy on the soil and the underlying tallowwood. Elsewhere, men and women who had to be Servants massed slightly apart from the younger demographic of the other Gardeners. Unar smelled the vitriol in one of the robes that brushed the earth; that one was Oos. They were attended by almost all of the slaves, who were also mostly young-smelling and trod lightly but held no magic, at the moat’s shallow ford by the Temple doors.
“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.”