Unar began to take the old woman’s arm, but Ylly’s hiss recalled to mind that any assistance was to occur once they were out of sight.
The slave’s loose, spotted skin abruptly reminded Unar of how her mother had looked, wasted by illness, on the day she’d come to demand compensation from the Garden for her runaway daughter. That was the first time Unar had climbed the walls of the Garden. She thought she’d recognised the source of the disturbance as a woman she’d hoped never to see again and was horrified to discover she was right.
I’m old, Mother had raged at the white-robed figure outside the Great Gate. I must have what I’m owed. You serve life. Do you want me to die? Because I will die, without silver, without children to do the work.
Unar had resisted the urge to answer in the affirmative. She’d leaned with one foot against the wooden wall, the other foot braced back against the trunk of a coconut palm, her hands slashed by the sharp edges of the fronds, her ears straining to hear the Servant’s reply. Anxiety had twisted her innards. She hadn’t been of age when she’d pledged herself to Audblayin. Was it possible that she’d be sent back?
Give me what I am owed! Mother had screeched.
And Unar remembered Isin and the broken lock. She said fiercely under her breath, You are the one who owes us, Mother. You are a murderer, and the Garden will never let you pass.
Yet the Servants who passed freely through the wards every day had pushed slaves to their deaths; how did that work? Unar had touched them with her magic to find out, and realised that just as the wards could be fooled by her insistence she was a seed, they could also be fooled by the magical sigils on the slaves’ tongues into thinking that aged humans were discarded refuse, no more significant to the goddess than the used leaf-plates tossed away once they were emptied of porridge.
“I won’t let her fall,” Unar told Ylly, grimly.
Delve as she might with her magic, though, she could neither figure out how the sigils were made, nor how they might be removed. She would have to ask Oos.
SIXTEEN
UNAR STOOD at the woody water’s edge.
There were no fish in this pool. These storage hollows, shaped in the clefts where the great branches of the tallowwood met the trunk, were the recipients of carved channels and leaf-nets designed to capture and divert as much rainwater from the lateral branches as possible. Underwater tunnels and tubes with various mechanisms inside them became frequently blocked by debris.
Sawas, submerged, was a darker brown shape against the brown bowl of water. It reflected the sky in some places, the smooth trunk and overhead Temple in others. The bastard child of an Odelland king popped her head out of the pool. She dumped two handfuls of soggy leaves on the edge, where they were swept up by another slave and taken away.
“So.” Hasbabsah sat on a blanket with the sleeping baby, not far from the edge. “Why does the Warmed One wish to learn to swim?”
Unar shivered. She didn’t wish to. Not really. She had no choice, if she was to grow in magical power.
“Hasbabsah!” Sawas said.
“It’s all right,” Unar said. “I’m not like them. I don’t toss old women from treetops.”
“I would like to see them try,” Hasbabsah grumbled. “I would take that Servant Eilif down to the forest floor with me.”
“Hasbabsah!”
“Down you go again, little duck. Let the Warmed One worry about me.” When Sawas had obediently dived again, the old slave indicated the baby on the blanket. “This one is fourth generation.”
“She’s pretty,” Unar said, keeping her distance. Babies didn’t really interest her, except for their potential to house the souls of gods. Their screams were high-pitched enough to split heads, and they couldn’t do or say anything interesting. A pet bear cub or a trained parrot was more entertaining. Isin had been different. Isin had been her own blood.
“She will never be a warrior,” Hasbabsah said, “up here in Canopy.”
Unar shrugged. “Can’t you teach her what she needs to know?” She hadn’t come to chat about the baby. She’d done her duty by it. Odel’s protection lay over it. “She’s got a good name, right? She’ll be able to go both up and down.”
It was a sop; baby Ylly was owned by the Garden, and even if someone tried to take her down, it was more likely she would stubbornly float, buoyed by the power of the god. Unar was trying to put a good face on the fact that names were the only inane influence slaves had over their children.
Sawas surfaced with another two handfuls of leaves and sticks. Her breasts, swollen with milk, bumped like clinked goblets on the surface while she pushed the little pile away from her.
“Only if her tongue carries the correct glyph,” Hasbabsah muttered, and Unar realised she was thinking of her own demotion, and that she might never see the elder Ylly again.
“Are we talking about tongues, now?” Sawas asked with a sparkle in her eyes. “I heard it was the handsome new Gatekeeper who changed yours, Hasbabsah. I wish he’d give me a kiss and change mine.”
“You have done enough harm by kissing, Sawas. Look at the child you unthinkingly brought into the world. Into a life of misery!”
“My life isn’t misery.” Sawas laughed. “What do you think of Servant Aoun, Warmed One?”
Unar felt the blood rush to her face.
“He was … is my friend,” she said. “Are the marks on your tongues truly changed by kissing?”
“They can be, if the man is an adept. Perhaps one day he’ll come to me. Sawas, he’ll say, I cannot live without you! He’ll kiss me and carry me up into the Garden proper. Perhaps Ylly will have a sister.”
“No!” Hasbabsah raged.
“I think I know why the Warmed One wishes to swim. So she can swim across the moat and spy on the Gatekeeper without clothes on, while he’s sleeping in the Temple. He has such fine, fleshy fruit. I would wake it with my marked tongue. I would take it between my thighs. It would reach so far up inside of me!”
“Sawas! One birthing was not enough to sting some sense into your empty head?”
Sawas turned lithely in the water and went under, bubbles of laughter trailing in her wake, while Unar stood, stock-still, trying not to picture Aoun’s so-called fine, fleshy fruit. She didn’t want to imagine it reaching up inside of her. It was indeed bigger than others she’d seen. She knew that, like monkey’s parts, men’s grew bigger in preparation for mating. That was a slightly stomach-turning thought. She had sworn to Audblayin not to try it, and she didn’t want to try it.
A kiss, though. That would be safe. A kiss would break no oaths. Being held by Aoun might not be too much of a transgression, either. But Unar didn’t serve the love goddess, Oxor. This was Audblayin’s emergent.
“You spoke of Old Gods, Hasbabsah,” Unar said. She hoped her voice sounded normal. She hoped the old slave, behind her, couldn’t read her thoughts from her body language. Even if she had, who would she tell? Hasbabsah would never return to the upper levels of the Garden. It was a mean thought.