“I did speak of them, Warmed One.”
“You mentioned their bones. When I stole those chimera cloths from the princess of Odelland, there were broken bones inside of them.”
Unar had found more bits after she’d left the palace, and had shaken the old, yellowed fragments into the forest. They’d fallen quickly out of sight. Old bones weren’t what she’d wanted to give to Odel as tribute. The chimera skin was the prize.
Or so she had thought.
“Chimera skin keeps its magic for many hundreds of years,” Hasbabsah said quietly. “I know the cloths you speak of. I was there when my mistress hid them under the floor. The cloth shields magic-imbued objects from one another. She did not want them interfering with the bone-magic of the bed.”
“The platform? That was bone? It was too big.”
“It was a neck bone of the Old Gods.”
“How could something so big be raised from Floor without any enemies noticing?”
“You are young. Understorians do not always raid Canopy. In hungry times, they trade. In prosperous times, they buy back captured slaves. That bed was once part of a Floorian place of worship. Understorians carried it up to Canopy, to purchase the lives of their loved ones.”
Unar was astonished.
“I’ve never heard of slaves being bought back.”
“These are not times of prosperity.”
“You must have hoped. When you were first captured. You must have hoped they’d bring something like that floating bed and buy you back with it.”
“I still hope it,” Hasbabsah said.
The baby woke.
“Come, Sawas,” Hasbabsah called as the young mother surfaced again. “It is feeding time for baby Ylly.” She put her little finger into the baby’s mouth to mollify it for a moment. “There are no spells to stop the menstrual cycles of slaves. The Garden can always use more hands. How convenient for them that we multiply.”
SEVENTEEN
THAT NIGHT, Unar climbed down to the pool for her first lesson.
It was different in darkness. She couldn’t see its depths. Shapes she thought looked like fish in the moonlight were the long, shining leaves of neighbouring trees.
“Sawas?” she whispered as loudly as she dared.
Streams of dirty wash water falling from the edges of the Garden splashed into hollows that were lined with the purifying pith of fiveways fruit. The pith strained and sweetened the water before it joined the main pool. Unar paced along the path. Somewhere below her, a baby cried.
The slaves slept in small hollows in the branches. Some of them would have smoke holes bored through to the branch-top paths, but Unar couldn’t smell any smoke. It was a mild winter and a still evening.
“Sawas,” she whispered again.
“I’m here, Warmed One,” Sawas said cheerfully, scrambling up from underneath onto the path. “Let’s go to the pool.”
She had something like a wooden turtle shell on her back. When they reached the water, where an Airak-lit brazier was reflected, blue-white and blazing, Unar saw that the shell was a shallow, smooth, baby’s sleeping-bowl, one that could be rocked with a foot to settle a bundled child. Sawas set her clothes beside it.
“Are you cold?” Sawas asked. “Are you going to swim with your clothes on? They won’t keep you warm, and they’ll grow heavy. It’s dangerous.”
“Aren’t you going to show me some swimming movements first? Can’t I practice the movements? Build the correct muscles?”
“You can’t build the correct muscles without the resistance of the water.”
Unar took her clothes off. There was nobody to see her but Sawas. Had Aoun looked at her, the day she’d woken in the Temple? Or on the day of Audblayin’s death? Or had he only looked forward, towards the Temple? She should’ve only looked at the Temple, too. Maybe then she’d be a Servant, like him.
“Hold the bowl with both hands,” Sawas said. “It floats. It’ll hold you up. Don’t let go. The first action you must practice is kicking. Don’t use your magic.”
Unar’s skin crawled as she slid into the cool water. She gritted her teeth to stop from reaching for the power and found that her body did float without it, after a fashion; feet deep down and flailing, her back bent and her eyes upwards, clutching the wooden bowl to her chest.
“Your teeth are chattering,” Sawas observed, laughing. “You must be cold. Look what happens to you, away from sunlight. Gardeners must be a little bit like lizards. You can only move about in the heat of the day.”
“It’s nothing like that,” Unar said. “I feel like I’m falling!”
Sawas swam around her in circles.
“Everybody is falling,” she said. “Everybody grows old and dies and is born again. The water will catch you. The water will hold you up.”
Unar waited. She floated. The fear ebbed from her.
“I don’t like fish,” she said at last, to break the silence.
“I’ve never tasted one,” Sawas replied.
EIGHTEEN
IN THE morning, Unar had barely started work when Ylly flew out of nowhere at her.
“They’ve taken her away to sell,” Ylly sobbed, her arms wrapped around Unar’s knees. “Sawas and the baby. They must have seen you. She’s being punished because of you!”
“Quiet, slave!” Unar hissed, in case anyone was close by, but a quick flick of her magic showed they were alone by the watercress beds. “Nobody saw me with Sawas, Ylly.”
Ylly’s whole body quaked.
“Hasbabsah sent me a bird with a message. At daybreak, a Servant went below to grow a new room in Sawas’s hollow. A separate sleeping room for the baby. Sawas and the Servant spoke. Hasbabsah couldn’t overhear them. But then the Servant took Sawas and baby Ylly away, out of the Garden, in the direction of the market. Where else could they be going?”
“Maybe the Servant needed a slave to carry her basket?”
“Then why take the baby?”
Ylly was frantic. Unar didn’t know what to say to calm her. Her magic warned her that others were coming.
“Don’t shake me,” she said. “If anybody sees you, they’ll sell you as well. Listen, you said that Hasbabsah couldn’t be sold because she knew the secrets of the Garden. Doesn’t Sawas know any secrets?”
“No! She’s always stayed below!” Ylly released Unar and crumpled to the earth, burying her face in her hands.
“I’ll find out what’s happening,” Unar said in a low voice. “Oos will tell me. My friend. You remember her. She’s a Servant, now.”
Ylly shook her head.
“Your friend,” she repeated huskily, hopelessly, “she was the Servant who took my daughter and granddaughter away. Oos, the vizier’s daughter.”
Unar grunted. Had Oos been sent on some grim errand to prove her loyalty to Servant Eilif? Or had she thoughtlessly gone to buy glass goblets, jewelled shoes, or other fineries she’d grown accustomed to having in her father’s home, enjoying the freedom she had as a Servant that had been denied her as a Gardener? Not that Oos had wanted to leave the Garden, since passing through the Gates.
“How old is this news?” she asked.