“Have we leave to sit at your table?” Hasbabsah asked.
“Our table is yours while the bucket fills,” said a deeper, heartier voice than Esse’s.
When Unar reached the doorway, she saw a stone hearth bigger than a slave’s bedroom. It dominated the far wall. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen so much precious stone in one place. Perhaps they had traded it from Floor. This big room was as dry, open, and bright as the first space had been dark, cramped, and dank. A bored chimney carried away the fragrant smoke from the fire, but not before it passed through three tiers of gutted river fish on iron spits. Crates of dried broadleaves sat to the left of the hearth; dried, wrapped meat portions filled cloth sacks to the right. There were embroidered hangings on either side of the hearth, too, that might have been decorative or covered entryways to other corridors.
In the centre of the room, a coarse cross-section of quandong wood served as a table, its surface broad enough to host a demon sacrifice. The slab held dark, dried blood in its crevices, as though it had been used for butchering before.
Two men sat at the table, at the point farthest from the fire. Thankfully, neither was completely naked; they wore short waist-wraps and nothing else. One was an enormous, red-haired brute with a beard and pale arms patterned with inked beasts. The other was small with a smooth chin, yellow hair, and clear eyes the colour of clouds.
“I said that our table is yours,” the brute repeated in a gentler voice, and Hasbabsah sank into a four-legged chair by the fire with a relieved groan. Ylly went to stand slightly behind her, her back to the flames, shaking her wet hair and looking wary.
Oos gripped Unar’s hand tightly. They stood, rigid, by the door as Esse closed it behind them.
“Some ugly-looking fish you have caught, Esse,” said the yellow-haired man, his expression curious.
“Don’t kill us,” Oos blurted at once. “We can pay you. Just these two slaves for now, but later, when you take us back to Canopy, we’ll pay more.”
“I see no slaves here.” The yellow-haired man looked amused.
“Don’t skin us alive. Don’t throw us to demons. The goddess we serve—”
“Girl child,” Hasbabsah interrupted, “these three brothers have offered us all monsoon-right by asking that we sit at their table. You answer them with insult. They have pledged to share food and water with you until the monsoon is ended. It means that if food runs low before the rains stop, we will all starve together before they throw you to the demons.”
“Your gods and goddesses have no power here,” Esse said, opening a bag of fresh fish before the fire.
“I’ve made no pledge not to throw her to the demons,” Ylly said.
“We will not run low on food,” the deep-voiced, red-haired man boomed, leaning back from his crumb-covered, empty plate. “Introductions are in order. But not before all are seated.”
He turned unblinking brown eyes on Unar and Oos until they shuffled, still hand in hand, over to an empty pair of stools. Then he stared at Ylly until she sat down, too.
“I am Bernreb,” he said, “second son of Moonoom.”
“I am Marram,” the yellow-haired man said, smiling into the silence that followed Bernreb’s pronouncement. “Third son of Moonoom. Over there, gutting the fish for your breakfast, is Esse, first son of Moonoom.”
“I am Hasbabsah of Nessa,” Hasbabsah said.
“I’m Ylly, daughter of Ylly.”
Oos squeezed Unar’s hand so tight that Unar couldn’t feel it anymore and said nothing.
“You don’t look like brothers,” Unar said, avoiding giving her name. “You all look different. How can you all be sons of Moonoom? You look like you all had different fathers.”
Bernreb guffawed.
“Canopy must indeed be a strange and wondrous place. I never heard of three brothers all having the same father.”
“Fathers die so quickly,” Marram said.
“Moonoom was our mother,” Esse muttered, throwing fish guts into the fire.
“Oh.” Unar took a deep breath. She reminded herself that the floor her feet stood on was the very same sapwood that the Garden stood on. This was still her place. The heart that beat within the great tree was her heart. “I am Unar of the Garden. This is Oos.”
“Then we are all well met,” Bernreb said.
“Is there nobody else living here?” Ylly asked.
From some other, unknown place in the home wafted the bawls of a baby crying.
Unar shared a glance with Oos.
“Excuse me,” Bernreb said. “I only just put her down. The sound of our voices must have woken her. We try to keep her in the back where the demons will not hear her crying and come to investigate.” He stood up from the table, passed through one of the embroidered hangings, and returned with a bundle in his bulging, tattooed arms.
Unar stared at the bundle. The blanket-edge bore the family weaves of the House of Epatut. She hadn’t cared about family colours and emblems; hadn’t taken them with mother’s milk, as Oos had.
But she recognised these.
“Now you have seen her,” Bernreb said, “I must clean her. Excuse me.”
Ylly stood up abruptly, went to Bernreb, and lifted the baby’s fat brown body out of the wrappings. This child had been all but newborn when she fell at the end of the last monsoon, and now looked none the worse for it. Her bared bottom had an odorous, muddy smear across the cheeks, but Ylly ignored it.
“She’s from Canopy,” Ylly said, with eyes only for the baby, cooing and swishing until the cries turned to uncertain smiles. Bernreb looked bemused, but he made no move to take the baby back. Perhaps he felt that babies belonged in the arms of women. Or perhaps, since it appeared they would all be living together for five months, he simply saw no sense in stopping Ylly from taking on some of his duties. He couldn’t know how Ylly had longed to hold her true granddaughter, how she’d kept bitterly silent ever since Sawas was sold away.
“Did you steal her?” Oos asked. “Did you steal those blankets?”
“Oos,” Unar said with wonder, extricating her bruised hand, remembering the wrappings full of rotten quandongs and satinashes she’d let fall amidst crushing disappointment. “You know whose baby this is, better than me. She is Imeris, daughter of Epatut. She survived the fall.”
“She survived a fall,” Bernreb agreed heartily. “We had not given her a name.”
“She is Imerissiremi,” Ylly said at once. “Issi for short.”
“Wife-of-Epatut dropped her in the market,” Hasbabsah said. “Not at the Garden. You didn’t find her caught in this tree. How did you find her?”