“Is it a trap?” she asked Esse, putting her hand out to his arm, half to steady herself and half to get his attention. “A trap to catch the demon?”
“One of my own invention.” He did not sound proud, or excited, or doubtful. He sounded far away as though envisioning what would happen. “Inside the hollow, the bait is suspended by a rope. When the rope is pulled, the door will close. Can you see?”
He pulled Unar close and put her on the other side of him, pointing to the mechanism, and Unar could see. She was impressed by it, actually, but wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of saying so.
“The weights will serve two functions. One, to drive the stakes into the holes I have made for them, deeply so that the demon cannot brush the door aside. It can dig out with its claws, given time, but by then the chute will have diverted the river’s edge, directing the water into the hole. It will fill to the brim in mere seconds and the demon will drown.”
“I’m glad,” Unar said slowly, “that if we had to fall into one of your traps, it was the net and glue trap, and not this one. You’ve kept your word, to keep us safe.”
“I am glad,” Esse said, “that you see the necessity now.”
“Wait. There’s no metal in the trap. Surely you didn’t use my little bore-knife to make that hollow.”
“No.” Esse unclipped his harness from the rope. He undid the knots and allowed that end to fall. Unar supposed he would haul it back up when they stood again at the railing. The S-shaped piece of metal, he held in front of her face. “Here is your knife. I lost my other piece when we sawed through the yellowrain tree.”
“I see.”
He tucked it into his pocket and turned away from her. Then he crouched again, one foot in front of the other on the narrow branch.
“Hold on to me. We must climb back up.”
Worried that any sudden moves would send them hurtling to their deaths, Unar slowly eased her weight onto his back. No sooner had her feet left the branch than Esse took a quick skip, hop, and jump to the right hand side of the hollow, away from the river, and there was the soft sound of his forearm spines sliding out of their sheaths.
Then, the axe-biting sound and shuddering impact of Esse embedding himself in the bark of the tree.
Unar tucked her face into the back of his neck as splinters flew. Swiftly and steadily, Esse climbed.
She thought, How those red-and-yellow puffed-up parrots calling themselves soldiers of Odelland would tremble at the sound of a hundred Understorians climbing their precious king’s blue quandong tree.
And she stifled a laugh.
Had she gone crazy? Whose side was she on? The barrier would keep Esse and his ilk from Odelland. From Ehkisland. From Audblayinland. From all of Canopy. It was trespass there that had seen Hasbabsah made a slave, her spines broken.
Yet the magic bed of the decrepit princess was the neck bone of an Old God, Hasbabsah said. There had to be a way through the barrier.
Unar became aware of the heat and movement of Esse’s muscles. His arms and legs seeming untiring. Both his thighs together made up the width of one of hers, yet he didn’t labour for breath. When he lifted one knee to stick his shin spines into the tree, she thought again that he had the longest shanks she’d ever seen on a man or woman. Edax had long legs, but not so thin. He hadn’t wanted to remove all his clothing, but Unar had made him when they had been together during their lessons. She’d wanted to see all of the non-owl parts of him as clearly as possible by meagre moon-and starlight. There had been knife-scars on his skin, sparse body hair, and very little padding, but several knotted veins had stood out on his calves, and his no-longer-youthful knees had been cracked and saggy.
Unlike Aoun’s.
That led her to remember Bernreb’s offer with a wince. Since he’d made it, she’d followed Oos’s example and bled for several days; it had been horrible, but it was over now, and she knew what to expect next moon. Her soiled bedclothes, taken by Esse, had obviously been used for demon bait instead of left in the river to leach out the dangerous scent.
Unar looked up and saw the underside of the platform by the side of the river. The rope still dangled down. They were almost back at the hunters’ home. She saw Esse’s upraised forearm, the bone blades gleaming, unblunted by the climb.
Magic must keep them sharp as well as clean.
She tried to extend her magical senses to examine them, but it was not even like trying to reach with her hands tied behind her back. It was as if she had no arms. As if she was born a worm or a snake and had never had them, except in her feeble imaginings.
Unar made a small noise of frustration. Frog must tell her more. No more waiting.
“Do not let go,” Esse said. “We will go through the river together. I will leave the rope tied to the outside, and secure the other end of it to the inside. It will mean extra chores to keep the water from the fishing room floor, but by next moon, the river will be too strong to pass through at all without the aid of a rope.”
Unar didn’t answer him. She could guess who would be doing the extra chores. Then they were in the river again, and her arms around his neck were all that held her to the world. The water washing over her while she clung to a near stranger reminded her of the feeling of Audblayin’s power washing over her the morning she had knelt with Oos and Aoun before the night-yew in the Garden.
There had been six new Gardeners chosen that day. Fledglings, the old Gatekeeper had called them. Not quite Gardeners, but not of the world outside, either.
She, Oos, Aoun, and the three others had worn their crimson ceremonial Gardener’s garb for the first time. Red leaf-shirts and green trousers beneath hooded crimson robes. Their knees crushed the leaf litter, and the branches of the night-yew spread over their heads. The yew’s tiny white flowers were turned to fruit once yearly by the first rays of the first month of the post-monsoonal sun. They had waited for that dawn to transform them too.
Oos had whispered, One who walks in the grace of Audblayin can’t wait for her powers to wake!
I can’t wait to eat the fruit, Aoun had muttered, and his belly had grumbled.
Unar hadn’t said anything. She’d thought her powers were already awake. How else had she passed the tests they had given her? How else had she watched the work of the Gardeners and felt like she could do it faster and better? They had been in the Garden for weeks already.
Then the sun had risen over the great forest. It struck the crown of the night-yew first, some thirty paces over their heads. Minutes later, the first minuscule crimson fruit began to fall. The fruit tasted like turpentine—bitter with only a hint of sweetness, exactly the way that the crushed night-yew needles smelled—but Unar had reluctantly eaten a few more of them, anyway. It was part of the ritual. Or it amused the Servants to poison them.
As the light travelled further down the yew, more and more fruit fell, till it pinged off their heads and shoulders like rain.