Why so few? Mother had answered. Unar had thought she sounded cold, but what if it was the hollowness of despair? She’s fit only for the block.
Unar had run, at last, not knowing that her mother was frightened of the forge because the world had become a blur.
Frog had said, She knew I would not be able to do the work. She thought I looked small. For my age. She wanted sons.
How did Frog know that? What messages had she received from Canopy? What spies had she sent to peer into Uranun’s rented hovel? Unar wondered if Father had been tempted to send Wife-of-Uranun to Audblayin’s emergent to ask for a male child. But what gifts could Uranun have sent to the Garden? He had stolen and eaten his own child’s mushrooms. Sacrifice was hardly in his nature.
He was willing to sell his daughter to put food in his own mouth. Nothing like Wife-of-Epatut, Issi’s mother, who lavished rare metals and costly fabrics on the Servants just for a chance of conceiving again. When Wife-of-Uranun had finally made her way to the Garden, it had been to ask, not for a son, but for a thousand weights of silver.
Unar looked fiercely at Frog’s face again. She wanted to give her little sister everything that should have been hers by right. It was a miracle that she lived, that this chance even existed. When Unar returned to Canopy, Frog must accompany her. Perhaps they would live rough for a while, as out-of-nichers, searching, finding food with magic that Unar must keep hidden outside of a palace or emergent. But only until they found the reborn Audblayin and returned him to the Garden. Then all honour would be theirs, all powers returned, and Unar would keep Frog by her side, in sunlight, all the time.
But she didn’t dare say anything. Not while she feared being rebuffed.
Unreturned love is for fools.
Frog held the triplicate, paired strands of twine apart with her small, loosely splayed hands while Unar worked the handle that twisted them. When the twist in the strings was just short of snapping them, Frog slid her hands away from the weighted end of the rope towards the loose end, and the six lines became a single, fatter one.
Unar pinched the place between made and unmade rope as they moved the completed section beyond the clamping, hanging weight that kept the twine tensioned. When it was fixed, and the three rotating hooks reset with loose continuations of the twine, their lengths coming from six of the bags that Unar had filled, she opened and closed her fingers to uncramp them.
Esse’s head poked under the flap. He peered at them, at the rope, and at the candles he had given them to work by. There were dark smudges under his eyes. Since the demon trap was completed, he’d told Marram he would become diurnal again, beginning by not sleeping that day.
“That will do,” he said. “Cover the jig. Blow out the candle. Come and eat.”
Frog and Unar shared repulsed looks. Whatever the name of the lidless lizard that Bernreb had caught that afternoon, Unar did not enjoy its sour meat or flaky texture. Hasbabsah said it was good for them, especially the eight eyes, which were thin jellied blobs on beds of bright orange fat.
“Do you know, I liked eating that long-armed-thing,” Unar lied. Bernreb’s earlier catch had been tainted with its male musk and practically inedible, but it was tastier than the lizard.
“Do you not listen to the old woman’s raving?” Esse said. “Eating that meat more than twice in a moon will grow hair on a girl’s chest.”
“If only I had known,” Frog said flatly. Unar guessed she was thinking of Wife-of-Uranun, or perhaps her Understorian mother, whom she’d showed no signs of missing.
“Frog,” Unar said, catching her as Esse’s head disappeared and Frog made to blow out the candles.
“What is it?”
“You send birds to Canopy. You have friends there. You must know if Wife-of-Uranun was with child a third time. Did she have a son, in the end?”
Frog blew out the candles. Unar couldn’t see her face.
“Our mother fell, Unar,” she said. “She was not with child, nor will ever be again.”
Another shock. Their mother had fallen? Or had she flung herself down in desolation?
“Was it because she was blind?”
“No.”
Unar waited for more information, but it wasn’t forthcoming.
“You said you had an adopted family here in Understorey. Were they kind to you? The woman you called your new mother. What kind of woman is she?”
“Later, Unar. We will talk later, when they are all sleepin’.”
*
UNAR LAY on her pallet, feigning sleep.
All but Ylly and Issi had retired to bed, pallet, or chair to sleep. Unar wished angrily that Hasbabsah hadn’t forced the flaky lizard down the baby’s throat; surely that was what kept the normally contented child screaming this late at night.
Ylly sang a soft, wordless song as she jiggled Issi over one shoulder, but Unar noticed the song had gotten hoarser and even tinged with anger and frustration. Oos’s restless shifting on the pallet besides Unar’s indicated that she, too, was still wide awake.
At last, Oos sat up.
“Let me help you,” she begged Ylly. “Let me take her.”
“No,” Ylly snapped
“I have nieces and nephews.” Oos got to her feet. “I know what to do with babies.”
“You know what to do with babies, all right. Sell them, if you need a new ribbon for your hair.”
Unar tensed beneath her blanket, her back turned to them. Maybe this would be the moment. Oos wasn’t her friend anymore. Not faithful to her anymore. She’d finally confess to Ylly that she’d sold Sawas away because Sawas had tried to tell Servant Eilif about Unar learning to swim. And Ylly would, rightfully, blame Unar for involving Sawas in her determination to break the rules of the Garden.
“Ylly, I’m sorry.” Oos’s voice was thick with emotion. “I’m so sorry. One who walks in the grace of Audblayin was raised never to look down, but that’s no excuse. I should have looked, anyway. I should have seen.”
“Yes. You should have. It has been a long time. Since I had Sawas. And she was taken so soon. Weaned so early.” Ylly sounded even hoarser. As if she had started crying. Oos moved closer to her, away from Unar.
“When my niece had bubbles in her stomach, my sister would hold her like this. Facing down, along her forearm, with her cheek in her hand. And then swing her. Right. Like that.”
For a wonder, Issi’s squalling subsided into discontented grunts.
“She is heavy like this,” Ylly said with a flutter of a forced laugh.
“Should I fetch Bernreb?”
“No. Let him sleep. Will you … will you take a turn?”
“Of course.”
Long moments went by while the baby settled. Hurry, Unar thought. The sooner you all go to sleep, the sooner I can join Frog in the hearth room and learn more. She was so hungry to learn.
At last, her ears detected the sounds of tucking a child into her cradle.