Abruptly, before Unar could turn over and risk a peep through her lashes, there were other sounds. Unar couldn’t reconcile them, at first, with what she knew: Ylly hated Oos, and was old enough to be her mother, besides. Kissing sounds were kissing sounds, though. They hadn’t been a feature of the Garden, but Unar remembered them from the streets.
She didn’t need to roll over to see what was happening. There was nobody else in the storeroom but Unar and the baby, and the women were not kissing the baby. Not like that.
Get on with it! she raged inwardly.
No sooner had she had the thought than two bodies thudded onto Oos’s pallet beside her. Hands scrabbled to pull the too-small blanket over both of them. Elbows and knees invaded Unar’s space. They had to be wriggling out of their clothes.
For her own amusement, Unar would have liked Bernreb to appear just then. He still sometimes checked on the baby. He didn’t appear this time, though. And Ylly and Oos didn’t go to sleep. After what seemed like hours, the soft, sucking sounds of fingers in fluid-filled places were accompanied by Oos’s strangled gasp, and Unar dared to hope that they would fall asleep where they were, collapsed on one another, and she could make her escape.
“The last power of the Garden has finally left us,” Ylly whispered with joy.
Oos’s new lover obviously didn’t know her as well as Unar did. There was nothing Ylly could have said more calculated to make Oos cry. Unar was sorely tempted to leap up and advise Ylly to put Oos facedown along her forearm and rock her until she settled.
Instead, she held herself completely still. Ylly held Oos. The night surely held only a few more hours.
Unar counted silently to a hundred after she thought the other two women were asleep. They didn’t stir when she rolled away from them. She crawled through the workshop and, kneeling, peeled back the corner of the embroidered hanging.
No movement in the hearth room. Hasbabsah snored in her chair. Frog was curled in her corner. Unar crawled over to her, hating Oos and Ylly for discovering they didn’t actually despise one another. They’d spent so long cuddling that Frog had fallen asleep, but she would surely want Unar to wake her.
Frog’s eyes opened before Unar could touch her. Were they Wife-of-Uranun’s eyes? Unar didn’t know. She couldn’t remember. Maybe she didn’t want to remember. The Garden was the only place worth remembering.
“The fishing room,” Frog mouthed. Unar nodded. Once they stood by the roaring wall of water that would disguise any sounds they made, Frog rubbed her eyes and asked, “What did Esse show you, then?”
“A trap he made to catch that demon.”
“Only magic-wielders can catch a dayhunter. ’E wasted his time.”
“If you say so. Little sister, will you teach me how to use my own magic now, or must I continue to simply provide my power for your use?”
Frog put her fists on her hips.
“It would serve you right if I never teach you. You still think you walk on high paths above me. Above everyone, with how black you are. But soon you will lose the sun’s kiss.”
“I never said—”
“Of course not. You do not wanna stay here in Understorey, though, do you? The first thing you wanted to know was how to get through the barrier. You begged me to take you home. But this is my home, do you see? This is anyone’s home who would fight for justice.”
Unar only gazed at Frog. Justice? Why should she care about that?
“I’m not sworn to the goddess Ilan, Protector of Kings,” she said carefully, “but to Audblayin, Waker of Senses.”
“Yes,” Frog answered impatiently, “obviously. If you were sworn to Ilan, I could use you to debilitate my enemies with remorse. Fill them with self-loathin’ until they slit their own throats. We would not hafta fight anyone, then.”
“Fighting? What are you—”
“If you served Airak, I could use you to strike my enemies down with lightnin’. If you served Atwith, I could make them fall dead by the score, like autumn leaves. Instead, you serve Audblayin. Am I to bring down the kings of Canopy by impregnatin’ their wives? Your so-called gift is all but useless to us.”
“Us?” Unar waved her hands around in the air. “Who is us? Your adopted family, Frog?”
“I might as well show you. You can always heal the injured. Useful, I suppose, since I have been wounded in battle. Sit down on this crate.” Frog nudged one of two crates with her knee. “And don’t interrupt me. You look at me and see a child, but you are the child.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
UNAR SAT on the crate.
Frog sat on the other crate, opposite her, knee to knee. Unar stared at Frog, childlike and yet not-child, lost and found and yet still lost. Unar could make no sense of her words: This is anyone’s home who would fight for justice.
The river hissed as it sheeted past. Only Esse’s rope, stretching from a fixed shelf into the flow, wicking water along its length to plip-plop-plip on the floor, broke the glassy sheen of it in the light of the luminescent fungi. All evidence of Bernreb’s butchery was gone.
“Do you know the godsong?” Frog asked. “They do not allow music, but you should have learned the godsong before they locked you up behind those Gates.”
“Yes,” Unar said. Teacher Eann hadn’t been completely ineffective.
“Listen to my voice carefully as I sing the first verse.”
“I will.”
Frog’s singing voice was soft and high.
Airak the white with his forked swords of light
stole the gleam from the Old One’s eye
while the winged and the furred, the beast and the bird
come when summoned by Orin, or die.
Unar’s lips compressed. Those weren’t the words she’d been taught.
“Now you sing it,” Frog said.
Unar hesitated, unsure of whether Frog intended to steal the sound from her very throat, as Frog had stolen the sound of Marram’s flute, or if Unar would be permitted to hear the words that she sang in her deeper, raspier voice.
Airak the white with his forked swords of light
dances with those who will dare
while Oxor is love and her sunshine above
pierces mortals and mists with her care.
Frog had done nothing to alter her singing, Unar thought, unless it was something that she couldn’t sense.
“Well?” Frog said.
“Well, what?”
“Could you tell the difference? That you were an adept but not me? That you had the gift and a patron deity, and I did not?”
“No.” Unar kept her expression fixed but wanted to slap the incredulity off her sister’s face. Frog already knew she couldn’t tell. Was this just a reminder of her supposed place? Frog shook her head.
“I had heard power is purposely waked in Gardeners as surely as it is waked here in Understorey, but the effect does not carry across the barrier, it seems. I must do the work of wakin’ your bones in the Understorian way myself. Sing again, in the next highest octave.”
“Octave?”
Frog grimaced. Even seated, her small fists went to her narrow hips.
“Startin’ with this note. Like this. Airak.”
“Airak.”
“No, no.” Frog rolled her eyes. “Match it exactly. Airak.”
“Airak.”
“Huh. That is not your natural frequency, either. The bones stay quiet. Try again. Airak.”