“It’s going to crack and fall,” she shouted at Frog as the other tree trunk abruptly loomed ahead. Unar plunged her magic into that tree instead. It was a greenmango, the sour fruit fit only for birds and slaves. Unar thought she’d seen its crown in daylight, made rainbow-coloured by parrots and toucans. A new branch erupted out of the side of it, arching to meet the one they held on to. Frog leaped across the gap between branches before they could cross. Unar followed close behind her.
When she turned to look back the way they had come, she saw Marram, running barefooted along the tallowwood branch, without ropes or chimera-skin wings. Without the bow and arrows he usually carried.
“Go back, Marram!” Unar shouted. “The branch is breaking.”
His face looked grim. He could feel it, magic or not, but he kept coming.
“I will kill ’im if ’e does not go back,” Frog said, crouched at Unar’s heels, holding her little knife in a white-knuckled hand.
“Oos will wake soon.” Unar’s voice was haggard. The futility of Marram’s determination broke her heart as surely as the tallowwood branch was breaking. “Go back. You love her. You should be there when she wakes.” A twinge pulled at her even as she said this. She loved Oos too, but for now she had to follow Frog and find out more about her powers.
“You took me in.” Unar tried to convince him a third time. “You fed me. Protected me from demons. Go back, Marram. Please.”
The tip of the tallowwood branch, which had been perfectly horizontal, silently slanted towards the forest floor. Marram sprang at the greenmango branch, hands and spines outstretched, but it was four or five body lengths away from him.
He fell into darkness. Unar watched his flailing arms and legs with horror until she couldn’t see him anymore.
FORTY
DIZZINESS THREATENED to send Unar over the edge.
She sat down abruptly on the greenmango branch, her gorge rising, still staring into the space where Marram had vanished. The wet bark felt unreal beneath her palms. Rainwater ran down the back of her collar and along the curve of her spine.
“It’s your fault,” she said, and there was no magic in her broken voice at all. She felt as empty as the day Oos and Aoun had drained her. “You killed him.”
“If you wanna blame me for it,” Frog said, “I do not care. Just grow us a big bracket fungus to lie down on and rest, and another one to keep the rain off. In the mornin’ we can go on to the next tree, and the next.”
Unar hardly registered the words. Marram had been kind. He’d been banished from his society for refusing to help strike at gods he didn’t even serve. Now he’d fallen just as surely as if he’d made that attempt and failed.
The only one who can fly.
Minutes later, Unar heard them calling across the void. Bernreb’s voice, and Ylly’s. Even Hasbabsah’s. They called for Marram and Unar and Frog. Unar bit her lip to keep from calling back to them. Oos wasn’t calling. Maybe she was dead. Maybe Frog had killed her after all. As for Esse, he would be too angry to call, but busy putting together some contraption capable of coming after them, even in the monsoon.
Frog’s small hand landed on Unar’s shoulder and shook her impatiently.
“I can’t grow anything,” Unar said.
“Yes you can. Of course you can. If your voice is tired, use this.” The hand tapped her back with something round and hard. Unar twisted to take it from her, a white rock the size of her two hands, shaped like a wishbone stuck into a flatcake.
“What is it?”
“The ear bone of an Old God.”
Only when Unar turned it did she see the hole bored into the long end of it.
“There’s only one hole. Where does the sound come out?”
Frog hesitated.
“It comes out in another world. In the place where the Old Gods dreamed while they were sleepin’. Just blow into it.”
Unar blew. It seemed that the whole forest vibrated, yet the long, dark leaves of the greenmango didn’t move. Not a single gemlike bead of water fell that hadn’t been about to fall already. There was no moss on the new branch and no spores had had time to fall, but back at the main tree trunk, life surged, and the sheltered beds that Frog had asked for sprang, smooth, orange and gleaming, into being.
“Come on,” Frog said, leading her by the wrist again. They lay against each other, wet but warm, and waited only a little time for first the urgent, calling voices and then the pale Understorian day to fade completely away.
FORTY-ONE
IT WAS still dark when Unar woke.
She peeled the leeches off her skin and rubbed the sores they left behind. Then she lapped a drink of rainwater from the edge of the enormous bracket fungus that unyieldingly took their weight.
“Are you ready?” Frog asked, proffering the ear bone, which glowed a gentle green. She had a leech sore on her eyelid, barely discernible.
“I’m ready,” Unar said. She breathed in life and breathed out magic. The greenmango stretched a new-grown arm in the direction Frog indicated, and a fig, like the one at the great crossroads on the border of Ehkisland in Canopy, reached its new arm out until the branches crossed. Unar hesitated. This was more a crossroads than the other. If she made this crossing, it was one she could never return from, and she didn’t know whether to feel anticipation or fear.
Then she remembered how she’d jumped off the head of the dayhunter. How she’d left her parents’ home. That seeds were ambitious, desperate, single-minded, and strong.
Audblayin favoured boldness.
She and Frog stepped off the tree behind them just in time for it to slough the dying overextension of itself.
Fig branch met myrtle. Myrtle met sweet-fruit pine. Sweet-fruit pine met false palm. False palm met quandong, complete with ripe blue fruits that they ate for a morning meal.
“If you had been patient,” Frog said reproachfully as she spat a seed into the rain, “and not alerted them until we were ready, we would have supplies with us. Proper food, rope, nets, and knives. Tinder and firestarter and sand.”
“How far are we going?” asked Unar, who had never crossed more than one or two niches, never travelled further than she could walk in a day.
“To the far edge of Canopy. It would take a week in the dry. Maybe five days in the monsoon. To make a new branch, most of all a great tree needs water.”
“You can’t teach me about trees. I’m a Gardener. Teach me something else, sister.” A thrill went through her when she said it. Why should she be afraid? She had done the impossible and helped two slaves to escape certain death at Servant Eilif’s hands, while eluding the punishment of denying her power. Confident in her destiny again, she straightened her back and lifted her chin.
Nothing could deny her. She would be the greatest Bodyguard Audblayin had ever had. When she found him. After all, not even a season had passed in Understorey, and she had already found her sister.
“The Master will decide what you are to be taught,” Frog muttered.