The slave looked everywhere but at Unar.
“One of the other women from my previous household.” The dirty hands clenched on the slave’s knees. “The oldest one. She can’t work as she once did. She couldn’t turn the crank handle to bring up water, so I did it for her. It took me all day.”
“So?”
“So I was left with no time to prepare the soil and plant the seeds that were given to me to complete the spiral pattern. I buried them in a single hole. Now I have to dig them up again, loosen the earth, and plant them properly before morning, but I can’t find where I buried them. I need a lantern, or when daylight comes, they’ll find out about the old woman. They’ll push her off the edge of the Garden.”
Unar had been raised to hate slaves. If they were dark-skinned slaves, Canopians who had been sold by their families to settle debts, they were weak and deserved to starve, and if they were pale Understorian slaves, they deserved to be pushed off the edge of the Garden for being enemy raiders or the descendants of enemy raiders.
But before she could turn away in disgust, she heard her mother’s voice, saying that Unar was fit only for sale at the block. She remembered her sister, Isin, who had fallen, and the missing baby Imeris. It was too late for either of them to return to Canopy, but if they had somehow survived the fall and been found alive by the denizens of Understorey or Floor, she would wish for strangers to show them forgiveness. Kindness, even.
She felt for, and quickly found, the strength of the life force in the seeds and their yearning to grow tall and strong. Inside the other woman was the unfurling of potential life; the slave was ovulating. The smell of earth and pulpy red arils filled her nostrils.
“It’s that bed over there. That’s where you buried them,” she said.
“Yes, Warmed One.”
Unar led the way off the bridge and over to the raised bed. She began digging, and found the seeds almost at once. The slave gave a small cry of relief. Smooth, shiny shapes filled Unar’s palms. She lifted them, sniffed at them, using her goddess-given gift.
“These are gap-axe seeds,” she observed.
“Yes, Warmed One. Planted here in the Garden, watered by rain, they will grow to only ten paces tall. There’s something about having their roots in Floor that makes the great trees grow to one thousand paces and more.”
“I know more than you about the great trees!”
“Yes, Warmed One.”
Unar didn’t feel particularly warmed at that moment. She dwelled in abundant sunshine that rarely reached Understorey, it was true, but she shouldn’t have boasted about having more knowledge than a slave.
“Go to sleep,” she said. “I’ll plant the seeds in the spiral pattern. With magic, it won’t matter that the soil hasn’t been loosened. I’ll lend them the strength to push through compacted ground. I’ll even germinate them, so that all can see the work was done.”
Unar saw from her hesitant expression that the slave woman didn’t believe her, and didn’t care. Were there Understorian gods? If so, they must be pathetic and powerless compared to those of Canopy, but maybe they had eyes to see; maybe they would recognise the tribute that Unar paid to them by protecting one of their own.
And maybe they would watch over a helpless, fallen girl child in recognition of Unar’s tribute.
THREE
THE HAMMOCKS were tied between loquat trunks.
Unar stopped at the paired, hollow-trunked, deciduous prison trees at the grove entrance to return the unknotted ropes of her climbing harness to the store. Fallen leaves were beginning to make paired, patterned circles around their bases. Leashed tapirs were sometimes kept there, when the wealthy brought their foliage-fattened livestock for tribute. The meat of the docile animals, captive bred and accustomed to being farmed in treetops, was a rare treat. It was generations since troublemaking slaves had been sealed up inside either of the swollen, stumpy prison tree trunks, but Servant Eilif had threatened to do it to Unar the last time she was caught out of her hammock by moonlight.
On that occasion, Unar had been trying to sprout the seeds of the night-yew, despite knowing that it was forbidden for there to be more than one night-yew tree in the Garden. And when Unar had asked why there could be only one, Eilif’s answer had been that there could be only one incarnation of Audblayin at a time, which seemed irrelevant, but Unar hadn’t tried again.
The scent of loquat nectar in fuzzy, still-furled flowers and the sound of snoring drew Unar along the dirt path towards the hammocks. Layered, petal-like eaves of the Gardener’s Gathering pavilion sheltered the sleepers from light rain without blocking afternoon sunlight. Streams of water, diverted from the pavilion’s peak over the edge of the Garden nearby, connected the higher platform with one of the pools below. Oos said she hated the waterfalls, because they made her need to pee, but Unar appreciated their ability to mask murmured midnight conversations.
Midnight was well behind her now. She’d spent an hour planting, and her mind was numb, all the magic bled out of her by the task of germinating the gap-axe seeds. In hindsight, it had been a little ambitious, but Unar was accustomed to having a deeper well to draw on than most.
“Did you find the baby?” Oos asked sleepily, invisibly enfolded in her hammock, as Unar tried to climb into the one beside it.
“No.”
Unar’s arms felt like logs. She slipped back to the turf, rested a moment, and then tried again to drag herself, headfirst, into the hammock.
“It was good of you to join the search, Unar.”
“It was stupid of me,” Unar said, her voice muffled by blankets. “Nobody lives who falls.”
“Did you go into Understorey?”
“Yes.”
Oos caught her breath reverently.
“What was it like?”
“Dark.” Unar struggled to turn over, to lie on her back and look through the gap of her cocoon at the underside of the red-painted roof. The hammocks came from Ukakland, where the insect god imbued them with the ability to repel night invaders, but the soft silk lining was something Oos had sewn for her. “The rain was mostly stopped. The moonlight too.”
“Did you meet anybody? Any wild slaves?”
“I met a liar. His name was Edax.”
Oos guffawed.
“He was a liar if he said his name was Edax. That’s the name of the Bringer of Rain’s Bodyguard. Nobody else is allowed to take that name.”