Today, there was no barrier.
Kirrik led Unar up the stairs to the second storey of the dovecote. Unar kept her eyes lowered; surely they would be met by the sight of a carpet even finer than the ones below. The upper apartment must be spacious and luxurious, if the Master lived here all alone. In the time since Unar had arrived, she didn’t think he had left it.
Or maybe he was a monster in shape as well as deed. Maybe he lived in a morgue, surrounded by the body parts of men butchered to feed him.
Unar wanted to laugh. She and Frog would have to leave Kirrik as soon as possible, and the humour came from knowing Frog must’ve had the same thoughts on arrival at the three hunters’ home. Yet Frog hadn’t hesitated when Unar precipitated their early departure. She’d had a plan. Unar would have to formulate a plan, too, in case she was forced to flee before learning what she needed to know, gaining what she needed to gain.
Spines. A way to pass through the barrier. A way to guard my own strength. Three things. Then I’ll take Frog and go.
Then she saw what was in the single, long room that filled the second storey. Packed into turpentine shavings like clothing being protected from pests were the bodies of men. Some were bundled for cold weather or wet, and some, like Marram, nearly naked. His wounds were healed, and the flesh of his chewed leg regrown, and he lay, supine, as if sleeping, though his chest didn’t rise or fall. His bone amulet was missing.
Hundreds of men, as many as two or three Canopian kings might command, stored as thoughtlessly as Esse stored coils of rope. Waiting.
Where’s the Master? Unar almost asked before remembering she must speak only when spoken to. Keeping her eyes lowered, she stared at Marram.
“Touch him,” Kirrik commanded. Unar put her hand obediently to Marram’s wrist and found it warm, but with no pulse. Wait. She felt a single, slow beat. The youngest of the hunters slept as a tree bear sleeps through the monsoon. Kirrik hadn’t killed him, after all.
One less warrior, Frog had said, when the time comes.
But Frog and Unar knew the three brothers had gone into exile because they wouldn’t fight against Canopy. Upon waking, Marram would refuse to serve and would die as quickly then as he would’ve before the dovecote, if Frog hadn’t intervened for Unar’s sake.
Four things. Four things I need before I can leave. Spines. A way through the barrier. Magical defences. The spell to wake Marram. I can’t leave him behind.
“You look tired, Nameless,” Kirrik said, smiling unpleasantly. “Will you not lie down beside him and rest?”
“Core Kirrik, will I wake again, if I do?”
Was the room enchanted, or perhaps the wood shavings? Unar could have extended her magical senses to find out, if she dared. Her throat remained raw from the strangling vines and still stung from the kiss of Frog’s knife, however, and she didn’t know what would trigger Kirrik’s cruelty.
“I can wake any of them, at any time,” Kirrik said, “but of course you are not a block of fish fat, to store with my other supplies for war. You will be my trained chimera, unless I find that you cannot be tamed.”
“I can be tamed, Core Kirrik,” Unar said, horrified to hear a whine in her voice she hadn’t put there intentionally. “I can.”
“We will see,” Kirrik said, gliding away back down the spiral stairs.
Unar looked down at Marram.
“I can,” she said again.
I don’t care about Floorians, Understorians, or Canopians. But I won’t leave him.
“What was that, Nameless? Did you say something?”
Kirrik had halted with her hand on the banister.
“No, Core Kirrik. Only … what about the Master? Where is he?”
“Where, indeed.” Kirrik’s mouth opened wide with glee. She howled with a flaying laughter, the sound of which penetrated Unar’s magical senses, dissolving her body and tossing the soul that remained up and down on the waves of it. Realisation struck Unar: Kirrik was a woman somehow fused with a demon. The soul of the chimera, accustomed to floating nearby while the desouled fleshy shell transformed, was bound to Kirrik’s soul, keeping it in this bodily plane even when she was fatally wounded. Teacher Eann’s lesson, previously disbelieved, popped into Unar’s head. A female chimera lays two eggs into her own mouth, then transforms into a male. During the transformation, the creature’s soul hovers; it does not go into the ether. It waits until its new body is ready to receive it again.
Kirrik’s laughter cut off. Unar returned to herself.
“You are the Master,” she whispered. “Your skill is that you cannot be killed.”
Attacking you will do no good. Your soul will wait until your body is healed, ready to receive it again.
“Return to your chores, Nameless. There will be no more standing watch. The enemy I saw approaching has been turned to a harmless thread in the carpet beneath my feet. Work hard and learn fast. The time will come when you will be a thread or a tool, and while tools are oiled to keep them sharp, carpets are beaten.”
“Yes, Core Kirrik.”
There can be no half measures. I must destroy your body so completely that your half-demon soul can never return to it.
FORTY-SEVEN
UNAR WAS allowed to use her magic in small ways.
With the blindfold off, she healed the messenger birds when they were injured. She coaxed eggs out of even the smallest of them, bringing tears of laughter to Kirrik’s cold eyes. She made bread from replicated grain and grated fresh-grown aerial-tubers to make porridge. The nonmagical tasks of washing and darning clothes returned some of her old calluses to her hands.
With the blindfold on, she brought great rivers of power into Kirrik’s grasp. She poured her breath into not only the ear bone, but also a cracked tooth and a tailbone as long as her arm. All of them for outcomes that pleased Kirrik; Unar was not permitted to see.
“The bones work best for different purposes,” Frog whispered as Unar used a fragment of broken jaw to sprout seeds for the birds.
Unar nodded grudgingly. The hints Frog slipped to her when Kirrik was out of the room usually made sense. “I felt that. The ear bone is best as a simple amplifier. The tooth works best for splitting and breaking. The tailbone for balance and for healing.”
Frog would not, or could not, answer her questions about breaking through the barrier, but she had healed all of Unar’s sores with Kirrik’s permission. They hadn’t given back the clothes she’d arrived in, but put her instead in loose skirts and shirts with long sleeves that covered her hands and fell to the floor. Unar recognised their function. They were garments unsuited to climbing.
“So,” Frog said softly, with a rare smile, “not so dank and dunderheaded as I thought.”
“The men that went from here, fourteen days ago, with Core Sikakis. Are they bringing back a bone? Or a god?”
Frog’s smile faded.
“You should not—”