“I know. I shouldn’t ask questions. Only remember what I am told.”
Frog swallowed. She looked over her shoulder. Core Kirrik had gone up onto the flat roof to release two birds that were too big for the tiny windows.
“They went to find a claw of the Old God whose essence was stolen by Airak. They say it will work as the lamps do, only the lightnin’ can be directed, and it will not harm the one who holds it. They call it Tyran’s Talon.”
“Who was—”
“You must never say the name of one of the Old Gods,” Frog interrupted, her eyes bulging slightly as if startled by how much she had said. “Core Kirrik would feed me to piranhas if she even guessed that you knew it. Promise me you will not say it, not ever!”
“I promise,” Unar said, but she suspected the name held power; more power than singing the names of the gods and goddesses of Canopy. Could it be her path through the barrier? Or the secret of stealing the power of another? Tyran. The god whose essence was stolen by Airak.
She wished that she knew how to read, for Kirrik might have all of the Old Gods’ names listed somewhere, and if they were forbidden, then they must be a danger to Frog’s mistress somehow. Unar wished she had asked Hasbabsah. The old slave seemed to have known all sorts of things, but it was too late now.
“This tooth, that’s best for splitting and breaking,” Unar murmured. “Couldn’t it be used for war? Couldn’t it be used for breaking a person’s bones into tiny pieces?”
“One person,” Frog admitted. “You could focus its power on a single enemy. It would be time-consumin’. You would be defenceless while you did it. Other soldiers might slay you.” She glanced sharply at Unar. “You must not attack Core Kirrik, Un—I mean, Nameless.”
Unar threw up her hands. The motion, she hoped, concealed the fact that she had slipped the Old God’s tooth into a pocket of her black skirt, wrapped in her blindfold to keep Kirrik from sensing it.
“Why do you keep accusing me?”
“I am not accusin’. I know. You want to kill ’er, but you would not like what would happen if you tried.”
“She told me she can’t be killed. I believe her.” She can’t be killed by an ordinary person, but I’m not ordinary. “I don’t need to kill her.” Only to make Audblayin safe from her.
“Good.”
Kirrik threw open the door to the corridor.
“Enough of that. Men are coming. Four of them. They will need feeding. Go to the kitchen, Nameless.”
Unar was trusted enough to boil oil and cook long slices of aerial-tuber for Kirrik and her frequent visitors without supervision. Men and women came to relay reports or receive instructions, all of them wet, muddy, and injured, and went away again with repaired weapons and full bags of food supplies. Their wounds couldn’t be healed, since Unar didn’t love them.
One day, Kirrik had said, laughing, you will love me enough to heal me, Nameless the Outer.
Once, a boy had been brought to have his snake spines put in. Unar hadn’t been allowed to watch, but she’d spotted the leather bag in which the live snakes were stored, hanging by a rope from a roof beam, and some of the women brought identical leather bags with them when they came.
Unar exited the kitchen, balancing four plates of fried tuber, to find that Core Sikakis and his three pale henchmen had returned. They glanced at her as she passed the room where they slung personal belongings, stoppered gourds of drink, feathered talismans, and fire starters onto their bunks. Then they followed her back to the writing room and sat down at the table.
“Will you take bia?” Unar asked as she put plates in front of them.
“No,” Sikakis said, inclining his head in apparent thanks at the offer. Two weeks of new growth around the edges of the previously neat beard had shaped a sharp doorway around the bemused set of his lips. His eyes were bloodshot.
“You do not have it,” Kirrik surmised.
“One who walks in the grace of Airak does not have it,” Sikakis agreed between bites of fried tuber. “As you guessed, the Talon is kept in the Earth-House of Hundar. It’s unguarded during the monsoon, but only because the entire structure is flooded. We are all swimmers, but even Garrag could barely set his fingers to the lintel of the gate before being driven back to the surface to take a breath.”
The man he had indicated, robed in linen with long arms and hands like plates, lifted his eyes from his fried tuber long enough to mutter, “Magic is needed, Core Kirrik.”
“But not the magic of Audblayin,” Sikakis added, glancing at Unar.
Unar froze in place, petrified by the treacherous thoughts whirling in her head.
Kirrik needs Edax.
“You need the magic of Ehkis,” she heard herself say distantly. “You need a Servant of the Bringer of Rain.”
“The Servants of Ehkis can’t be pushed from the roads of Canopy.” Sikakis argued. “They stick to branches like snakes. Our people in Canopy would have no chance to get near them, much less shake them down here for us to gather like fruit. Ehkis’s adepts do not stay in her emergent, either. How would we find one to snare?”
Kirrik massaged her forehead. Her eyes, when they fell on Unar, glittered. “Nameless, you show improvement, but you are not yet one of us.”
“With respect, what do you mean, Core Kirrik?” Sikakis asked her.
“Nameless has associated in the past with one called Edax, the rain goddess’s Bodyguard. She has boasted about his ability to stay underwater for extended periods, without the use of magic.”
“I haven’t boasted—” Unar said.
“Now she seeks to trade.”
“Dank,” Frog mouthed from her place behind Kirrik, holding a pitcher of water. “Dunderhead!”
“What kind of trade?” When Kirrik didn’t answer, Sikakis turned to Unar. “Well, Nameless? What are your demands?”
Unar first looked at Kirrik and then back at Sikakis.
This was a trap. She couldn’t reveal her ambitions.
Or an opportunity. Maybe the only one she would have.
“I want the spines of a warrior,” she said. “I want every question about magic answered that I care to ask. I want my sister’s custody, to go where I please, when I please. Core Kirrik will show me how to overcome attempts to steal my magic. There must be a way. When she wishes a magical task to be completed, she’ll ask me, and I’ll decide whether to comply. Everyone here will call me by my name, Unar, which my mother gave to me.” Unar addressed her final lines to Frog as much as to Kirrik. “She was not much of a mother, but she gave me life, and she gave life to my sister, who is mine to protect now. Not yours.”
Kirrik stared at her with disdain.