“How has it come here?” Unar asked without thinking; it was obvious how the chimera had come into Canopy. Odel had torn a hole in the barrier because she had asked him to.
“Forget about finding the tribute,” Odel said without taking his eyes from the mesmerising glow of the chimera’s twin bulbs. He stood between her and the beast with the taper in one hand, the other hand relaxed at his side, and he’d sent his Bodyguard, his only real protection, to Ehkisland.
“I can use Audblayin’s power to—”
“I forbid you to use Audblayin’s power in my realm. In any case, other than the barrier itself, magic will not affect a chimera.”
“Airak’s lantern held it at bay.”
“Did it? Did you see it turned back by the lantern? Or did you see a demon playing with you, as a monkey plays with an injured bird? You carried chimera skin on your person and your magic was spent. It couldn’t be sure what you were. But now it knows.”
“But the lanterns protected the dovecote from demons.”
“Other demons, perhaps. Not chimeras. They are ancient creatures, close kin to the Old Gods. You said the woman, Kirrik, was a sorceress; a soul-switcher. If she spoke true, it’s likely that she gained that power by merging her bones with those of a chimera; the stench of that foul deed would be itself enough to keep other chimeras away.”
Unar wanted to laugh. If chimeras could smell past deeds, it was a wonder this one wasn’t repulsed by her, too. She scrabbled in the mound of tributes for a tasselled spear and a costly, inscribed sword with an ivory handle, hefting them in her hands.
“I’ll distract it,” Unar said. “You can go to the king of Odelland. Order his soldiers to go after Kirrik.”
“You can’t kill it, Gardener Unar,” Odel said sadly, “and this king would not spare a single soldier for the defence of a niche not his own. You must go after Kirrik. Perhaps we’ll meet again in my next life.”
And he blew out the taper with a gentle breath, just as the bunched chimera leaped at him, teeth bared.
Odel staggered backwards a quick dozen steps with the beast’s jaw closed on his shoulders and neck. The chimera followed furiously on its hind legs, tail lashing the floor. Unar circled sideways around them, sword and spear still feebly raised, watching with dismay as the god crashed backwards into the pool and burning branches tipped from the bronze bowl over both of them.
“Holy One!” she cried.
“Go!” Odel shouted as he and the beast both began turning the white-hot colour of the bathtub right before it shattered. The chimera had let go of him, god’s blood on its black teeth, trying to back away, but Odel’s arms were locked around its neck and he whispered fiercely in the place where its ear should have been.
Unar dropped the weapons and ran.
She ran through a night that beat with the overwhelming percussion of frog song until her bleeding feet screamed. Odellanders stared at her as she pushed past them, but nobody hindered her flight from the Temple. She was crying again.
Another god, dead because of me. Everything I touch turns to poison. Everyone I try to save turns to dust.
Would Odel’s power still keep baby Ylly from falling, if the chimera destroyed him? Or was Audblayin made even more vulnerable by his imminent death? What if Kirrik’s people threw Audblayin out another window, with nobody waiting to catch her this time, and she did not float?
Unar stopped to rip more sections of her skirts away and bind her feet in them as best she could. She’d gotten turned around somehow. This wasn’t the road she’d travelled before, and this late at night, only a few unlucky slaves still laboured along the lower paths.
She tried to control her breathing. Tried to feel her connection to the Garden. She couldn’t, immediately panicking that despite everything, Kirrik had managed to cut the emergent down.
There.
There it was.
Unar took another deep breath. The Garden was still there. She knew which way to go. Ignoring the pain in her feet, she flew along the streets of Canopy, across the border into Ehkisland. There was an autumn market there, being unshuttered and stocked in the dark by slaves and the stricken, which shouldn’t have opened until the true end of the monsoon. Unar didn’t stop to speak to them.
Seven trees later, she found the place where Kirrik and Sikakis had come through the barrier.
At least, bodies whose throats had been slashed by serrated spines lay around the turning that led to Ehkis’s emergent. Unar froze, indecisive, at the junction of wide, flat lateral branches. Her ears felt sharpened to points.
She could hear only the frogs and the wind in the leaves.
Kirrik had been far ahead of her, but how much time had she lost during her incursion into Ehkisland? Was Kirrik still battling in the rain goddess’s domain? Did Aurilon defend the submerged goddess at this very moment? Was Odel’s Bodyguard also dead? Or had Aurilon found Ehkis already missing, kidnapped, and Kirrik’s soldiers moved on into Audblayinland? There were too many possibilities, most of them awful.
Unar stepped out along the path to Ehkis’s sacred pool, then backed up and took a few steps towards the Garden. Her magic was returned to her. She would grow a new branch through Kirrik’s black heart, before the woman even knew she was there, if only she could find her.
Or Kirrik would use Unar’s power to triumph again. Steal her body, smash the Garden, and snatch Audblayin. She shrank from that thought as she shrank from the road to the Temple. The amulet was more than it had seemed, but could she trust it? Could she trust Understorian old wives’ tales? The amulet hadn’t saved Marram from Kirrik’s sleeping spell. Yet he had woken early. And his soul remained firmly embedded in his body.
I can’t risk meeting her. The consequences of her soul in my body are too terrible.
With stars wheeling overhead, Unar went away from Ehkisland, choosing the other road, over the border into Audblayinland.
FIFTY-FIVE
WITH THE crossing, Unar felt as though she doubled in size.
She blinked. One hand went to Marram’s amulet. The other hand went to the place below her ribs where her magic resided; her body hadn’t grown at all, but the well of power within had deepened, and now it pulsed, exerting pressure on her to be used.
No. I am not worthy of this.
I was wrong about everything.
Edax, Airak, Aurilon, and Odel died for nothing.
Audblayin’s Bodyguard will be a man. Not me.
Yet it was like nothing she’d felt before. It had to be something that Kirrik had done to her. Some wicked power entering her. Audblayin’s gift somehow twisted. She wouldn’t use it.
“Boy,” she said, grabbing the elbow of a dirty child who scampered along the road with his arms stretched as if to catch the stream of flat-faced white bats overhead. “Which way to the House of Epatut?”
“Maybe I know!” He tried to pull angrily away from her. “What’ll you give me?”
Unar put her hand up and caught one of the creatures, ignoring the razor-teeth that it drove into her thumb.
“I’ll give you this.”