Audblayin’s smile deepened.
“No. I don’t suppose it ever will. But he gave it to you, and he hasn’t taken it back. It means something to him. A bargain. A promise. He’s very powerful now. I am the living goddess Audblayin, and I can’t force the Garden to let you in. But the Gatekeeper could, if he were ever to choose you over me.”
Unar took a deep, shuddering breath.
“That day will never come.”
“I agree,” Audblayin said simply. “There is too much honour in him. The Servants chose well, when they chose him.”
SIXTY-ONE
UNAR WENT into the hearth room.
It was discoloured with age and smoke, and the tapestry hangings were faded, but the great table was the same, even if it hosted extra chairs. Esse hung fish over the fire as though he hadn’t moved for seventeen years. The back of his head looked the same as it always had, but his ears looked bigger and there was a stiffness in his crouch that hadn’t been there before.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” Bernreb said gruffly from his chair. His beard was salted with grey, and the snarling animals that covered his arms and chest were faded, the flesh beneath slightly sagging, but he still looked as though he could split a chimera skull with a single blow of a cleaver.
Unar stared at the red and green vest that he wore. It was made in the colours and the cut of a Gardener.
“My middle-father will be my Bodyguard for a time,” Audblayin said. “Until I can find another to trust. Canopians are strangers to me, though I have fuzzy memories of Canopian men and women that I have trusted before. Still, they’re like tales told at a fireside that I vaguely recall.”
Your Bodyguard? But the Bodyguard must be an initiate. An adept.
“Take care of yourself, madwoman,” Marram told Audblayin warmly. Of all of them, he seemed to have aged the least. Unar thought he still looked boyish, but she couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying. Bernreb preoccupied her. “It cannot be easy having a goddess in your head.”
“I am the goddess, Youngest-Father. Do not fear. I’ll take care of this body. I’ll take care of little Ylly.”
“You can’t think they will let Bernreb into the Garden,” Unar said. She pointed to the depiction of a headless man etched into the burly hunter’s pale skin. “He’s a murderer, the same as me.”
“As for that,” Audblayin said, “I don’t intend to stay in the Garden all the time, as I have done before. When I’m in the Garden, I won’t need a Bodyguard. The strength of my Gatekeeper has seen to that. When I’m outside the Garden, that’s when I’ll have my middle-father with me.”
“Understorians can’t walk free in Audblayinland. Unbroken spines are not permitted.”
“Then I’ll have to see the king,” Audblayin said calmly, “about what is permitted and not permitted. Refresh yourself as needed, Godfinder. I mean to reach Canopy before high noon.”
“Not without me,” a child’s voice said with determination. Unar turned to face a boy who couldn’t have been older than nine or ten but who was almost her height, white as churning river water but with something darker in the sound of him. It was something she recognised with her magic sense, the same sense that had told her about Kirrik’s kin.
“Frog’s soul,” she whispered, stunned.
Bernreb’s giant hands massaged her shoulders, or perhaps he was holding her up by the shoulders like giant pegs holding up a drying shirt.
“This is my son,” he boomed proudly. “Leapael.”
“I am Leaper,” the boy said fiercely, and grimaced the way that Frog had grimaced. “Not Leapael. I will go one way, and that way is up. I want to see the sun, all day, every day. You cannot make me stay down here, Middle-Father. Issi promised to take me with her.”
The mischievous-looking girl’s grin slipped, and Sawas pinched her.
“That is not Issi’s decision to make. I should have whipped her for helping you to get spines so young.”
“It is my decision,” Leaper said loudly.
My sister’s soul.
“Why couldn’t you wait?” Unar accused Audblayin. “Why couldn’t you let me share in the joy of it, this time? First you separate us by distance and now, again, by time?”
“I had no part in Frog’s fall,” Audblayin said. “You saved me, Unar. You said so. Ylly’s life was your gift to me. Now I give this gift to you.”
“Too late! Frog didn’t love me. She was already half grown. This boy is the same. He doesn’t know me.”
“He thirsts for the heights. That much is the same. The rest is up to you.”
“Do not talk about me,” Leaper said crossly. “Do not talk about me! Tell Middle-Mother that I can go to Canopy, if you want to talk!”
Sawas sighed. She shared a long look with Bernreb.
“You can go,” she said. “So long as you obey your middle-father and your sister, you can go. Thank Audblayin I’ll be rid of your complaining.” And then she seemed shocked by what she had said, covering her mouth and looking at Ylly.
Unar went to the fishing room to wash herself and her clothes. There were fewer storage racks and ropes in there now, more benches and buckets for washing, and ointments and sweet-smelling tinctures. She opened the stopper of one gourd of wood fern and another of distilled quince, marvelling at how strongly they brought back her earliest premonition.
She restoppered them and put them away, wiping her hands uncomfortably on her cut-off skirts. The river was a thin trickle, parting the smokescreen that kept the opening closed to biting intruders.
Oos arrived with Unar’s old green Gardener’s breeches in hand.
“Do you want to wear these?” She touched Unar’s cheek in the dim, greenish glow of the fluorescent fungi, and her eyes slitted a little with envy. “They’ll fit you. You are still so young.”
Unar took the breeches from her and traced the faded cloth.
“No. I have no right to them now.”
“What will you do?”
Unar wanted to tell Oos that she had nothing left to do, once Audblayin was delivered, but to die, but she was overcome with giddiness at the realisation she didn’t want to die anymore. He thirsts for the heights.
What could she do, in place of allowing herself to fall like a leaf?
The rest is up to you. Unar licked her lips.
“Become a fuel finder, I suppose,” she said slowly. “My father may still be alive. Although I doubt it. Frog said he was bleeding for wood in Eshland. What have you done for sixteen years, Oos? Stayed here? Lived here? Without a thought for the Garden?”