“I CAN’T help you work tonight, Ylly,” Unar said, two weeks later.
She had to shout to be heard over the roaring wind and rumbling of the storm. This wild night belonged to Ehkis and to Airak. The monsoon was very close. The Gardeners wouldn’t know for sure until the storm broke. If the rain stopped when morning came, then this storm was but a precursor, and the true storm was still to come. If it didn’t stop after a day, they could be almost certain it would continue for five months. Unar didn’t even bother to try to stay dry. She’d left her sandals behind at her hammock, along with her waterproof leaf-jacket. It didn’t matter. The driving rain was blood-warm.
Ylly said nothing. She’d said nothing since the day Sawas was taken away from the Garden. Unar pressed her seed porridge portion into the older woman’s hands.
“Take my supper. You’re losing weight. I’ll help you again tomorrow.”
Ylly took the porridge and turned away.
Unar dashed across the bridge, not worried about being seen. Who but Ylly would be out in this weather? She went to the Gate, locked hours before, and early, by Aoun, and pushed it open a body’s width, boring a hole through the lock with her magic and sealing it again behind her with the rich scent of thirsty soil thick in her nostrils.
The water above her, below her, to both sides of her, made her feel like raising her arms, winglike, and swimming through the air. She laughed with the joy of it as she flitted over the slippery, winding paths towards Ehkisland.
When she came to the lowest branch over the Understorian border, with the pool she and Edax practiced in yawning black and tantalising below, she laid her wet red tunic and green trousers over the peeling bark and stretched her arms above her head.
“Wait for me, Audblayin,” she said. “Keep your gifts until my return.”
She dived smoothly, several body lengths, down into the pool. Somewhere in midair, she lost her magic, but she was used to that sensation now. It would be there when she came back up to get her clothes.
Thunder seemed to shake the great trees. The myrtle pool quivered, hissing where rain sheeted into it. Unar swam confidently to the edge. She hardly needed Edax now. Only there was something about his gaze on her, about his wiry arms and clever fingers, that drew her back again.
She climbed out of the pool, stood in the warm rain, and waited for him.
For the longest time, he didn’t come. A twinge of worry twisted her gut. Had an attempt on the goddess killed Edax instead? Perhaps he’d forgotten this night was a lesson night.
Hands landed lightly on the wet crown of her head, and she looked up, getting rain in her eyes. Edax hung from a branch by his talons, above and behind her. When she turned to him, their lips were level. His hands were at the back of her head now, pressing her forward, so that their mouths met.
She was glad to close her eyes; she couldn’t get used to the sight of his upside-down smile. The kiss electrified her, as if she had sworn herself to the lightning god. Like her powers, her oaths had been left behind in Canopy.
He had kissed her before, but this time he didn’t stop. Edax lowered himself slowly, sliding down her body like a viper; he kissed her chin and her throat. He unbound her breasts and kissed them, and Unar’s stomach plunged as though she was in free fall, diving, a thing she had been afraid of, once, but now thrilled to do.
Her knees felt weak, but to kneel would be to put herself out of reach of his lips. He slid down further, his tongue leaving imprints down her belly, and without removing her loincloth, he encircled her hips with his arms and pressed his face between her shivering thighs.
Unar looked up and saw the deep cuts he’d made in the branch with his unnatural feet. Without the goddess in him, blood must be rushing to his head as it hadn’t in Ehkis’s realm, but she couldn’t think of that; his clever fingers had found their way inside her final wrappings, found it hot and wet as the rain.
She clung to him to keep from collapsing and pulled some leather binding loose by accident. Were his weapons slipping? She didn’t want him to lose them. Abruptly, there was his manhood, at the level of her eyes, shockingly engorged, at once ridiculous and mesmerising. Had she been afraid of such a thing?
His feet couldn’t hold their combined weight. He lost his grip. They fell into the pool. Unar hadn’t had a chance to take a proper breath and water filled her nose. She remembered not to scream; she had screamed underwater in the moat at the Temple, where Oos’s magic had saved her.
There was no magic here.
Edax hauled her out of the water. Fingers that had probed her private places now cleared her mouth of her own myrtle-leaf-garlanded hair.
“Are you hurt?” he shouted.
“No!” she managed in return.
He kissed her again, the right way up this time.
“And your oaths? Little Gardener, do you wish to keep them?”
“No,” Unar said. She closed her eyes. Not to block the view of his sensuous mouth, when he stood the right way up, but so she could pretend he was Aoun, who would die before breaking those oaths his ignorant child-self had made long ago.