STILL WET from her passage through the vertical river with Esse, Unar plucked Frog by the collar and dragged her from the hearth room into the dark corridor between the fishing room and the rest of the dwelling.
“Are you my sister?” If she could have used her magic, she would have delved into Frog the way that Oos had delved into the jacaranda seed during her lesson in the Garden. She would have determined at once if Frog was fruit from the same tree as Unar was.
“You are wet,” Frog said, her small fists striking Unar’s chest. “Get off me!”
Unar only leaned harder on her, so she couldn’t wriggle away.
“Are you Isin?”
Silence.
“Answer me!” Unar thought of the story about the man and woman fighting over poisoned mushrooms, Frog’s parents, on the other side of the barrier. In Canopy. “They were my parents that you saw. They were starving.”
Frog’s chin lifted insolently.
“You can imagine them easily, can you not? Imagine this. Imagine them screamin’ at each other to go to Audblayin’s Temple and collect the silver they were owed for their daughter’s service. Imagine the man ravin’ that the Garden was not a place for men, that it was the woman who would hafta go. I lost sight of them when they went. I could not follow. But from that moment, I knew I had a sister in the Garden.”
“You knew,” Unar repeated dumbly, hypnotised by the scene that Frog had painted in her mind, “you had a sister in the Garden.”
“Yes. Of course I am your sister. You are so dank.”
Unar rallied with the old anger she’d always relied on.
“And you,” she said, shaking Frog, “are so small. So good at pretending to be weak, but you healed Hasbabsah with magic. Who knows what else you can do? That yellowrain didn’t fall by accident, did it?”
“No.” Sullenly. “I cut it down.”
“But the crown was in Canopy. You said that the crown was in Canopy. You know how to pass through the barrier. You can take us home!”
“No!” Frog gripped Unar’s little fingers and bent them back until pain sent Unar stumbling in retreat. “I sent a bird to Canopy. One of my friends in Canopy lopped the crown for me. It was not a great enough tree to ’ave anybody livin’ in it. It was tall enough, though. I knew it could reach here from the place where I was waitin’.”
Frog rubbed her shoulders where Unar had pinned her.
“You sent a bird?” Unar recoiled again, but there wasn’t much room to move in the corridor. The opposite wall was at her back. “You have friends in Canopy, but not me? Not your own sister? Why didn’t you send a bird to me?”
Unar realised she was crying. She couldn’t scrub the tears away without Frog seeing. Frog was the child here, not Unar. Frog was the one who couldn’t remember her birth mother, not Unar. Frog should be the one crying.
“You were a Gardener by the time I found out your name. A keeper of Understorian slaves. ’Ow could I send a bird to you?”
“Keepers of slaves? Is that why you think Gardeners are enemies, unless they share your blood? That’s why Oos is your enemy, but not me? That’s why you’ll teach me, but not her?”
“I never said you were not my enemy.” Frog kicked her, hard, in the shin, but the tears that might have come to Unar’s eyes from the pain were already there. “I hadta meet you before I could reveal myself to you. I hadta know. My friends in Canopy know where to get gossip. Erid, Wife-of-Uranun, threw me away because she already had one daughter. She did not need another. She needed sons. What if you were like ’er? What if it was your idea to throw me away?”
Unar was shocked and repulsed.
“My idea? My idea? I hated them because they didn’t look for you. Not properly.”
“Now you know why they did not look. I was too small.” Frog folded her arms. “Small and useless.”
“Isin.” Unar tried to take Frog’s shoulders again, with gentleness and love this time. “Isin. Isin.”
“Stop sayin’ that name.” Frog pulled free. Tossed her head. “That is not my name.”
Unar slid down the wall of the corridor until she was sitting, wet and shivering, in the dark.
“Not your name?”
“Come back to the hearth room,” Frog said. “Get dry. Tell me about whatever it was that Esse showed you.”
“What Esse showed me,” Unar repeated hollowly.
“Come this way, broken eggs for brains, jumper on dayhunters’ backs. You will feel better in front of the fire.”
* * *
UNAR DRIED herself in front of the fire.
What if you were like ’er? What if it was your idea to throw me away?
Was she like her mother? She didn’t know. Had Mother been going blind? It was starting to make sense now. Mother staying home on days she should have gone to the forge. Mother making mistakes, flattening a finger of her left hand. Lashing out in a rage but striking the wall or floor beside Unar instead of Unar herself.
Unar and Frog made rope all day without exchanging another word.
Every now and again, Unar looked up from the wood-and-metal jig that Esse had set up for them—whose bore-knife did he steal to get the metal for these rotating hooks and pins?—to fix Frog’s solemn face again in her mind.
Not lost by accident. Abandoned with deliberation. Unar wanted to recoil from the thought but forced herself to face it instead. When she thought of their mother, Wife-of-Uranun, her starkest memories were of sudden rages. Now that Unar knew they had been provoked, not by Unar herself but by her mother’s terror of an inability to work and subsequent starvation, could she forgive the neglect that had led to Isin falling?
No. Not ever.
Isin could have helped their father, just as Unar had. Fuel finding could have kept them from starving, couldn’t it? Only, the wood god, Esh, had been weak that year and the rain goddess, Ehkis, had been strong. The wood was wet and would not dry. Neither Unar nor Father could cut wet wood with a blunt axe.
Your belly’s speaking, Erid. Eat these, Father had murmured.
Why so few? Mother had answered. Unar had thought she sounded cold, but what if it was the hollowness of despair? She’s fit only for the block.
Unar had run, at last, not knowing that her mother was frightened of the forge because the world had become a blur.
Frog had said, She knew I would not be able to do the work. She thought I looked small. For my age. She wanted sons.
How did Frog know that? What messages had she received from Canopy? What spies had she sent to peer into Uranun’s rented hovel? Unar wondered if Father had been tempted to send Wife-of-Uranun to Audblayin’s emergent to ask for a male child. But what gifts could Uranun have sent to the Garden? He had stolen and eaten his own child’s mushrooms. Sacrifice was hardly in his nature.
He was willing to sell his daughter to put food in his own mouth. Nothing like Wife-of-Epatut, Issi’s mother, who lavished rare metals and costly fabrics on the Servants just for a chance of conceiving again. When Wife-of-Uranun had finally made her way to the Garden, it had been to ask, not for a son, but for a thousand weights of silver.
Unar looked fiercely at Frog’s face again. She wanted to give her little sister everything that should have been hers by right. It was a miracle that she lived, that this chance even existed. When Unar returned to Canopy, Frog must accompany her. Perhaps they would live rough for a while, as out-of-nichers, searching, finding food with magic that Unar must keep hidden outside of a palace or emergent. But only until they found the reborn Audblayin and returned him to the Garden. Then all honour would be theirs, all powers returned, and Unar would keep Frog by her side, in sunlight, all the time.
But she didn’t dare say anything. Not while she feared being rebuffed.
Unreturned love is for fools.
Frog held the triplicate, paired strands of twine apart with her small, loosely splayed hands while Unar worked the handle that twisted them. When the twist in the strings was just short of snapping them, Frog slid her hands away from the weighted end of the rope towards the loose end, and the six lines became a single, fatter one.
Unar pinched the place between made and unmade rope as they moved the completed section beyond the clamping, hanging weight that kept the twine tensioned. When it was fixed, and the three rotating hooks reset with loose continuations of the twine, their lengths coming from six of the bags that Unar had filled, she opened and closed her fingers to uncramp them.
Esse’s head poked under the flap. He peered at them, at the rope, and at the candles he had given them to work by. There were dark smudges under his eyes. Since the demon trap was completed, he’d told Marram he would become diurnal again, beginning by not sleeping that day.
“That will do,” he said. “Cover the jig. Blow out the candle. Come and eat.”
Frog and Unar shared repulsed looks. Whatever the name of the lidless lizard that Bernreb had caught that afternoon, Unar did not enjoy its sour meat or flaky texture. Hasbabsah said it was good for them, especially the eight eyes, which were thin jellied blobs on beds of bright orange fat.
“Do you know, I liked eating that long-armed-thing,” Unar lied. Bernreb’s earlier catch had been tainted with its male musk and practically inedible, but it was tastier than the lizard.
“Do you not listen to the old woman’s raving?” Esse said. “Eating that meat more than twice in a moon will grow hair on a girl’s chest.”
“If only I had known,” Frog said flatly. Unar guessed she was thinking of Wife-of-Uranun, or perhaps her Understorian mother, whom she’d showed no signs of missing.
“Frog,” Unar said, catching her as Esse’s head disappeared and Frog made to blow out the candles.
“What is it?”
“You send birds to Canopy. You have friends there. You must know if Wife-of-Uranun was with child a third time. Did she have a son, in the end?”
Frog blew out the candles. Unar couldn’t see her face.
“Our mother fell, Unar,” she said. “She was not with child, nor will ever be again.”
Another shock. Their mother had fallen? Or had she flung herself down in desolation?
“Was it because she was blind?”
“No.”
Unar waited for more information, but it wasn’t forthcoming.
“You said you had an adopted family here in Understorey. Were they kind to you? The woman you called your new mother. What kind of woman is she?”
“Later, Unar. We will talk later, when they are all sleepin’.”
* * *
UNAR LAY on her pallet, feigning sleep.
All but Ylly and Issi had retired to bed, pallet, or chair to sleep. Unar wished angrily that Hasbabsah hadn’t forced the flaky lizard down the baby’s throat; surely that was what kept the normally contented child screaming this late at night.
Ylly sang a soft, wordless song as she jiggled Issi over one shoulder, but Unar noticed the song had gotten hoarser and even tinged with anger and frustration. Oos’s restless shifting on the pallet besides Unar’s indicated that she, too, was still wide awake.
At last, Oos sat up.
“Let me help you,” she begged Ylly. “Let me take her.”
“No,” Ylly snapped
“I have nieces and nephews.” Oos got to her feet. “I know what to do with babies.”
“You know what to do with babies, all right. Sell them, if you need a new ribbon for your hair.”
Unar tensed beneath her blanket, her back turned to them. Maybe this would be the moment. Oos wasn’t her friend anymore. Not faithful to her anymore. She’d finally confess to Ylly that she’d sold Sawas away because Sawas had tried to tell Servant Eilif about Unar learning to swim. And Ylly would, rightfully, blame Unar for involving Sawas in her determination to break the rules of the Garden.
“Ylly, I’m sorry.” Oos’s voice was thick with emotion. “I’m so sorry. One who walks in the grace of Audblayin was raised never to look down, but that’s no excuse. I should have looked, anyway. I should have seen.”
“Yes. You should have. It has been a long time. Since I had Sawas. And she was taken so soon. Weaned so early.” Ylly sounded even hoarser. As if she had started crying. Oos moved closer to her, away from Unar.
“When my niece had bubbles in her stomach, my sister would hold her like this. Facing down, along her forearm, with her cheek in her hand. And then swing her. Right. Like that.”
For a wonder, Issi’s squalling subsided into discontented grunts.
“She is heavy like this,” Ylly said with a flutter of a forced laugh.
“Should I fetch Bernreb?”
“No. Let him sleep. Will you … will you take a turn?”
“Of course.”
Long moments went by while the baby settled. Hurry, Unar thought. The sooner you all go to sleep, the sooner I can join Frog in the hearth room and learn more. She was so hungry to learn.
At last, her ears detected the sounds of tucking a child into her cradle.
Abruptly, before Unar could turn over and risk a peep through her lashes, there were other sounds. Unar couldn’t reconcile them, at first, with what she knew: Ylly hated Oos, and was old enough to be her mother, besides. Kissing sounds were kissing sounds, though. They hadn’t been a feature of the Garden, but Unar remembered them from the streets.
She didn’t need to roll over to see what was happening. There was nobody else in the storeroom but Unar and the baby, and the women were not kissing the baby. Not like that.
Get on with it! she raged inwardly.
No sooner had she had the thought than two bodies thudded onto Oos’s pallet beside her. Hands scrabbled to pull the too-small blanket over both of them. Elbows and knees invaded Unar’s space. They had to be wriggling out of their clothes.
For her own amusement, Unar would have liked Bernreb to appear just then. He still sometimes checked on the baby. He didn’t appear this time, though. And Ylly and Oos didn’t go to sleep. After what seemed like hours, the soft, sucking sounds of fingers in fluid-filled places were accompanied by Oos’s strangled gasp, and Unar dared to hope that they would fall asleep where they were, collapsed on one another, and she could make her escape.
“The last power of the Garden has finally left us,” Ylly whispered with joy.
Oos’s new lover obviously didn’t know her as well as Unar did. There was nothing Ylly could have said more calculated to make Oos cry. Unar was sorely tempted to leap up and advise Ylly to put Oos facedown along her forearm and rock her until she settled.
Instead, she held herself completely still. Ylly held Oos. The night surely held only a few more hours.
Unar counted silently to a hundred after she thought the other two women were asleep. They didn’t stir when she rolled away from them. She crawled through the workshop and, kneeling, peeled back the corner of the embroidered hanging.
No movement in the hearth room. Hasbabsah snored in her chair. Frog was curled in her corner. Unar crawled over to her, hating Oos and Ylly for discovering they didn’t actually despise one another. They’d spent so long cuddling that Frog had fallen asleep, but she would surely want Unar to wake her.
Frog’s eyes opened before Unar could touch her. Were they Wife-of-Uranun’s eyes? Unar didn’t know. She couldn’t remember. Maybe she didn’t want to remember. The Garden was the only place worth remembering.
“The fishing room,” Frog mouthed. Unar nodded. Once they stood by the roaring wall of water that would disguise any sounds they made, Frog rubbed her eyes and asked, “What did Esse show you, then?”
“A trap he made to catch that demon.”
“Only magic-wielders can catch a dayhunter. ’E wasted his time.”
“If you say so. Little sister, will you teach me how to use my own magic now, or must I continue to simply provide my power for your use?”
Frog put her fists on her hips.
“It would serve you right if I never teach you. You still think you walk on high paths above me. Above everyone, with how black you are. But soon you will lose the sun’s kiss.”
“I never said—”
“Of course not. You do not wanna stay here in Understorey, though, do you? The first thing you wanted to know was how to get through the barrier. You begged me to take you home. But this is my home, do you see? This is anyone’s home who would fight for justice.”
Unar only gazed at Frog. Justice? Why should she care about that?
“I’m not sworn to the goddess Ilan, Protector of Kings,” she said carefully, “but to Audblayin, Waker of Senses.”
“Yes,” Frog answered impatiently, “obviously. If you were sworn to Ilan, I could use you to debilitate my enemies with remorse. Fill them with self-loathin’ until they slit their own throats. We would not hafta fight anyone, then.”
“Fighting? What are you—”
“If you served Airak, I could use you to strike my enemies down with lightnin’. If you served Atwith, I could make them fall dead by the score, like autumn leaves. Instead, you serve Audblayin. Am I to bring down the kings of Canopy by impregnatin’ their wives? Your so-called gift is all but useless to us.”
“Us?” Unar waved her hands around in the air. “Who is us? Your adopted family, Frog?”
“I might as well show you. You can always heal the injured. Useful, I suppose, since I have been wounded in battle. Sit down on this crate.” Frog nudged one of two crates with her knee. “And don’t interrupt me. You look at me and see a child, but you are the child.”