“WHO ARE you, to come into my place without seeking guest-right?”
Kirrik’s voice half deafened Unar. She flinched away but not too far, mincing steps where it seemed the other woman had stepped, not wanting to step off the edge of the path and break with the umbrella on the forest floor.
Marram’s voice, when it came, sounded weary. It floated down from a height, as though he stood on the flat roof of the cylindrical dovecote.
“The child you shelter, called Frog, is some sort of sorceress or Floorian bone woman. That Gardener you keep a prisoner was under my protection. I will have her back before I go.”
“Will you? Where will you go, and how? It is the monsoon. You are at death’s door yourself. What safe refuge will you take her to?”
Unar had no choice but to surreptitiously push up one edge of the blindfold so that she could see. She bit her tongue, hard, to keep from crying out. In the cold blue light of the death-lanterns, she saw dark, bruised stripes across Marram’s face, neck, and chest. He stood, swaying, close to the edge of the roof, wearing a bone amulet she hadn’t noticed him wearing before.
One of his arms was knotted with vines in a way that suggested his collarbone was broken. But the worst was the front of his left leg; some kind of creature had eaten away the flesh from knee to ankle, so that the shinbone where the spines were grafted was exposed to the air.
Unar let the blindfold drop. Everything was black, but she could still imagine Marram there, a living corpse. Only the magic that maintained his grafted spines could be keeping him on his feet.
“Marram, I’m safe here,” Unar called. “Please, go back.”
Kirrik spun to face her.
“I did not give you permission to speak, Nameless,” she said, and pushed Unar backwards. Little hands caught her as she stumbled. Frog had somehow crept around behind her.
“Fly away, Marram!” Unar tried to scream, but no sound came out of her mouth, and Kirrik used her magic in some way that she couldn’t see. Vines grew around her, pulling her backwards by the throat. Frog moved away from her, and Unar found herself roped to the road, vines holding the ear bone against her mouth so that when she breathed out she couldn’t help but breathe into it. When she breathed through her nose, she felt Frog’s little hands again, this time pinching her nostrils shut.
Marram made no sound. Was Kirrik choking him with vines, too? Unar tried to take control of her own gift, but something struck her in the place in her belly where her control came from, like a mother slapping a child’s hands away from a pot of honey, and the only thing she could think of to do, to deny her power to Kirrik, was hold her breath.
Curse you, Core Kirrik. What’s happening?
Trussed and blind, she listened to the blood pulse in her ears, straining for a hint of Marram’s movements, but Kirrik wasn’t even breathing hard, and Frog was silent, too.
Unar couldn’t hold her breath forever.
She twisted so her lips were to one side of the bone flute, though the vines cut off the blood flow to her head.
“Frog,” she gasped, light-headed almost instantly, “he helped save you from the demon!”
Then she had to relax back into position and her breath flowed through the bone, giving more of Audblayin’s life force to a woman who wanted to use it for death. How could it obey Kirrik? Why would it not obey Unar herself?
“May I speak, Core Kirrik?” Frog said at last.
“Speak.”
“The man did ’elp me escape a dayhunter. ’E gave me food and shelter.”
“How can that be? A fool such as this. He comes all but naked into the forest. It is obvious he has fallen from a height. Only the chance of vines in his path has saved him, and yet, instead of crawling home, he has come here, without so much as a pair of bracers to keep the spotted swarm at bay.”
“Is that not courage, Core Kirrik? Could you not use ’im? Could you not put ’im with the others? Nameless the Outer can be used to heal and slow ’im. I am sure Audblayin’s power will work as well as Atwith’s, and she has affection for ’im. I would have slowed all of them, if only we had not left so suddenly.”
Unar tried to follow the conversation, limp and useless in her outrage. Her breath was being stolen by a woman who would have been a slave in Canopy. Her own sister was helping that maggot-faced witch. Kirrik and Frog had been worried they couldn’t use her to kill enemies, but any green, living thing could be used to choke a person!
Kirrik didn’t answer, not right away.
“’E is almost dead, Core Kirrik,” Frog said softly. “Without air, ’e will not wake, and we will have one less warrior when the time comes. Better than any heightsman I ever saw, I swear.”
“I will indulge you this one time, Frog the Outer,” Kirrik said tightly. “The next favour you ask had better be for me to cut your throat for disloyalty.”
Unar struggled to understand the change in the dynamic between them. Only moments ago, Kirrik had been telling her how Frog reminded her of the Master’s son. How she had saved Frog’s life. Now there was a coldness about her, a bloodlessness, as though her body had been taken over by another. Or an act she had been making an effort to maintain, now unnecessary, had been dropped.
“Yes, Core Kirrik.”
Again, Unar’s breath transformed into some shape she couldn’t see.
“Take him, then. Put him with the others. Take the bone flute from Nameless the Outer. The very sight of her angers me. It would not do to lose my temper and kill her accidentally. Let her sleep outside. Do not bring her food until she begs to obey.”
“Yes, Core Kirrik.”
Frog took the ear bone and the blindfold away. Unar couldn’t turn her head because of the vines still across her throat. She blinked away the rain that fell into her eyes. Kirrik had already gone back into the dovecote.
“You are failing,” Frog hissed. “You must try harder!”
Unar didn’t say anything. Words could be stolen and used against her. She gave as much of a nod as she was able. Frog pulled the knife at her belt and cut the snug vines around Unar’s throat. Yet she couldn’t do it without cutting Unar’s skin.
“Core Kirrik told me not to heal you,” Frog muttered, “but say something, and I will close the wound.”
You’ll close the wound? Not if you don’t love me!
Unar would rather bleed than be faced again with the reality that her ability now belonged to these women. She shook her head, jerking her chin in the direction of the doorway, hoping that Frog would understand that Unar intended to obey.
“So you are a little bit afraid of ’er,” Frog said. “Good. You should be. I am.”
She went back inside, and Unar was alone.
* * *
WHEN MORNING came, the door opened.
Unar watched black skirts approaching from her facedown sprawl on the wet walkway. She supposed she should beg to obey. She supposed she should beg for food. But she couldn’t even make herself feel hungry.
Kirrik stared down at her.
I won’t ask what happened to Marram. I will stay. I will learn.
“Did you sleep well, Nameless the Outer?”
That chill. That inhuman quality.
“Yes, Core Kirrik.”
“You have not used Audblayin’s powers. You make no move to strike me, though you know what vines can do. Can you be trusted to meet the Master now, Nameless?”
Unar crawled in an awkward scrabble to kiss the hem of Kirrik’s skirts.
“If you think I should, Core Kirrik.”
Kirrik laughed.
“Yes, I think you should. Come inside. Follow me.”
Unar went on hands and knees after her, as far as the long, dark corridor, where she used her hands against the walls to gain her feet and stagger after Kirrik towards the blocked spiral staircase.
Today, there was no barrier.
Kirrik led Unar up the stairs to the second storey of the dovecote. Unar kept her eyes lowered; surely they would be met by the sight of a carpet even finer than the ones below. The upper apartment must be spacious and luxurious, if the Master lived here all alone. In the time since Unar had arrived, she didn’t think he had left it.
Or maybe he was a monster in shape as well as deed. Maybe he lived in a morgue, surrounded by the body parts of men butchered to feed him.
Unar wanted to laugh. She and Frog would have to leave Kirrik as soon as possible, and the humour came from knowing Frog must’ve had the same thoughts on arrival at the three hunters’ home. Yet Frog hadn’t hesitated when Unar precipitated their early departure. She’d had a plan. Unar would have to formulate a plan, too, in case she was forced to flee before learning what she needed to know, gaining what she needed to gain.
Spines. A way to pass through the barrier. A way to guard my own strength. Three things. Then I’ll take Frog and go.
Then she saw what was in the single, long room that filled the second storey. Packed into turpentine shavings like clothing being protected from pests were the bodies of men. Some were bundled for cold weather or wet, and some, like Marram, nearly naked. His wounds were healed, and the flesh of his chewed leg regrown, and he lay, supine, as if sleeping, though his chest didn’t rise or fall. His bone amulet was missing.
Hundreds of men, as many as two or three Canopian kings might command, stored as thoughtlessly as Esse stored coils of rope. Waiting.
Where’s the Master? Unar almost asked before remembering she must speak only when spoken to. Keeping her eyes lowered, she stared at Marram.
“Touch him,” Kirrik commanded. Unar put her hand obediently to Marram’s wrist and found it warm, but with no pulse. Wait. She felt a single, slow beat. The youngest of the hunters slept as a tree bear sleeps through the monsoon. Kirrik hadn’t killed him, after all.
One less warrior, Frog had said, when the time comes.
But Frog and Unar knew the three brothers had gone into exile because they wouldn’t fight against Canopy. Upon waking, Marram would refuse to serve and would die as quickly then as he would’ve before the dovecote, if Frog hadn’t intervened for Unar’s sake.
Four things. Four things I need before I can leave. Spines. A way through the barrier. Magical defences. The spell to wake Marram. I can’t leave him behind.
“You look tired, Nameless,” Kirrik said, smiling unpleasantly. “Will you not lie down beside him and rest?”
“Core Kirrik, will I wake again, if I do?”
Was the room enchanted, or perhaps the wood shavings? Unar could have extended her magical senses to find out, if she dared. Her throat remained raw from the strangling vines and still stung from the kiss of Frog’s knife, however, and she didn’t know what would trigger Kirrik’s cruelty.
“I can wake any of them, at any time,” Kirrik said, “but of course you are not a block of fish fat, to store with my other supplies for war. You will be my trained chimera, unless I find that you cannot be tamed.”
“I can be tamed, Core Kirrik,” Unar said, horrified to hear a whine in her voice she hadn’t put there intentionally. “I can.”
“We will see,” Kirrik said, gliding away back down the spiral stairs.
Unar looked down at Marram.
“I can,” she said again.
I don’t care about Floorians, Understorians, or Canopians. But I won’t leave him.
“What was that, Nameless? Did you say something?”
Kirrik had halted with her hand on the banister.
“No, Core Kirrik. Only … what about the Master? Where is he?”
“Where, indeed.” Kirrik’s mouth opened wide with glee. She howled with a flaying laughter, the sound of which penetrated Unar’s magical senses, dissolving her body and tossing the soul that remained up and down on the waves of it. Realisation struck Unar: Kirrik was a woman somehow fused with a demon. The soul of the chimera, accustomed to floating nearby while the desouled fleshy shell transformed, was bound to Kirrik’s soul, keeping it in this bodily plane even when she was fatally wounded. Teacher Eann’s lesson, previously disbelieved, popped into Unar’s head. A female chimera lays two eggs into her own mouth, then transforms into a male. During the transformation, the creature’s soul hovers; it does not go into the ether. It waits until its new body is ready to receive it again.
Kirrik’s laughter cut off. Unar returned to herself.
“You are the Master,” she whispered. “Your skill is that you cannot be killed.”
Attacking you will do no good. Your soul will wait until your body is healed, ready to receive it again.
“Return to your chores, Nameless. There will be no more standing watch. The enemy I saw approaching has been turned to a harmless thread in the carpet beneath my feet. Work hard and learn fast. The time will come when you will be a thread or a tool, and while tools are oiled to keep them sharp, carpets are beaten.”
“Yes, Core Kirrik.”
There can be no half measures. I must destroy your body so completely that your half-demon soul can never return to it.