IMERIS SHARED a glance with Daggad.
“You could kill the creature without having to be a Hunter,” she pointed out, just as Daggad said, sounding shaken, “You could not call Airak’s lightnin’ to Ulellin’s Temple!”
Leaper laughed and took some more magenta cherries from Daggad’s hand.
“What about baiting the trap?” Imeris asked. “Whether you used me or used Anahah, the bait would die in the trap along with the creature.”
Leaper threw seeds petulantly over his shoulder.
“Would not. I have better control over my power than that.”
“Do you? Even in a different deity’s niche?” Imeris’s thoughts raced. This could be the end to an extremely undesirable situation, two Hunters on the run with the beast’s intended prey; if Leaper really could kill the thing, life above the barrier would return to normal for her, leaving only Loftfol to worry about as she pursued the sorceress Kirrik. Daggad, grateful for his freedom, would no doubt help her in that enterprise, taking Oldest-Father’s place, and if Anahah could transform into a chimera and chimeras could smell the soul of a sorceress, as the Godfinder had indicated, all could be set to rights, leaving Loftfol to be pacified by Kirrik’s head and Imeris’s explanations. The curse would fall on me, Anahah had said, unless I used that form to save another’s life, but he would be saving a life: He would be saving Imeris and all of Kirrik’s future victims.
“Whatever niche it is makes no difference to me,” Leaper said carelessly.
“How can that be?” Imeris stilled his hand with her own. “This is no time for boasting, Leaper. Can you truly accomplish what you claim?”
“Will it help if I swear it on Oldest-Father’s grave?” Leaper sneered abruptly in her face, so angry that he reverted to the Understorian syntax of their childhood. “Even the smallest and the weakest sibling has his own feelings and thoughts. You might have been his favourite, and Ylly might have turned out to be a goddess, but I have my uses, too!”
“Me? His favourite?” Imeris goggled at her brother. “Nothing I ever did was good enough for him. You called Middle-Father a slave, and he laughed. I called Oldest-Father a slave, and he never forgave me; he beat me half to death, took my weapons away, and did not call me by my real name ever again!”
“Not where you could hear him,” Leaper retorted. He mimicked Oldest-Father’s stiff carriage and said in a flat, harsh voice, “Issi is a Heightsman. Issi comes home. She steals away from Loftfol every chance she gets to visit her fathers. She shows the proper respect. She has the strength of a man. Never mind that Leapael is lazy and inept. Issi will defend the home when I am gone.”
“I never—” Imeris tried to interrupt, stricken, but Leaper continued over the top of her, kicking at the tree in a fury.
“Issi this, Issi that! Too late for me to visit him now, isn’t it? And where are you? Not defending the home, are you? You’re here, hiding from Orin’s beast, begging me to defend you! If only Oldest-Father could see us now!”
Imeris punched him in the mouth. Hanging from his rope, he escaped the full force of the blow. He tried to punch her back, but by then he was spinning, flailing; at some point they stopped trying to hit each other and just struggled to hold on to each other; it occurred to Imeris that he might fall, and then she would have killed her brother as well as her teacher, besides being responsible for Oldest-Father as well.
The sound of her own ugly crying was horrible in Imeris’s ears. It didn’t help that Leaper was bawling, too. Daggad pulled them both back into the hollow. He and Anahah said nothing while Imeris and Leaper cried and held each other. Leaper, like any young Skywatcher and regular at the king’s court, had anointed himself with oils. He smelled like frangipani over sweat and char and sand.
“I pretended to be asleep,” he gasped against her shoulder, “when he needed help checking the traps.”
“I made fun of him,” Imeris said hoarsely, “because he was afraid to fly.”
“I despised him for having no magic ability.”
“He would not let me visit Nirrin. I wished for him to die.”
“I wished that Airak was my father instead. I told him so. To his face, Issi.”
When she felt calm, and when Leaper’s trembling subsided, Imeris pushed him out to arm’s length.
“You are not the weakest,” she said. “Nor the smallest, come to that.”
He pulled a cord out of his shirt. It secured a chimera-leather pouch around his neck. Inside, there was a curved, flattened ivory shape like an animal’s claw. It was the diameter of his palm.
“This is Tyran’s Talon,” he said, wiping his nose with the back of his other hand. “I overheard the Godfinder telling Aforis it was in the Earth-House of Hundar. That’s a mud building below Airakland where Understorians from the village of Hundar meet and trade with the Floorians of Gui. Our Temple also trades with Gui. They’re our source of black sands. For a price, I was able to convince one of the Gui traders to put the Talon into one of the bags of sand, which I intercepted.”
“You have a long story about this thing and where it came from,” Imeris said, staring at it, “but no mention of what it does.”
Shame darkened Leaper’s cheeks.
“It’s a bone of the Old God who became Airak,” he said in a rush.
Imeris understood at once.
“It makes you stronger than you should be in Airak’s power.”
“They’d take it from me if they knew. I’m only a Skywatcher, and—”
“And they do not like it when we have their bones,” Imeris said softly, touching her amulet.
Leaper nodded.
“I wasn’t boasting,” he said. “I’ll kill Orin’s beast for you, if you want me to.”
“Will the goddess not be in ’er Temple when you call lightnin’ to it?” Daggad asked incredulously. “She and ’er Bodyguard and all others who serve ’er?”
“Ulellin lives in the leaves,” Leaper said without taking his eyes from Imeris. “At the very branch tips, tossed by the wind. She and her Bodyguard and all others who serve her. They’re wafer-thin, like leaves themselves, and the leaves move to catch their feet whenever they take a step. They come down every ten days or so to eat and drink and for the goddess to repeat in normal speech what the wind’s told her. Lightning travels down through trees, not up. Springing a trap in the Temple wouldn’t harm her.”
“What about the king’s fortune in wires? Where would they come from?”
“The copper in the metal-stone fruit, Daggad,” Imeris said, touching his arm. “The tribute we saw the man wheeling along the bridge.”
“You would need a coppersmith to shape them. It would take a week.”
“I know the smith in Gannak,” she said, surprising herself. “We were going to go there anyway. And Leaper said the goddess comes down only every ten days.”
“You wouldn’t really need to replace every vine with a wire,” Leaper said. “The trap would still function with every second or third one replaced.”
“Ulellin won’t forgive you, Skywatcher,” Anahah said softly, speaking to Leaper for the first time. “Her memory is long. You’d draw the mantle of future secrecy and fear from your sister’s shoulders onto your own.”
“A future like yours, you mean?” Leaper said scornfully. “Airak will protect me. I’m loyal to him.”
“I don’t question your loyalty,” Anahah said. “I was a loyal Bodyguard for many years. It’s their loyalty to us I no longer trust.”
Leaper’s chin lifted.
“My sister is Audblayin. She’s Issi’s sister, too. Slander her, and we’ll see if your ability to survive lightning is any better than the creature’s.” Anahah’s expression didn’t change, but one hand fluttered reflexively to his abdomen.
“Stop it, Leaper,” Imeris said.
“You fight like a young crocodile,” Anahah said, “whose throat hasn’t yet sealed against the water. You’d drag an adversary into the lake to drown him, not caring that you’d drown yourself as well.”
Daggad, who had gobbled down a few bean cakes while he reconciled himself to the idea of desecrating the wind goddess’s sanctuary, perked up interestedly.
“What do I fight like?” he asked.
“A tree bear,” Anahah answered, still watching Leaper. “Very bold against enemies of your own size and calibre, but underestimating the efficacy of a spider’s venom.”
“And me?” Imeris prompted.
Anahah met her gaze in the blue light of Leaper’s lantern. He hesitated.
“You should use whatever set bridges you can find at this level,” he said. “We must all return to Canopy. Our auras are fading. I’ll keep to this tree while you fetch your smith from Gannak. With new scent laid over old and plenty of greenery to camouflage myself in, I’ll be safe until your return, but be careful. The beast will be close by.”
“We will be careful,” Imeris said, feeling a pang to part with him. Even without his powers, his presence and his knowledge were a comfort. “We have the map. The next time you see us, we will have the Silent Smith, Sorros, to help finish the beast once and for all.”
“I’ll leave the lantern here,” Leaper said, “nailed to the tree. Send me a message when you need me again. This one burns cold, big sister. It’s no good for starting cooking fires, but it’ll be safe for you to put your hand into the light.”
“Not one of yours, then?” Imeris laughed as he used the blunt end of his axe to fasten the lantern in the hollow.
“Not one of mine,” he admitted. “I stole it from the Shining One myself.”