“THAT CANNOT be all of it,” Daggad said.
From their position in a rare Understorian-level lateral branch, the village of Gannak was visible all at once. Connected by the ropes and pale wooden boards of its bridges, all set by this hour of the morning, it comprised a dozen trees whose windows flickered with firelight. Their external platforms and some of the bridges were also lit, by scented bark torches for the midautumn festival day, Full-Belly, which would culminate by early evening in feasts and singing.
“Has it not grown since you left?” Imeris asked.
“It ’as shrunk. Or I ’ave grown.”
“Or you have gotten used to Canopy.” She shrugged a little. It seemed smaller to her, too. The sight and smell of the Full-Belly torches drew her back to a time when she raged against her fathers for forbidding her trips to Gannak. A child’s careless tattling in the village could have been dangerous to her fathers then.
It was dangerous to them now. Loftfol had watchers in Gannak. She was glad to have approached it from the opposite direction to the tallowwood tree where her fathers had raised her.
“The forge is in the jackfruit tree,” Imeris said, struck by the painful memory of how Nirrin and Vesev had died. “Nirrin’s house—Nin’s house—is in the ulmo tree.” That other memory, of filching honey, made her smile. “The forge is closer, but Sorros might not be working on a festival day.”
“What else would ’e be doin’?” Daggad asked grimly. “’Is children are dead, and you called ’im Sorros the Silent. Is ’e likely to be at the ti-house having a chat?”
“To the forge, then.” Imeris didn’t want to go to the forge. Not really.
Daggad went down ahead of her, roped to her harness, as he was trialling his new spines for the first time this morning and Imeris had talked him into using caution. He was a heavy man, and she wasn’t sure that if he fell she’d be able to hold them both, but it made her feel slightly better.
They passed through a beaded curtain of dried, painted quandong seeds in the side of the jackfruit tree to find the forge fire dark and cold. Imeris’s skin prickled at the haunting presence of Vesev and Nirrin. She felt sure their souls had been reborn by now, but the sensation of watching eyes remained present.
Forgive me, Oldest-Father. If I had known what Nirrin was that day, if I had killed her before she could escape …
Imeris lit a taper, dropped it into a ghost gourd, and hung the gourd at her waist. Daggad moved past her, deeper into the wide, circular space.
In the dim room, Imeris could now make out hammers and tongs hanging from pegs on the walls, cold-working tools and bell moulds on bench tops, bags of precious sand, lumps of beeswax, charcoal piles, sharpening stones, and immoveable-seeming anvils. Split skins of a very small number of half-rotted, mango-smelling fruit revealed seeds of iron, copper, silver, and gold.
“Not laminated.” Daggad grunted, picking a half-polished sword blade up from a table. “It is the cast duplicate of a Canopian sword. Just like the weapon you carried when we met. I suppose I should be glad you ’ad solid steel and not tallowwood.” He put down the blade and picked up a wooden sword, leather wrapped around the handle, razor-thin chips of metal set into the edge and point.
A black shape leaped out from under a table, swinging a hammer the size of Daggad’s head.
“The smith! Do not harm him!” Imeris cried. Daggad’s instinct must have been to slash his attacker with the wooden sword; he threw himself backwards instead, and the hammer crashed into the table over which Daggad had bent his head. “Sorros, stop, we are friends, I am Imerissiremi!”
The silhouette turned to her, blanched, black-bearded face and short black hair revealed by the light of the gourd lantern, teeth bared.
“No traitor’s spawn will steal from me,” Sorros seethed. “I know who you are. They came ’ere, your fellow students. They warned us you would seek new weapons.”
“I have weapons!” Her heart knocked hard against her ribs. She’d never seen Sorros like this before, and it was as frightening as if he were possessed by a sorceress himself. “I came seeking your wife and you.”
“You will die before you raise a hand to ’er! It was no accident my son and daughter died when they were with you.”
Imeris also hadn’t heard Sorros speak so many words in the entirety of their acquaintance. She put another table between them when he raised the hammer and took two steps towards her.
“No,” she said, holding her empty hands high. “It was no accident. The sorceress needed your daughter for the magic she would someday wield. Vesev died because he was in the way. That is not why I need Nin.” As she spoke the words, she suspected it was useless. Sorros would never agree to help her. Loftfol had turned every weapons maker in Understorey against her, and Gannak had been against her fathers, especially Middle-Father, from the beginning. Sorros continued his advance, teeth gritted, hammer raised. What could she do? She couldn’t kill him.
“Wait,” Daggad said. “I know you. The boy who ate all the checkers pieces because ’e lost the game.” Sorros lowered his hammer. Daggad smacked himself in the forehead with the hand not holding the wooden sword. “No. Why would she do that? Why would she marry House Gannak’s youngest? Gods’ bones! What an insult! The boy who ate the checkers!”
Sorros drew himself up indignantly.
“Who are you? ’Ow do you know me?”
Daggad put the wooden sword down, because he needed both hands to contain his laughter.
“The boy who ate the checkers,” he hooted, pointing at Sorros. “The boy who shat splinters for a whole monsoon! It was too muchta hope that she would choose somebody sensible the second time around. Well met, Gannak Sorros, the Silent Smith, Lord of Checkers.”
“Give me your name, dunderhead!”
“I am Daggad, sonna the spinewife Rididir. You and I shared a classroom, on the rare occasions you cameta school, before you went to your uncle’s village to ’prentice to the smith. You were away when I set off on the raid, but we shared somethin’ else besides the classroom. A wife, it turns out.”
Sorros stared. He waited until Daggad stopped laughing. Imeris kept the table between them, still uncertain.
“Nin is at the ti-house,” Sorros said at last. “Helpin’ to prepare the feast.” Imeris thought of the breakfast table of Audblayin, overflowing with greater amounts and varieties of dishes than Sorros had likely ever seen. Feast had a different meaning in Canopy. In Gannak, the name of the festival reflected the fact that only a once-yearly feast could result in a full belly. “I am regretful, Daggad, to tell you that your mother is dead. Our daughter, Nin’s and mine, who would ’ave been the new spinewife, is dead also.”
“May she be reborn a goddess,” Daggad said lightly.
“Your companion could tell you more of Nirrin’s death.” Sorros frowned heavily at Imeris.
“My companion, as you call her, is enlisted by the Canopian Hunt to kill a demon set loose by the goddess of birds and beasts. I ’ave been named a Hunter also. If you cometa Canopy, if you help us, I promiseta make no claim to Nin, to your house or your belongin’s.”
“You ’ave no claim! They said you were dead!”
“I am not dead.”
“’Er life is with me. She would not chooseta go with you.” Sorros set his hammer down on the anvil with a clang. “And I do not believe you would force ’er.”
Daggad sighed. He rubbed his chin. “No,” he admitted. “I would not. Come along, Imeris. We must find ourselves another smith.”
“Daggad,” Imeris said, startled, “you must stay here. This is your home. Canopy cannot come after you here. Epatut and Otoyut cannot come after you. Forget the Hunt. Leave the creature to me.”
“I ’ave no home,” Daggad said. “I ’ave no wish to be a wedge between my once-wife and this man. Besides”—he ducked his head to hide his expression and waved in her direction—“a skinny girl like you could not carry the necessary equipment up to the Temple. Whether ’e makes wire by cuttin’ thin strips from ’ammered sheets or by forcin’ it through a confined channel in a die, drawplates, swage blocks, and ’ammers are ’eavy.”
“I am curious,” Sorros said, “about ’ow you intendta take me through the barrier to Canopy to make a wire snare for a demon.”
“More than a simple wire snare is needed,” Imeris said.
“The birth goddess owes my companion a favour,” Daggad said.
“Wait a minute!” Imeris moved out from behind the table, towards Daggad. “No. It was my intention to bring the metal-stone fruit down for the smith to work on below the barrier where he would be safe from the creature.”
“Many favours,” Daggad told Sorros, ignoring her. “You could say Imeris and Audblayin were like sisters.”
The smith tangled his fingers in his beard.
“Could these many favours extend,” he asked, “to granting my Nin another child? It is late for us, I know. We ’ad not dared to ’ope. I might risk facing a demon, for a child’s sake. Is the demon a dayhunter?”
“It is no dayhunter,” Imeris growled.
“Leave a message for Nin,” Daggad said. “Tell her you will be battling demons for ten or twenty days.”
Sorros picked up a stick of charcoal and began riffling through a drawer for something to make marks on, but then he hesitated.
“Battling demons in Canopy when they care nothing for our demons down ’ere. Bah!” He shook his head and resumed rifling. “You ’ad better make it worth my while, once-’usband to my wife.”
“Come with us to Audblayinland,” Daggad said. “We will ask favours of the goddess together.”
“Unless the asking meets with a favourable response,” Imeris corrected him, still irritated, “there will be no passage to Audblayinland.”
Sorros loaded himself and Daggad with the tools he thought he might need. He led them by quiet back bridges to the tree that was furthest from the centre of the village. It was a gobletfruit, uninhabited. The cool, smooth, richly coloured orange-brown bark was lightly pitted as though raindrops had made an impression on it.
The three of them had climbed only a dozen body lengths or so before Imeris, in the lead, noticed Daggad looking back towards the village, frozen against the tree trunk.
“What is it?” she called down to him, but when she saw where he looked, she caught her breath and covered her glowing gourd with one hand.
Outside the spiny plum which hosted the ti-house of Gannak, one of the torches had gone out. A tiny, distant figure stretched a taper to relight it.
“It is not ’er,” Sorros said gruffly from below both of them. “Whoever it is, they are too far away to take notice of that weak excuse for a lantern. Carry on.”
But Daggad didn’t move.
“Daggad,” Imeris said sharply. He looked up, and she lifted her hand from the ghost gourd at once; his expression was agony.
“I should ’ave done what your fathers did,” he said, stricken.
“Commit murder and go into exile?” Imeris struck her spines, hard, into the bark of the tree. “You would have lost her anyway.”
* * *
IMERIS FELT nothing as they passed through the barrier.
Daggad followed her easily. Yet when she looked back, Sorros pressed his hands against something invisible and unyielding. Light from Airak’s lanterns and the full moon illuminated his awestruck face.
“Now what?” Imeris asked, inching along a lateral branch, making room for Daggad. Sorros could not reach them.
“Now,” Daggad answered, shifting the pair of baskets laden with blacksmith’s tools on his back, “you run aheadta the Garden. Get your sisterta come back ’ere and bargain with Sorros.”
“It is the middle of the night,” Imeris argued. “Even if the goddess Audblayin did come to the barrier to bargain with murderous outlawed Understorians in full view of her subjects, she would not come now.”
“Somebody will come.” Daggad plucked at the knots in the safety line holding him to Imeris. “You can do the bargainin’. Somebody with the power to open the barrier will listen to you.”
“You forget.” Imeris snatched her rope away from him. She coiled it efficiently in her all-but-healed hand. “I cannot enter the Garden.”
“But you can try to get Sorros what ’e wants. Ulellin’s Temple is waiting. Anahah is waiting.”
She stuck her tongue out at him.
“Wait above the barrier,” she said, “to refresh your aura, but do not lose sight of Sorros. We do not want him changing his mind just yet.”
When she had climbed high enough to reach the low roads of Canopy, she stopped to empty her bladder, wash her hands, and splash some water on her face. It had been days or weeks since she had felt safe enough to have a proper, long rest; until the creature was slain, she had no choice but to carry on.
The Great Gates of the Garden were deserted. Lanterns lining the platform in front of the Gates threw the carvings into dramatic relief.
Battles. Audblayinland soldiers in two-by-two centipede formation, short swords raised and long spears levelled. They gripped branch roads beneath their studded sandals and faced Understorian warriors with wild eyes, thin lips, noses like blades, and spines out in all the usual places as well as some fanciful ones. Imeris had rarely looked at the finely detailed background carvings. She didn’t care to see herself depicted as a beast.
Yet, this time, something caught her eye. One of those smaller, backgrounded scenes. A Gatekeeper of the Garden, lantern held high, summoned a maze of vines against a creature with a tusked head and what might have been spots or might have been twelve pairs of eyes. In another difficult-to-decipher, almost-hidden scene, the soaring Bodyguard of Audblayin met a winged animal made of leaves in the skies over the Garden.
Imeris touched the wood of the Gate, a subconscious gesture, as if she could brush away the bristling Servant in the foreground of the image and more clearly see the smaller shapes of Gardeners. They hurled seeds at a cohort of invaders who had hair and eyes half light and half dark. The seeds sprouted in the hair of the invaders, and roots tried to strangle them.
And lightning fell among the Gardeners.
These are not only battles of Canopy against Understorey. These are Airak’s Servants attacking the Garden!
Then the gate cracked open, making her jump. Aoun stood there with his lantern, shadows under his deep-set eyes. When he recognised her, his attention drifted beyond the circle of light, as if he expected Orin’s beast to be following behind her.
“It is not here,” Imeris said softly, looking up at him. “I need to speak to my sister. I do not wish to wake my middle-father.”
Aoun sighed.
“Unlike me,” he said, “your father doesn’t sleep. Remember?” Imeris grimaced. Lack of proper sleep must be impairing her more than she thought. “Go into his house, sister of my mistress. I’ll rouse the goddess for you. Where are your companions?”
“I have not come to interview anyone on behalf of the Hunt. I wish to ask for the gift of a child, on behalf of an Understorian woman and man.”
“That’s not for you to ask,” Aoun said, frowning. “She’s a goddess of Canopy. Did Oos suggest that you come? She presumes much for a fallen Servant.”
“I will ask Audblayin myself,” Imeris said stubbornly.
She went to Middle-Father’s house. The door was closed. She knocked on it in a pattern they had once used when hauling tree kangaroo carcasses in the dark. The door opened, and Middle-Father’s hairy, hulking, tattooed form filled it.
“Middle-Father,” Imeris said in the instant before they embraced.
“Is it dead?” Middle-Father murmured. “Have you killed it? They told me to go down below the barrier to avoid being named a Hunter. I am so sorry! I should have refused. I could have taken care of it.”
“Magic will take care of it,” Imeris said, letting him lead her inside, where the hearth fire that blazed, bringing beads of sweat in an instant to her skin, was an exact replica of home. “Leaper will take care of it. It will not be long now. Besides, being named a Hunter saved me from becoming a slave.”
“I worry about you.”
“Do not worry.” Imeris detached from him, stepping past him, mesmerised by the flames.
“I am not talking about the beast. Leaper said Loftfol has turned against you.”
“I killed Horroh the Haakim.”
“Have you come for a tattoo?” Middle-Father indicated one of his oldest tattoos, of the head coming clean away from the Headman of Gannak’s shoulders, but when his grin didn’t bring a smile to her face, he sighed and squeezed her shoulder. “You respected him.”
“He underestimated me.” Imeris felt like the words were coming from somebody else. In the flames, she saw Horroh’s face.
“I am sorry you needed to do it.” Middle-Father went to the table, opened a great corked gourd of turnips pickled in brine, and gave her one to eat. “And proud of you at the same time.” He ate one himself, relishing the salt. “Why have you come?”
“I need Ylly to—”
“You should call her Audblayin—” He gestured with his half-bitten turnip.
“I will call her whatever I—”
“Issi,” Audblayin said from behind them. A gust of wind made the flames dance and the smoke sting Imeris’s eyes. Stiffly, she turned towards the yellow-robed, jewel-draped woman in the doorway. “What exactly were you going to call me?”
“Little sister,” Imeris said. “I need your help.”
“Turnip?” Middle-Father offered. Audblayin made a repulsed face at him.
“I need to ask for a boon on behalf of an Understorian whose help I need,” she explained. “Sorros the Silent Smith, you remember? Kirrik killed his children. He will help me if you will promise to give him and his wife another child.”
“A random child from Canopy?” Audblayin asked carelessly. “You can buy them at any slave market.”
“Of course not. A child of their own flesh.”
Audblayin drew herself up then, in the manner indicating that Ylly had been pushed to the back of Audblayin’s mind.
“You’ve forgotten how our world works, Issi. My people bring tribute to the Garden. Their love and devotion feeds my power. That is what allows me to grant their wishes. If I spend my resources below the barrier, where I am weak, on frivolous whimsies—”
“You would be spending it to help me defeat an enemy!”
“Orin’s creature is not my enemy.” Audblayin slammed her palm down on the table where the turnips sat.
“No?” Imeris said in a strangled voice. “It came here, tried to kill your Bodyguard, our own middle-father, did it not? I stood at the Gate of the Garden moments ago and saw a beast very like the one I am hunting facing down some long-dead Gatekeeper. My sister was not there in that moment, but you surely were, Holy One. You say you do not interfere with the affairs of other deities, but do you know what else I have noticed? Since the Hunt began, it has not rained.”
“Ehkis must have other reasons for that. She does not care—”
“I think she does! You rarely communicate with one another, you do not see, hear, or touch one another, yet you fight like a human family and your memories are long. I cannot feel it, but somewhere here”—Imeris waved her hand around in the empty air—“your magics are all interwoven with one another’s. Airak allowed his niche’s king to make the call. Ehkis is aiding the Hunt. Ilan as well. You could if you wanted to.”
“Have you finished interrupting me?” Audblayin leaned with both hands on the table. Green leaves curled out of the gourd; one of the pickled turnips was coming back to life, trying to grow close to her.
Imeris swallowed. “Yes.”