Just as he despaired of ever reaching the physic hut, and despite being absolutely convinced he’d taken a wrong turning, Noetos
suddenly found himself there. As he’d feared, the hut was the source of the fire and was little more than a burnt-out shell.
The flames had moved on to the tree to which the hut was anchored and the Canopy was in some danger of catching alight. The
tree burned with a green flame and gave off acrid black smoke, fortunately blowing away from where he stood.
There was no one about.
The Padouki had fled, that much was clear, but the burning shell of the hut gave no clue to the fate of the non-magical travellers.
He’d left his friends asleep—should have been asleep himself, given the drug had worked on all those without magic—and already,
as he looked about wildly, guilt had begun its work on him. Could he have found his way here earlier? Ought he to have tried
harder to enlist Cyclamere’s help? Would the time spent sparring with and talking to his old mentor—to be honest, time that
had given him deep satisfaction—turn out to be self-indulgent?
“Noetos!” called a voice from somewhere in the smoke. “Your daughter wants to bid you farewell.”
The three of them were together, the victims of the nameless voice’s spikes, shackled to each other with invisible, unbreakable
chains. The voice had manipulated them from the start, had separated them like sheep from the rest of the flock, and was using
its power to keep them alive. Or shepherding them to their deaths. The voice was silent on the matter.
Arathé tried to read the faces of the two men for any evidence they had suffered an experience similar to hers. Conal’s face
was ravaged: in the last few weeks fat had melted away from around his jowls and under his chin, and the hollow where his
eye had been glistened with suppurating fluid. The normally immaculate priest was rough-shaven and lank-haired. He had been
devastated, no doubt, but not by the voice. He had achieved his demise all on his own.
Captain Duon, on the other hand, seemed unchanged. Unless one looked closely. She could make out the hollowness around his
eyes, and noticed his hands shaking slightly.
Has he hurt you?
she asked them.
Conal turned away with a snort, which served as an answer of sorts. Duon simply nodded, then added, “But not in the way he
hurt you.”
They both knew then. She felt she would die of horror and shame.
Come, my children
, said the voice.
Just a little further.
Please
, she begged the voice, as they stumbled along yet another bridge.
Please let us go. What are we to you?
Not very much, not now. The question is, what are you to him?
Arathé coughed as they stepped onto a platform shrouded in smoke, and stumbled on the uneven boards.
Careful now, you don’t want to fall, not in front of your father.
Across a gap of fewer than ten paces stood Noetos, shoulders slumped, his outline shimmering in the super-heated air. Before
Arathé could think of a way of attracting his attention, Captain Duon called out.
He looked up. Despite the heat shimmer and smoke haze, she saw the emotions flicker across his face: surprise, delight, disgust
and frustration. She could be sure she hadn’t imagined his disgust, and knew it to be justified, but it hurt her all the same.
She dissolved into tears.
“Arathé, wait there! I’ll find a way to get to you.”
“Stay where you are,” Duon commanded him, not in his own voice. “I am taking your advice, fisherman, and removing these three
from harm. They will be returned when I have finished with them.”
“You bastard. I know what you did to Arathé. What makes you think I believe you’ll keep her safe?”
“Nothing.” This time it was the priest who spoke. The struggle on his face was terrible to watch; she knew just how helpless
he felt. “But I can guarantee her death should you seek to rescue her. You must realise I have the power of life or death
over them.”
A sudden burning smote Arathé in the back of her head. She screamed and fell to her knees. Her father shouted something, but
she could not make it out over the roaring in her brain. Then silence as the pain ceased. She raised a hand to her nose; it
came away bloodied.
“When I learn who you are, I will find you and kill you,” her father said.
Conal laughed wheezily. “Come, then. Find me and kill me if you can. As long as you stay away from your daughter.”
Noetos watched them go, three shambling figures energised by an unholy power. He put his head in his hands and wept.
“She is your daughter?”
The voice did not register for a moment; then his hand jerked automatically for his sword, but another hand rested there,
preventing him from reaching it. He relaxed, took a deep breath and nodded to Cyclamere. He was unguarded; the man had his
measure. Even were it available, his magical speed could not save him should his former tutor wish him dead.
“Aye. My elder child.”
The Padouki warrior grunted and stepped back from Noetos. “You have another? Safe, far from here, able to carry on the Red
Duke’s line?”
Despite all he’d said it mattered to him, clearly. Cyclamere was still in his heart a servant of Roudhos.
“No. Anomer is here also, hopefully alive, his magic helping protect the rest of our company.”
“Their mother?”
“Dead, as much as killed by my hand.”
He couldn’t keep the bitterness, the self-recrimination, from his voice. Cyclamere would hear it.
“You have many stories to tell.”
“Aye.”
The man grunted again. “It seems I need to hear them. You are right, young Roudhos: I have unfinished business with your family.
I have done what I can here. You and I, we must work out how to rescue your daughter and protect your son, then it seems I
must aid you in defeating the gods. The elders will have to protect the Padouki as best they can.”
SOMEWHERE IN THE THICK
grey mists of her childhood, Lenares could remember being told a story. It went something like this. Shell was a beautiful
girl who met and fell in love with Gord, a boy who worked on her father’s farm. He wasn’t at all the sort of boy her father
would have approved of for his daughter: his cheeks were wind-chapped and ruddy, his hands calloused and his pockets empty.
But they loved each other regardless, and settled to run away together.
Shell spent her last night on the farm packing her treasured possessions into a shoulder bag, and a sweet smile played on
her lips as she thought of Gord and the road they would walk together on the morrow. Her father noticed the smile and asked
her why she was so happy. She told him she was looking forward to the harvest, and thought no more of it.
Her father was not convinced and, following his instincts, paid a visit to the single men’s quarters. There he observed Gord,
a quiet, dependable chap, gathering together his worldly goods with the same sweet smile on his face the farmer had seen his
daughter wearing earlier. Immediately the truth of his daughter’s perfidy became clear, and he spent the night sharpening
his favourite axe.
The next morning Shell slipped out early from her house and met with Gord on the southern road. They hugged and kissed as
they celebrated their boldness and cunning. At that moment, however, Shell’s father stepped out from behind a tree, his axe
in his hand. Shell and Gord stood there helpless as he—
Lenares knew how the story ended. She could remember giggling with misplaced delight at the description of what happened to
the foolish lovers. And she now knew the terrible reason why her father—her real father—had told his daughters that story.
But what she knew most of all was how Shell must have felt standing over the broken body of her beloved. What it felt like
to have a broken heart.
The ladders and bridges and platforms weren’t a problem to Lenares. The only problem was getting the others to listen to her
words. It took them a long time to believe her when she said that this was a number problem and they ought to follow her.
People were stupid, really, thinking that numbers were abstract things, of no use in the real world. “That’s all very well
in theory,” they said, as though reality and theory were opposites. Well, this was the real world, and her numbers and patterns
could tell her how to solve the problem of navigating the Canopy.
Palaman had taught all the young cosmographers about the problem of the Seven Pasture Gates. The Third of Pasture was the
largest but least populated of Talamaq’s suburbs, and residents often farmed the spaces between buildings. A man had a series
of fields connected by gates, and on one particularly busy day he’d got to thinking about whether it was possible to visit
all his fields without going through any gate twice. According to Palaman, who had been Chief Cosmographer even before Mahudia,
it was not possible, and he demonstrated the problem on the board for them all. He explained what topology was, how the angles
and distances of the paths between the gates were irrelevant. The relationship of the gates to each other was the thing.
So Lenares searched her memory and thought about the relationships between the bridges and platforms she’d travelled across
since being hauled up into this three-dimensional city. It was a lot harder than the Seven Pasture Gates: she could remember
forty-one platforms, thirty-four bridges and sixty ladders. How many combinations were there that would lead her from where
they were now to the ladder they initially ascended?
It was a strange thing. Despite her broken heart, despite the horror of what she had seen, of what had been done to her beloved
Torve, she could not help herself. She simply had to solve the problem; could no more have refused than water could have stopped
flowing downhill. This was what she was.
“I have seventeen solutions,” she said calmly as the others crowded around her. “I will use the solution that keeps us furthest
away from where we are likely to meet people. If we come across anyone I will try another solution.”
“Good, good, Lenares,” Heredrew said. “Let us make a start before the Padouki locate us. I don’t want any more killing.”
“You seemed to enjoy it enough,” Robal growled. “Why stop now?”
He was jealous, that Robal. He wanted Queen Stella for himself. He especially didn’t want Heredrew to have her. His jealousy
was a bad thing; Stella knew about it and it made her angry. A younger Lenares would have said something publicly, but this
Lenares had learned discretion. Sometimes it was better for people to discover the truth themselves, Torve had said.
Oh, Torve.
Six hundred and twelve
, went the counter in her mind. Six hundred and twelve times she had said his name to herself since it had happened. But there
was nothing her wishing could do to undo the past. He was maimed now, and they could no longer love each other, not in that
way.
Not that they had, not fully. The Emperor had been mistaken. Perhaps if he had arrived in the House of the Gods a few minutes
later he might not have been, but that was a perhaps and therefore not true.
So, what did she feel for Torve now? She still loved him, she knew that for certain, but it was a different kind of love—it
had lost that delicious pink edge of excitement. It was now more reserved, a little frightened even. Scariest of all, she
didn’t know if he still loved her. Did he? The old Lenares would have asked, would have searched his numbers for the truth,
would have confronted him. But the new, grown-up Lenares knew that truth sometimes took time to form. How could he know yet
how he felt, so soon after his manhood had been cut away from him? How could he know anything but pain and humiliation? Like
a flower, their love would die if she pulled it up by the roots to see if it still lived. She would wait patiently until he
knew what he felt for her. Oh, but it was so hard to wait.
A very scary thought struck her, the scariest she’d had yet. Perhaps he blamed her for what had happened. And if he did, wouldn’t
that kill his love? Would he show her a pretend flower, so as not to hurt her feelings, or would he be angry? Oh, she so much
wanted to peep, to look at him with her number-sense.
The others followed her as she led them across empty bridges and up and down ladders.
“We must be getting close,” one of the men said, more in hope than certainty.
“I’m sure we passed that tree not ten minutes ago,” another man said. “Bark looks just like my first wife’s face.”
“Probably a mirror then,” said the first man.
“Be quiet,” Lenares told them. “I need silence so I can hold all the possible solutions in my head.”
“Consider yourself told off,” the second voice whispered to the first.
“I can hear whispers too,” she said.
After that there was nothing but their feet scraping across timber and rope hissing through their hands, along with the muted
noises of the forest canopy. Occasionally they heard the sounds of pursuit, and once they looked up to see a band of Padouki
men stamping across a bridge above them; but either the warriors were searching for someone else or they were lazy, because
they didn’t look down. Lenares chose a different solution anyway, to be safe.
Oh, Torve.
* * *
There were so many other things to think about that Torve had fallen asleep by the time she was able to check on him. For
a while she thought about the hole in the world, which had grown much larger since they had entered the land of the Padouki;
and every death in the Canopy above them ripped the hole still wider. Lenares had set herself the task of driving the gods
away and closing the hole behind them, but she had no idea how she was going to do it. Even when she had controlled the Daughter
she had doubted her ability to repair the damage the gods had made; now she had nothing except her clever mind and a connection—a
possible
connection—to her dead foster mother on the other side of the hole. How that might be exploited was a mystery.