Page 105 of The Boy Bride

Lill nodded crisply. He could not imagine why any of this mattered, but it was clear enough what his orders were, and it was a mission he knew he could achieve. In fact, it might have been made for him. It needed someone “pretty but deadly,” as Lord Davanu had put it, someone who could play the part of a desirable bride and then become a skillful assassin at the crucial moment. He would do it, and when he returned …

“No more knife-throwing in the streets for coins for you,” said Arsha, breaking into a sudden, beaming smile. “You’ll come live at Shawa House in comfort when you’ve done this job.”

When he thought clearly about it later, Lill wasn’t sure he’d ever really believed that. Why would you take a hired blade into your household just because he’d done one job for you? And whatever Arsha said, it hadn’t seemed quite clear that Lord Davanu wanted this job done in the first place. None of that mattered much. He had his orders. He had a mission. That was all he’d wanted.

* * *

Lill stood at the foot of his bed and retied his trousers with trembling hands. He had bolted upstairs without thinking about it, as if he could escape the memories tumbling down in his mind like pieces of a collapsing building. But—he faced the truth sternly—that wasn’t even something he wanted.

He wanted to let that building collapse around him. He wanted to stand in the wreckage and look at the sky.

There were practical things he needed to do first. He opened the door of his room, which he had closed behind him, and looked back down at Vanu lying on the floor. He had moved, burying his face in the crook of his arm. Was he all right? The other night, when Halza, Tirtu, and Padunu had been drunk, Vanu had sent Gurti to check on them. What had she been meant to look for?

Lill made a decision and went back into his room to put on his shoes. He went out through the balcony door, down the outside stairs, and across to the girls’ house. He could see a light burning inside in the front room. He pulled the rope by the door; it was connected to a shiny bell inside with no clapper that would swing and catch the girls’ attention. Vanu had rigged this up for his daughters, not so much because they needed it as to make them feel special; it was something all the deaf people in Tsuruva had in their homes.

Atari came to the door, yawning, and held it open for Lill to enter.

“Can I talk to Susami?” he signed.

Atari nodded and trotted back inside to fetch her sister. Susami arrived at the door already looking concerned.

“Is everything all right?”

Lill swayed a hand in the sign for “sort of.” He felt disloyal doing this, but he also felt certain it was the right thing to do.

“Vanu’s been drinking wine.” He didn’t know the sign for “drunk.”

Susami gasped. “He hit you.”

She pointed to her own cheek, then at Lill. He realized there must be a bruise showing already.

“No! It was an accident.”

Susami looked as if she’d never believed anything less. Somehow Lill liked her tremendously for it.

“I swear,” he signed, putting his whole body into it, trying to convey his sincerity. “By the Blue Heaven. He did not do anything bad to me.”

She relaxed. “He never has, to any of us.”

“What should I do? I don’t know what to do for someone when they’re … like that.”

To his surprise, Susami reached out and pulled him into a tight hug for a moment. He was too flummoxed to hug her back, and then she’d released him so she could sign again.

“I can look after him. Where is he?”

Lill heard a door bang somewhere and looked around. “Back there?” He pointed.

They set off toward the back of Vanu’s house, which was where the privy was located. By the time they got there, Lill could hear sounds of retching from inside the privy. He stopped, and Susami looked at him questioningly. She made what was either the sign for “throwing up” or just an explanatory gesture. He nodded.

“Leave it to me,” she signed.

“I’ll go get him some water,” said Lill. He set off for the kitchen.

He didn’t much want to be there when Vanu discovered that he’d fetched Susami. He brought out the pitcher of water from the kitchen and a towel, gave them to Susami, and accepted her suggestion that he could go up to bed.

He lay down in his room and stared up at the dark ceiling. His mind felt crowded, like a busy marketplace where you could only make out snatches of conversation. There was no chance he was going to sleep.

Instead he tried to face certain scenes from his past without flinching. He had a sharp memory, when he wanted to, and he could take punishment without making a sound; he could do this too. And he needed to, because his understanding of the past, the things that had happened to him and reasons they had happened—it was a jumbled mess. How had he not seen that until now?