Page 130 of The Boy Bride

“Padunu’s been taken prisoner,” Vanu signed. “But we’ve found Faru. I need you to come back with me.”

“Right. Change of plans,” Lill said to Otoni. “You and Nomi wait here, off the trail. We’ve got to go back to collect one of our friends.”

“Got it. We’ll be right here.”

“Time to get down, Nomi.”

Lill dropped to a crouch so that the little girl could climb down from his back. She squeezed his neck and refused to let go until her mother came and plucked her off. Vanu held out his hand to help Lill up onto the horse. Lill grabbed it and put his foot on Vanu’s boot to hop up, then hesitated. Should he get up behind Vanu, or …

“Up here,” Vanu said, pulling Lill forward to sit in front of him, between his strong arms.

He turned the horse and set off down the trail.

“All right?” Vanu asked.

Lill looked up at the side of Vanu’s face, so close in the dark. “Yeah. I got to carry a little girl on my back for the first time.”

Vanu wrapped an arm around him and kissed the top of Lill’s head. Lill thought he should return the question, ask if Vanu was all right, but he wasn’t sure Vanu would want to talk about it. He did seem to want to hold Lill, though, and maybe that helped.

Lill leaned back against Vanu’s chest and wished that they had a long ride ahead of them to enjoy this. And then, at the end of it, a bed to lie down in together, where Vanu’s big hands would slide under Lill’s clothes, stripping him bare, claiming all the secret, sensitive places that he had explored that afternoon. Others, even, that he hadn’t touched yet. There were probably others.

It was ridiculous to be thinking such thoughts now, but he couldn’t seem to help it.

“So,” he said, sitting up straighter and trying to act as one should on a mission, “what is the plan as it stands now?”

Vanu sighed slightly. “Padunu’s got himself taken by some villagers because he’s got ties to one of the raiders.”

“Not the man whose wife he slept with?”

“That one.”

Lill groaned.

“Can you go into Sakka and find out what they’re doing with him?”

“Of course. Then you want me to go down to Dukka and find Khatu. Right?”

“That was my plan.”

“Of course,” Lill said again. He had thought—hoped—that was what Vanu had in mind. “You can trust me.”

“I know,” Vanu said quietly.

Chapter 35

The Mission

Tirtu and Halza fretted about it all the way back up to the caves.

“Are you sure Lill will be all right?”

“He’s such a little thing—a delicate flower!”

Of course I’m not sure, Vanu thought. You could never be sure anyone would come back safely from a dangerous mission. But he knew what Lill was capable of, and this wasn’t such a dangerous mission for him.

He ignored Tirtu and Halza and walked by the head of the horse pulling Faru’s litter. Otoni’s daughter was frightened of him at first, but eventually she got over her fear enough to let him carry her. Otoni tried to look after Faru, who was doing his best to make sure they all wanted to leave him for dead.

He had an arrow in him, and he didn’t trust anyone to get it out, except maybe Padunu. He seemed to feel the shaman had gotten himself captured on purpose just when Faru needed him most. He wasn’t entirely lucid.