Page 132 of The Boy Bride

Padunu, never one to need much prodding to talk, launched into the story. “The people who found me and laid hands on me at Otoni’s home forced me to return with them to the village. It is in a sadly ravaged state following the raid. Some homes have been burned, others were still smouldering when I got there, and the residents—those who have not been carried off as hostages—were largely in the streets, in a state of great distress. My captors, refusing to accept my word that I was no friend of Arakhu Vinu—indeed, as you well know, he bears me an implacable grudge—found a place to imprison me in the tower attached to the village great house. My status as a shaman protected me from any worse fate for the time being, but I was of course extremely fearful that, should they discover the, er, lapse in my past, they would conclude—erroneously—that I am not deserving of the protection of my rank.”

“Yes, yes—get on with it,” said Tirtu impatiently. “Then what happened?”

“Lill appeared at the window of the room where I was being held. I do not know how he got there—the room, as I said, was in the tower, quite high up—but he arrived there undetected and proposed a plan whereby he would create a distraction to empty the lower floors of the tower, unlock the door of my place of confinement, and escort me down the stairs to freedom. I do not know the details of his plan, but it was quite effective. He brought me to the edge of the village without detection, and there we parted ways. Are you satisfied?”

Vanu found himself smiling in the darkness. So when Lill had told Padunu to say he’d “seen an opportunity” to free him, what he really meant was he’d come up with a brazen plan on the spot. Vanu was not surprised.

He felt suddenly ashamed of himself. What was he doing, dozing in a dry cave with a warm toddler in his lap, while Lill was climbing towers and creating diversions in the rain? He beckoned Otoni over and carefully passed her the sleeping child so he could get to his feet.

“Gonna go back up top with you, Shaman,” he told Padunu. “Fetch provisions. Check on the girls.”

He’d also talk to Gurti, so she didn’t have to get the news about her husband’s state from this windbag. That would be a better way of passing the time while they waited for Lill to finish storming—no, that wasn’t the word—infiltrating Dukka and rescuing Khatu.

They used some of the surplus bandage cloth, soaked in lantern oil, and a dry branch from the floor of the cave, to make a torch, so that they could leave the lantern with Otoni’s party. (In Vanu’s mind it was unquestionably Otoni’s party.)

They had gone down the ladder and climbed up past the underground stream before Padunu, who was walking behind Vanu, spoke.

“Lord Vanu, your bride—what is he, exactly?”

Vanu replied without glancing back. “He’s Lill. He’s mine. That’s all anybody needs to know.”

“I am sure that is true,” said Padunu. Then, after a moment, “Is it—it is not, I trust—all that you know?”

“No.”

“Excellent. I will say no more about it.”

Vanu doubted that, but for the moment Padunu made good on the promise, and they walked on in silence.

* * *

Lill had never done a rescue mission before. It wasn’t something he’d been trained for; the Sword Defenders were not bodyguards, and they would not waste time rescuing each other, no matter what the Twenty-One Martial Virtues said about loyalty.

So breaking Padunu out of that tower had been an interesting experience. Lill knew what he would have done to escape from captivity himself, but he’d had to think about what Padunu could manage. Not climbing down the slippery stones of the tower, Lill assumed. And not fighting his way through the people downstairs; he couldn’t even wield a weapon, as he’d made clear many times. But he could follow instructions, when he wanted to, and he had a strong instinct for self-preservation. Putting all of that together, Lill had thought of a plan to get the shaman out of the tower, and as soon as he’d thought of it, he’d wanted to put it into action. He hoped Vanu wouldn’t mind that he had done so instead of reporting back first as instructed.

On the path down to Dukka, Lill reminded himself that even if Vanu didn’t like it, even if he was angry that Lill hadn’t followed orders, the worst he would do would be to frown and sign, “Don’t take risks like that again,” or some such thing. A tightness in Lill’s chest eased but did not entirely go away. He didn’t fear Vanu’s anger; he just … didn’t want to make Vanu angry, all the same.

The path from Sakka to Dukka was not what would qualify as a road in Akramarra or the inner provinces of Zash, but it was broader and better-travelled than the trail down from the mountain. Lill walked carefully along the side, under the tree line and largely out of the rain, not so much to stay dry as to stay unseen by anyone else on the path.

He had been walking for half an hour, the path was bending more steeply downhill, and the trees on either side had changed, rather suddenly, from mostly pines to something broad-leafed that made quite a different sound in the wind and rain—it was rather startling to realize how far down the mountain he must be by this time. That was when two travellers passed him, coming up from Dukka.

One of them was walking and carrying a lantern, so Lill saw him coming from some distance and stepped back among the trees. The other was on horseback and overtook the first just before they passed Lill. The light of the lantern shone up onto the rider’s face, and Lill was startled to recognize him.

“You there! Is this the road to Umtúshta?” the rider demanded in Zashian.

The man on foot was a local, and he looked round sullenly at the rider.

“Umtúshta? No.” He pointed up the road, jabbing his finger to indicate different spots higher up the mountain. “Sakka, Bukhushka, Tumumi.”

“Then how do I get to Umtúshta?” The rider raised his voice and enunciated his words angrily, as if that would help the other man understand Zashian.

The other man shrugged and jerked a thumb back down toward Dukka. “You’re on the wrong road,” he said in Hawa. “Better go back down and start again.”

He walked on, taking his light with him, and after a moment the rider turned his horse and kicked it into a trot back down the path. Lill stood and watched horse and rider disappear into the darkness, feeling a strange, cold slither in the depth of his stomach. The rider was Arsha.

It should not have caught him so off-guard, Lill told himself sternly. He had known Arsha would be coming sooner or later. Arsha had said so himself.

“I’ll personally deliver the signal when the time is right,” he’d said, when he explained the mission to Lill on Lord Davanu’s rooftop.