Page 135 of The Boy Bride

“I would say she is,” said Khatu cheerfully. “My guess is she’s your dog now. You should think of a name for her.”

* * *

It was daylight, a couple of hours past dawn, when Lill and Khatu made it back to the cave. Gurti was sitting with Faru at that point, and everyone else but Vanu had gone back up to Umtúshta. Vanu had fallen asleep in the dappled sun by the mouth of the cave. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but there had been nothing else to do, and he had been tired.

He woke to noises in the forest, something that sounded like a dog bounding through the undergrowth, and bolted upright expecting to see a hunting party approaching. Instead, a black and white lowland sighthound, with long legs and floppy, feathery ears, came bouncing out of the brush. She pranced up to him, allowed him to pet her, and then turned back to give two sharp barks, as if summoning the rest of her party.

Vanu looked through the trees and saw a couple of figures approaching, a tall one and a small one. He plunged in among the trees himself, nearly tripping over the dog, which was now helpfully weaving around his legs.

Khatu was leaning heavily on a stick and dragging one foot. Lill looked uninjured but dead tired. He smiled when he saw Vanu, and it took Vanu’s breath away how beautiful he looked, trudging through the patchy light of the forest, relieved and happy to be back. Vanu covered the distance between them in a couple of strides, batting aside greenery, and gathered Lill up. Lill tightened his arms around Vanu’s neck and let himself be lifted off his feet.

“You should help Khatu, not me,” he muttered as he rested his forehead on Vanu’s shoulder.

“Can do both.” Vanu scooped Lill up and offered his free shoulder to Khatu.

“Lord Vanu, I’m in your debt,” said Khatu fervently, clutching Vanu’s arm. “Lill told me you led everyone down here to rescue me—and Otoni and Da. I never expected such a thing. I’m your man forever, my lord—I was already, but … Your boy bride’s a bee-fucker, did you know that?”

“Yeah.”

Lill was nearly asleep on Vanu’s shoulder by the time they covered the short distance to the mouth of the cave.

“Didn’t kill the dog,” he murmured as Khatu was embracing his mother and the dog was dancing excitedly between them.

Why you’d kill a dog, especially a well-bred hunter like that, Vanu couldn’t imagine. But Lill said it as if he hoped Vanu would be pleased, so Vanu kissed the top of his head and hugged him closer.

* * *

Lill didn’t remember much of the return journey to Umtúshta; Vanu carried him most of the way through the caves, and Lill—shamefully and incredibly—slept. He woke later in the day in his own bed, ravenously hungry, to find a bowl with bread and cheese waiting for him on the table next to the bed.

He sat up and stretched and shook out his hair. The house was quiet as usual. He pulled the bowl into his lap and stuffed a corner of bread hungrily into his mouth. He remembered Halza on that first day outside the fortress walls, frantically wondering how they survived in Umtúshta without provisions from outside. He smiled at the thought. It seemed as though he’d never eaten so well as since he’d lived here.

The bowl in his lap was the wooden one that Vanu had carved for him. Lill touched the letters on the interior. You have a home with me forever. He could read the words now, having learned enough of Hawa writing. He still found them frightening, the generosity of them, the impossibility of repaying anything like that.

Just not assassinating someone wasn’t enough to pay him back for offering a lifetime of safety. And Lill had only made the decision not to assassinate Vanu the other day. He felt a cold, shrinking horror when he thought of it.

The rest of the day, the atmosphere in Umtúshta was strange, but not in an unpleasant way. Faru was still lying ill in the cave above Sakka, and Padunu and Otoni, who seemed to have the most medical knowledge of anyone in the village, agreed that he would need to stay there for at least a few days before they could think of bringing him back up through the tunnels. There was regular traffic back and forth from Umtúshta to the mountainside. Lill caught Vanu whistling the tune to Barda and Khatu’s rude mnemonic song as he came out of the round hut in the garden. Padunu, Halza, and Tirtu were bustling around setting up a house for Otoni, while Mikhi and Atari showed Nomi around the village.

In the evening, Lill sat in the great house drinking beer with Khatu and Barda, who reclined by the fire with their injured legs propped up. The friendly dog lay between them, with her head on her forepaws. She had followed Lill around much of the afternoon, but seemed finally to have accepted that he wasn’t looking for a pet and attached herself to Barda and Khatu instead. Lill felt bittersweet about it and couldn’t quite say why.

“Earth’s tits, brother, you should’ve seen it,” said Khatu for perhaps the fifth or sixth time. “The way little Lill here took down those bastards from Dukka—I’ve never seen anything like it!”

“You’ve seen much better,” Lill scoffed. “You’ve seen Vanu fight.”

“Eh, not much, and not for three years. Anyway, it’s different. No offence meant, but Lord Vanu looks like a fighter. You look more like a … ”

“Girl.” Lill sipped his beer. “You can say it.”

“Vision of hotness,” Barda supplied. “He can’t say it, not now that he’s going to be married.”

“You and Otoni?” Lill seized the change of subject gratefully.

“I haven’t asked her yet. But … yeah. If she wants to. I never faced up to it before—I never had to—but I’ve never not wanted to marry her.”

That was a bit incoherent, Lill thought, but then, as he was realizing, these things were. “What about your father?” he asked.

“We don’t know that Da’s going to live,” said Barda after a moment, with a bluntness that surprised Lill.

“Even if he does,” said Khatu. “Blue Heaven grant that he does—but it’s like Barda said. How did you put it, brother?”