Page 17 of The Boy Bride

“Why?” said Mikhi to Vanu. “I thought you told him to stay away after the last time.”

Vanu frowned at her. “I did not do any such thing. The man is a shaman and must be respected.”

“But you hate his guts.”

“He speaks for the ancestors and the spirits,” said Susami quickly. “Of course our father does not hate him—and it is unfilial to suggest so,” she added emphatically.

Mikhi slumped back with a guilty look and muttered “Sorry,” to Vanu. He reached over and squeezed her shoulder. She was by far the most like him of the girls, and he often understood what she was thinking all too well.

“Anyway,” said Susami, “do you know why Padunu is back? I did not think he would return.”

“He did not say,” said Vanu, which wasn’t quite true. Padunu had said something that morning about the will of the ancestors guiding him back to Umtúshta, but Vanu had simply not felt that was a sufficient or entirely honest answer. “He brought some letters from our friends down the mountain, which had been waiting for us. Shall we read them together?”

The girls agreed eagerly, and he went to get the bundle of letters and returned to the seating platform. Stepping up onto the platform with its ring of cushions, it occurred to him that there was certainly room here for another member of the family. Someone else who could sit cosily here with the girls, drinking herb tea after lunch and poring over the letters from the outside world. It meant nothing, the fact that he could imagine it, certainly not that it was a good idea, but it was hard to get the imagining out of his head all the same.

He’d woken that morning with a headache and damp clothes because he’d fallen asleep at the table in the gathering place, and a soft rain was falling as the sun rose. Disgusted with himself and feeling ill, he’d got a long drink from the well and dragged himself back to his house, hoping the girls wouldn’t be up to see him come in. That was part of why he’d put them in their own house, so he wouldn’t have to answer questions about his behaviour, so he could do as he liked.

And indeed, no one saw him as he crept into the house and stripped off his damp jacket to hang it to dry. And then he found himself wishing that someone had. He’d have been ashamed to have to explain what he’d done last night, how much wine he’d drunk sitting alone at the table, but in a strange way it would have felt good to do so.

Chapter 7

Lord Vanu’s Wishes

It wasn’t some gift of prophecy that made Lill think of Vanu Urártu the moment he heard that Red Asp was dead. It was just that they had been talking about him in the library, and he had been in Lill’s mind. As he often was; the Lion of the Summer Pass had hung like a shadow over his life for as long as he could remember.

But it was true that Vanu had killed Red Asp, just as he had felled White Viper.

This time there was more detail to the story, less left to Lill’s imagination. It was not a satisfactory story. Red Asp had been leading an army of Andun spearmen, on the king’s special orders, to make another foray into the Summer Pass. This time they had not even made it up to the pass, had not been ambushed or had rocks dumped on them or their supply train raided. They had been met in a field at the foot of the mountains by Vanu Urártu’s army.

No one had known he had an army, but evidently he had raised one from the mountain villages, and it had met the king’s force on the field in a pitched battle—the last thing they expected but the only thing they were, supposedly, well suited for—and routed them. Vanu had met Red Asp on the battlefield, fought him, bested him, and killed him only when Red Asp refused to ask for mercy.

“How did he do it?” Lill asked one of the wounded men who returned, days later. There had to be an explanation, a trick, something. Maybe it was the same trick he had used to cut down White Viper, and Lill had to know.

The wounded man looked puzzled. “Swordsmanship, that’s how. Red Asp wasn’t a match for him.”

The tournament to determine the new leader of the Order began the day after that, and the surprise victor was Dumuz the knife-master. He took the name Yellow Adder, but Lill had known him for so long as Master Dumuz that he continued to think of him that way.

* * *

Lill was napping when someone woke him with a sharp kick. He rolled off his pallet, away from the kicking foot, and looked up to find Barda standing over him.

“My father wants to speak to you. Get up.”

“He’s Lord Vanu’s bride!” Halza called from his side of the fireplace. “Don’t mistreat him!”

Barda made a contemptuous noise. “Come on, outside.”

Lill scrambled to his feet and followed Barda out the door and up the path toward the great house. He started putting his hair into a quick braid as he walked, but he had nothing to tie it with.

The tables from last night’s dinner were still set up in the well yard, and two men were sitting on the benches. Two men Lill had not seen before. Something about that struck him as odd, but he couldn’t put his finger on what.

The older of the two men wore his iron-grey hair cropped short and had a closely trimmed grey beard and keen blue eyes. The other man had longer, brown hair, with two narrow braids hanging on either side of his face, decorated with gold beads, and he wore a white cloak over a pink tunic, strikingly different from the black clothes of all the other villagers. He looked about thirty.

“Tie his wrists,” the older man said to Barda, holding out a coil of rope without getting up from his seat.

Lill stiffened but tried not to react, pretending he hadn’t understood. He flicked his half-braided hair back over his shoulder. What was this about?

“Yes, sir,” said Barda a little uncertainly. He took the rope from his father and turned back to Lill. “Hold out your hands,” he said in Zashian.