Page 23 of The Boy Bride

“I don’t foresee that,” he said.

That made her smile again. Atari laughed and said something too quick for him to catch. He looked at her questioningly.

“She said, ‘See? He does like him,’” Mikhi told on her.

“Whether I like him or not, if he doesn’t behave himself around the three of you, he goes.”

Mikhi made an arc in the air with her hand, ending in a splat gesture. Susami frowned at her.

“What will we serve for the wedding feast?” Atari asked, ignoring all this.

“Will he need bridal clothes?” Susami asked.

“He came in wedding clothes,” Mikhi reported, “but Khatu shot an arrow through the skirt and it tore all the way up to here. But I still couldn’t tell that he was a boy!”

“What does he look like?” Atari asked. “Is he really like a doll, as Mikhi said?”

“He’s a young man,” said Vanu. “About Susami’s age. He’s very … ” What could he say? “He’s small and pretty.”

“Is he deaf?” Atari asked.

Now that was a question. Davanu had sent him, so maybe, just possibly …

“No,” said Mikhi. “I talked to him—talked out loud—and he can hear. Though … ” Something seemed to occur to her. “I don’t think he speaks Hawada. He may not have understood anything I said. I didn’t think to ask if he knows hand language.”

“It’s unlikely he will,” said Vanu. “He is from the lowlands—it’s not like in the Summer Pass.”

Atari nodded, still holding onto her enthusiasm. “We’ll find some way to talk together. I am so glad you’re going to marry him after all. I mean—ask him to marry you.”

Vanu was beginning to feel rather cheerful about it himself. He tapped Mikhi’s arm. “Let’s go together and tell Tirtu.”

* * *

Halza started up in bed as Lill burst through the door of the infirmary.

“What is it? What’s going on?”

“Can you stand? What about walking?” Lill demanded.

“I can try.” He grabbed Lill’s hands and hauled himself awkwardly up. “All right, I’m up. Now what?”

“Now we have to get out of here before they come to throw us both over the wall.”

Halza gasped. “I thought⁠—”

“I know. It turns out Vanu doesn’t want a bride—doesn’t want me, anyway, and he gave orders to dispose of me. I don’t know what orders he gave about you, but let’s not stay here to find out.”

He’d actually been surprised to find Halza still in the infirmary when he got there. It had taken him long enough to cut through the rope and escape from Vanu’s house that he’d expected Halza to have been thrown over the wall already.

They left the infirmary with Halza leaning heavily on Lill and dragging himself along at a maddeningly slow pace.

“Where can we go? Do you have a plan?”

“Shh. Yes.”

If there really was a way out of the fortress, it had to be a tunnel. And the exit had to be somewhere fairly far away, out of sight of the soldiers standing guard by the gate. If you had to dig a long tunnel like that, you’d want to start it as close to the wall on this side as you could, rather than adding extra length by tunnelling under the village too. So that was where they should look.

Lill hadn’t seen any obvious signs of digging, any big piles of dirt, for instance. He remembered the birds-eye view he’d had of the village from the top of the wall and wished that at the time he had known what he was looking for.