Page 31 of The Boy Bride

Khatu and Barda appeared behind Vanu, and Tirtu, recovered from his shock, was giving orders, telling them to take Lill away, don’t just stand there, by the Blue Heaven!

Lill let himself be passed into the brothers’ hands unresisting. Still Vanu didn’t speak; but he didn’t take his eyes off Lill, either. Lill couldn’t look away from him and didn’t quite understand why. Was this part of the man’s power?

His face was scarred on both sides: a horizontal slash under his right eye and a longer, vertical scar on the left, where a blade had nicked his eyebrow and bitten deep into his cheek below, just missing his eye.

Still he didn’t speak. Lill faced him, flanked by Khatu and Barda, who each had hold of one of his arms. He stared up into Vanu’s face, meeting his blue eyes, sure that when he did speak, it would be to pronounce a sentence of doom.

“Shall I have him taken back to the round house, my lord?” Tirtu was asking.

Vanu blinked and looked at Tirtu as if mildly startled. He nodded and turned away.

Lill swayed on his feet, the blow he had been braced for not landing. He felt light-headed; his vision swam.

Khatu and Barda marched him back to the infirmary, badgering him all the way about why he’d escaped from Vanu’s house, marvelling at how he’d dropped out of the tree, and scolding him for threatening Tirtu. Lill let it wash over him without attempting a response.

When he was inside the infirmary—the round house, they’d called it—he collapsed onto his bed and lay face down until he heard them leave and bar the door behind them.

Were they throwing Halza over the wall even now? He could not guess; he had expected to hear the order to be thrown over the wall himself, and it had not come.

Perhaps it would have been better if he’d stayed in his hiding spot on the roof where he’d been when he heard them bringing Halza to the well yard. He hadn’t achieved anything by trying to save Halza. Honour had demanded that he do it, but wasn’t he dishonoured now, if Halza was thrown over the wall anyway and Lill had lost his chance at escape?

* * *

“How was it?” Rami asked as he took his seat on the flat roof of the training hall next to Deru and Lill. “Your first mission!”

“You’re lucky, getting to go out like that.” Deru nudged Lill with a large elbow.

Lill weighed his response, not wanting to diminish the accomplishment by sounding too nonchalant, nor wishing to be thought boastful.

“It was good,” he said. “Three of us went with Master Hadda, but he stayed outside the city while we went in. We posed as entertainers—Zish had done it before, so he instructed us—and we went to perform at a lord’s house and gathered information.”

“What kind of information?”

“Our orders were to find out whether he’s still loyal to the Great King.”

“Oooh. And is he?”

“Yes, but only just. I overheard him saying things to one of his wives … ” He left it at that.

“And that was it?” Rami seemed nonplussed.

Lill shrugged. “That’s stealth-craft. If you do it properly, it’s not very exciting.”

“What kind of entertainers were you? Dancers?” Deru shimmied his shoulders in a way that, if he’d had breasts, would have made them jiggle.

“No, of course not. Acrobats. I was a knife-thrower.”

“Oh, that would be perfect for you.” Rami smiled.

He was sitting with one hand planted on the roof behind Lill’s back, and when he smiled at Lill, he looked directly into his eyes. Lill waited for him to say something more, to finish the thought: “That would be perfect for you because knives are the only thing you’re good at.” But he didn’t. Lill wasn’t sure how to respond.

“There were dancers,” he offered finally. “They performed before us.”

Deru hissed enviously. “Were they makha?”

They were speaking Hawada, as they usually did; Rami and Deru, having come to the Order comparatively older, and from the mountains, were not comfortable speaking in Zashian all the time. For Lill it was good practice. There were fewer and fewer words he didn’t know.

“Were they what?”