Page 42 of The Boy Bride

In the meantime, Tirtu had been in and out of Vanu’s house several times a day, yelling for Mikhi and making complicated requests about dumplings and candied nuts. He was probably doing the same with Gurti at the great house. The girls didn’t seem to mind. They signed jokes about him in his presence and weren’t taking any of his orders very seriously. They were having fun, too.

Faru had not emerged from his house, that Vanu had seen, since the day he tried to have Lill thrown over the wall. Vanu wondered whether he was even still in Umtúshta, though he thought Khatu, at least, would have reported Faru’s absence, or at least let it slip accidentally in conversation. Vanu didn’t know what it meant, exactly. Was it supposed to be an insult to him, that Faru wasn’t participating in the wedding preparations? Was he just sulking? Or maybe he was plotting something. Time would tell.

Finished dressing and with nothing else for distraction, Vanu went downstairs and out into the yard. Susami was coming out of the girls’ house at the same moment. She wore her best dress, with wide bands of blue braid around the skirt and an apron of pure white wool. She had braided ribbons into her hair.

“You look lovely!” he signed.

“You look good too, but let me fix your hair.”

He followed her into the girls’ house and sat obediently while she fetched her comb. Mikhi came bounding down the stairs. She wore a dress too, and wasn’t carrying her usual knife—or at least wasn’t carrying it anywhere visible. Her hair was down and rather wild. She whistled when she saw Vanu.

“Looking good!”

“You too,” he signed back. “Is Atari up yet?”

“She is getting dressed,” Mikhi reported. “Susami helped her put up her hair. Next she’s going to do mine.”

“No, she’s doing mine.” Vanu pulled the tie out of his hair and shook it out. Mikhi rolled her eyes.

Atari emerged, bouncing and glowing in her own best dress, while Susami was combing Vanu’s hair and Mikhi was pacing the room.

“What do we have to do first?” Atari asked. As she had reminded them several times in the last week, she had never been to a wedding.

“I think we wait for the summons to breakfast from Tirtu,” said Vanu. “He’s playing the bride’s father.”

He wondered what was going on in Tirtu’s house now.

* * *

It had been ten days since Lill arrived at Umtúshta, and he felt he was back where he had started on the dawn of that first day. It had been cold and grey then, too, and he had woken early so that the landlady of the inn in Radush could help him get into his bridal clothes.

She had been very talkative, admiring the quality of his gown and the beading of his headdress and telling him all about her eldest son, who had taken a boy bride of his own a decade ago. “And he’s still his favourite, even though he’s grown big now and has a beard!” she’d chortled. Nothing about Lill’s situation had struck her as unusual, until Halza arrived with the palanquin and incautiously mentioned something about going up the mountain. Even then, she’d thought he was headed for one of the villages on the lower slopes, but the idea had worried her.

“Are you sure you’ll be all right, dearie? They’re different up there,” she’d said.

The second time Lill dressed in his wedding gown, it was to be with the assistance of Gurti, wife of the lord of Umtúshta who had tried to have him killed less than a week earlier. She came with the carefully folded pile of blue and silver silk and the bridal headdress, perfectly restored from its broken state, balanced on top of it.

She looked stern, and Lill, meeting her in the main room of Tirtu’s house, wondered if she was being forced to do this against her will. By whom? Not her husband, certainly.

Unless … his mind flitted to stories of poisoned garments, cloaks that burst into flame, crowns with poisoned spikes inside that pierced the wearer’s scalp. There was no help for it. He had to get dressed for the wedding.

Gurti was attired more like a wedding guest than an assassin, to be sure. She had braided ribbons into her grey-blonde hair and wore a crisp white apron and several necklaces of fat amber and turquoise beads over her black dress.

Tirtu himself was fluttering around in a way that Lill would have found amusing if he’d been in the mood to be amused.

“Better take him upstairs to dress,” Tirtu told Gurti in Hawada. He did a kind of awkward dance, swaying toward the stairs and jerking back, obviously debating whether to come with them or not. “You’ll—you’ll be all right? You’ll be all right. He’s consented to the wedding, it was all a misunderstanding before, I’m sure he’s not going to cause any more trouble. But call me if you need me to interpret or anything of that sort.”

“Tirtu, don’t be absurd,” said Gurti. “Wait—ask him one thing for me. Does he need anything to help clean himself out?”

Tirtu gave her a mystified look. “What?”

Gurti clicked her tongue impatiently. “You know. If you’re going in the back door, it has to be well clear. Tchah, don’t be so foolish,” she said as Tirtu recoiled. “They have to consummate the marriage some way—‘the husband’s seed flows into the wife’s body and they become one.’” It sounded as though she was quoting something. “Ask him if he needs an enema.”

Tirtu turned toward Lill and looked for a moment as if he was about to speak. Then he shook his head and turned back to Gurti.

“I’m sure it’s fine. He’s been with plenty of men. He knows what he’s doing.”

Gurti frowned at him. “How do you know that? Are you making up things about him because he’s pretty?”