Page 7 of The Boy Bride

“Da doesn’t need a bride!” Mikhi declared loudly.

Tirtu gave her a pained look. “Of course you don’t have to take the boy in a true marriage if that isn’t your wish, my lord. And you can always let him go. You can keep him a while and send him home if you tire of him.”

“Where does he come from?” Vanu asked finally. Mikhi frowned at him, obviously not liking anything short of total rejection of Tirtu’s scheme.

“Lord Davanu Shawa found him for you in Torakand. Working at one of those hostels that they have down there. When I wrote, I told him to find you a boy ‘like the summer sun for his beauty’—but who could take rough use. Knowing what you like, my lord.”

“Ew,” said Mikhi.

Vanu glared at Tirtu, but he couldn’t summon much real anger. He’d have preferred the man not say such things in front of his daughter, but it wasn’t as if Tirtu had made all this up.

“I hate to see you like this, my lord,” Tirtu said, not for the first time. “Wasting away whittling trinkets and drinking weak beer. I want the Lion of the Summer Pass back. You’ve let your fire go out. You need to drink deep again, my lord, and rut like a beast, and sink your blade into the skulls of your enemies again.”

Mikhi made loud gagging noises. Vanu was distracted by a memory of a sword blade hitting bone, the way the sharp edge had stuck for a moment, the smell of blood …

“Go in the yard and see if your sisters need help,” Vanu told Mikhi.

She frowned and looked as if she’d protest, as if she’d like to stay and protect him from Tirtu with her disgust. Vanu gave her a look that got her to put down her spindle and get up to march out the door into the yard.

“Doesn’t need to hear,” Vanu told Tirtu irritably when she was gone.

“No, my lord, I know—forgive me. But she was with you in the glory days. She knows as well as any of us what you once were.”

Vanu sighed. There was truth in that, too, though what he took from it wasn’t the same as what Tirtu took. He ran a thumb over the braid that he’d begun to chip out of the wood, three strands curling around each other in a satisfying pattern. He’d thought it up all on his own, and that was satisfying too. He could sink down into this kind of thing and forget so much.

“Think it over, my lord. The boy could be just what you need.”

Vanu reached down and picked up his carving knife from the carpet. He set it aside with his half-finished braid and got to his feet, signalling to Tirtu to stay seated. On the shelf over the window he found the rolled-up holster of knives where he had left it.

“What’s that?” Tirtu asked.

Vanu held it out between his hands for Tirtu to see, the supple leather housing six wicked little blades of an unfamiliar style.

“Took it off boy.” Vanu tapped his thigh in about the place where the boy had been wearing the knives under his torn skirt.

“Huh. I suppose he felt he ought to have something for defence, coming into the Lion’s den as he was! Not that these sewing needles would be much use to him.” Tirtu chuckled.

Vanu remembered how the boy had hit Khatu in the face with his shoe from the top of the wall, while holding on with one hand. With aim like that, six light-weight, well-balanced throwing knives might be a lot of use. Either of those things on its own might mean nothing, but both of them, the knives and the aim, belonging to a person who was supposedly a hostel-boy from Torakand?

Vanu put the knives back on the shelf and sat down again. If Tirtu’s mind hadn’t gone immediately to assassination, maybe that was because the idea was far-fetched. What need was there for anyone to assassinate him in here, after all?

He ran back over the events of the other day. He’d been upstairs in his house when he heard Mikhi yelling, as only Mikhi could yell, for someone to stop something. He’d swung down from the gallery to the main floor without taking the stairs and been out the front door in a couple of strides, scanning for where her voice had been coming from. The big house next door that they used as a workshop; the door was open. He heard Mikhi’s voice again, from inside: “What are you doing?”

Then Khatu burst out with his bow in his hand and went tearing around the corner of the building. Vanu wanted to run after him and pull his head off, but there would be time for that later. He plunged through the open door of the workshop and up the stairs to the loft. Mikhi was leaning half out the window at the top. She pulled herself in and turned toward him.

“Da, Da, there’s a girl on the wall, and Khatu’s shooting at her!”

“Are you all right?”

“What?” She gave him an are you mad? look and spun around to lean out the window again and shout rude things at Khatu.

She was fine; Khatu hadn’t done anything to her.

He heard Khatu howl back from outside: “We’re being attacked!” And other voices, unfamiliar ones, from further away. From beyond the wall, in fact. He leaned over Mikhi, hands on the window frame, to look out past her.

Below he could see Khatu standing between the crossroads and the gate, lining up a shot with his bow. Tirtu ran past, shouting at someone to hang on. Vanu looked up at the top of the wall. The figure hanging there looked unreal, slight as a doll, strings of beads and blue silk everywhere, dainty bare feet dangling.

“Hang on, lad!” Tirtu called as he heaved the cart piled with straw into position.