Page 73 of The Boy Bride

They arrived at the house by the gate. It was bigger than Lill had expected, and the “few repairs” that it needed looked like they would involve rebuilding half the roof. Like Faru’s hall, it looked only half habitable, though at one time it must have been a handsome building, rivalling Vanu’s house, with an upper storey and glass in all the surviving windows. Halza led the way inside and began showing Lill around like a proud householder.

“That’s the kitchen where the roof’s caved in, so just leave those things by the door. I’m going to sleep upstairs here for the time being.”

Lill followed Halza upstairs and looked into three separate bedchambers opening off the landing.

“Are you planning on starting a family?” he asked jokingly.

Halza did not laugh. Lill turned to look at him and found him standing in the doorway to the largest of the three chambers with a fixed, faraway look in his eyes.

“All right, I’m headed back to my place!” Tirtu called from downstairs. “I’ll leave the two of you to catch up. Come back when you’re ready to eat, Halu!” He went out, whistling.

“What about your fiancée down the mountain?” said Lill, looking at Halza.

“What?”

“Aren’t you betrothed to a girl in Radush? But you’re planning on staying here and marrying … Susami, I’m guessing?” It had to be Susami.

“I’m not—I’m. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

The Sukiyan rhetoricians had a name for that kind of thing, when you said something that didn’t follow in the least from what had been said before. Lill couldn’t remember the term, but Halza probably didn’t know it either.

“I can believe that,” Lill said dryly. “So you do plan to break your engagement, then.”

He thought that was the important thing here. Some girl down the mountain was waiting for Halza to come back and marry her. He’d given his word. Keeping your word was the third of the Twenty-One Martial Virtues. Not that Halza would care about those, but surely temple servants had something similar?

“Do you know what it’s like to be in love, Lill? I—I mean—” Halza seemed to decide there was something inappropriate about the question he’d just asked.

“No,” said Lill, before Halza could begin apologizing, which would be absurd. “Of course not.”

Halza give him a sad look that made Lill want to squirm. “I barely knew myself until I saw her. Oh, I’d read of it, of course, and I thought I felt something for Auxshna, my mother’s neighbour’s daughter—but when I saw Susami … I couldn’t leave her behind here, Lill, even if they would let me go. But I don’t delude myself that I could take her away with me, either, not if her father wants to keep her here. So my plan is this: I’ll settle here, earn his trust, and win her hand. We can live together here until … well, until we can find a way to leave together. I want to give her a life away from this place, somewhere she can be free … You know she is deaf?”

“Yes, of course. You are learning hand language?” Lill signed.

Halza stared at him in bafflement.

“Hand language,” Lill repeated aloud. “Have you begun learning?”

“How would I … what is it?”

“It’s how Susami and her family talk. Did you not know that? What did you think—that you were going to marry her and not talk to her?”

Halza got that faraway look again. “We’ll communicate in the language of love.”

“I don’t know what that is. It doesn’t sound like a real thing.”

Now Halza was giving him a pitying look, which Lill thought was grossly unfair. Halza was clearly the one to be pitied here. He had completely lost touch with reality.

“I think you should learn her language,” Lill said doggedly.

“But how? Wait, you know it?”

“I’m learning it. My husband speaks it, so … obviously.” He shrugged. Was that the first time he’d used the phrase “my husband” in conversation? “We don’t know the ‘language of love.’”

Halza made a sad noise that Lill ignored. “So you could teach me the, uh, the hand thing, then. Could you?”

Lill considered that. Halza would be in his debt if he did that, and though he couldn’t yet see a way that could be useful, that didn’t mean something wouldn’t come up.

“Yes,” he said. “I suppose I could.”