Page 74 of The Boy Bride

Halza nodded. “Good. I suppose it doesn’t take long. It’s just gestures, after all.”

“It’s a whole language. Anything you can say in Zashian or Akra or any other language, you can say in hand language.”

“Oh.” Halza looked as if he didn’t believe that. “That reminds me—have you figured out yet how they get things in and out of the fortress? Has Lord Vanu told you?”

“No,” Lill admitted. “But I haven’t asked.”

“I have,” said Halza proudly. “Figured it out, I mean. Well, sort of. Barda told me about it. There’s magic involved.”

“There’s what?”

“Oh, it’s nothing forbidden! I’m very familiar with the prohibitions against sorcery—I memorized them when I was studying for my exams. It’s just a charm to summon a thick fog, they all know it. They have an accomplice on the other side of the wall—I think he may also be compelled by magic, which I’m less sure is entirely permissible, but Barda wasn’t quite clear about that—anyway, on moonless nights, they raise the fog and give a signal, the cry of a certain kind of owl, though to my mind it sounds more like a toad croaking, and their man on the outside comes to the wall and brings whatever they’ve requested and hoists it over.”

“By magic?”

“No, with a rope.”

“And Barda told you this.”

“He’s said he’ll teach me the charm.”

“Barda, whose brother told you he was going to cook you and eat you.”

“Well, that wasn’t true,” said Halza, looking puzzled, as if he couldn’t see any connection. “They’re obviously not short of meat—there was fresh venison at your wedding.”

“Yes, do you suppose their accomplice hoisted a whole deer over the wall, or butchered it first on the other side?”

“I don’t know, but … Wait, are you suggesting you don’t think Barda was telling me the truth?”

“I am. I don’t.”

Halza chewed his lower lip. “When you mention it, there was something about the way he said it … I suppose the part about the charm and the fog—certainly the spell to make the accomplice help them, even at the time I didn’t think that sounded very likely. I suppose they just wait for a dark night, and they’ve bribed the man on the other side.”

“I don’t think they have a man on the other side. Hoisting all that stuff over the wall—deer carcasses and firewood and sacks of grain and all that stuff you wanted for the wedding—we’d have noticed that going on. So would the guards.”

“But what do you think the truth is, then?”

“There’s a way out. Nobody’s hauling anything over the wall, and they’re doing their own shopping down the mountain when it suits them. Someone went out and shot that deer—probably one of the Gukhártu brothers, because it’s not the season for hunting deer, and the rest of these people have more sense.”

Halza was giving him an odd look. “Lill … these are our people now. Your marriage to Lord Vanu has made you one of them, and my marriage will do the same. You can’t talk about them as if they’re these people anymore. They’re your people.”

The urge to recoil from this nonsense and set Halza straight was so strong that Lill had to clench his jaw to keep his expression neutral.

“The prayers I said at the wedding struck me so powerfully,” Halza went on piously. “When they speak of the bride going into the husband’s house and becoming one with him, it’s⁠—”

“I don’t remember much of that,” said Lill sourly. “I was not myself, if you recall.”

Halza winced. “I am sorry about that. I hope—well, I trust it won’t be an ill omen for your marriage. I’m sure it won’t. You seem, well, happy—for you.”

“Yes, of course,” said Lill, instead of inquiring into what that meant.

Who would have predicted that Halza would go insane in this particular way? Lill certainly wouldn’t have expected it. But clearly Halza could not be trusted in the slightest.

Coming out of Halza’s house a short while later, after making an excuse about being expected at home, Lill ran into Barda himself, doing what could only be described as skulking.

“Lill! I heard you were about.” Barda was all smiles as he fell into step beside Lill. “Surviving married life so far, hey?”

“Yes, thank you.”