Page 84 of The Boy Bride

“Guess you don’t want her knowing about this … ” He gestured to Davanu’s hand on his chest.

“Oh, she knows. Not that we’re up here right now, but she wouldn’t have any trouble guessing. She knows I need a man every now and then. I have a couple of lovers I see regularly in the city. No other women, though. That’s how she likes it.” He smiled fondly in the dark, but not at Vanu. “We’re well suited. More than that—we’re made for each other. I’d wish that for you.”

“A wife?”

“Well, no.” His hand was on Vanu’s belly now. “I suppose a wife isn’t quite what you need. My poor Vanu.”

“I’m fine.” It was hard, in the dark with only his voice to rely on, to get across the right amount of annoyance.

“I know,” said Davanu. “I’m sorry.” He lifted his hand and combed his fingers through his beard. “I’ve a fancy to try that one trick you used to like—you remember the one—but I’m afraid this shrubbery is just going to get in the way. Should I give it a try anyway?”

He’d grown the beard for his wife—he’d already explained that. But Vanu shivered at a memory of himself, years younger, in Davanu’s house in Tsuruva, naked from the waist down and half off the bed, his legs draped over Davanu’s shoulders, as Davanu did the most surprising things with his tongue.

“Yeah,” he said thickly, because he wanted to feel that way again. As if he and Davanu Shawa were the ones who were made for each other.

* * *

“It’s all right, you don’t have to be scared,” Lill said.

He lay back on the bed, his bare limbs white in the moonlight. Vanu wanted to protest that he wasn’t scared. But was that true?

He knelt on the bed beside Lill, trying to get a better look at him, but the shadows fell so that they still concealed parts of his body. Vanu knew he did it on purpose. He put out a hand and touched Lill’s pale thigh, and as he did so he remembered why he should not do this. He watched helplessly as dark, angry bruises bloomed over Lill’s skin. He heard Lill’s raw shout of pain, but he couldn’t take his hand away.

“Vanu?”

He woke with a gasp. Lill was the one kneeling on the bed, looking down at him, touching Vanu’s shoulder lightly.

“Bad dream?”

Vanu ran a hand over his face and nodded. He sat up. They were in his bed, where Lill slept most nights now.

They had been married for two weeks. Most nights, Vanu dreamt about laying hands on Lill, but while awake he never did it. Usually the dreams just ended in frustration, but this was not the first time he’d found himself hurting Lill in a dream.

He reached out to touch Lill’s hair, smiling at him. He’d have to do something to deal with the wretched dreams. There was a word the shamans used for it—loosening the grip of the thing on you, what you did to get rid of an evil spirit.

They got up, and Lill went back to his room to dress, their usual routine. Vanu liked the surprise of what he would come out wearing, what pieces of jewellery he would put on, how he would arrange his hair. This morning, Vanu waited on the landing outside his door to see Lill emerge with his hair down, wearing one of the filmy layers of his wedding outfit over his black shirt and trousers. On anyone else, Vanu thought, it would have looked a mess, but on his boy wife, it was perfect.

“You look lovely,” he signed across the space between them.

Lill smiled and curtseyed before running lightly down the stairs. Vanu followed him down. The girls were up and already at work, Mikhi and Atari returning with water from the well, Susami cooking breakfast. When the food was ready, they carried the dishes up onto Vanu’s balcony and ate together as they usually did, talking about their plans for the day.

It had quickly come to feel natural to have Lill there, an extra member of the family. Just the way Vanu had imagined it would be—except he hadn’t imagined Lill would still be so much of a mystery to him, a fortnight into their marriage. Sometimes he liked it, the sense of a challenge, the thought of making his boy wife happier, more at home. Sometimes it made him worry he wasn’t being a good husband so far.

He was trying. In the warm late afternoons, when they had finished their chores, they would sit on the balcony and talk, just the two of them. Vanu told Lill stories he hadn’t heard in the lowlands: about the nomads on the steppes beyond the mountains, the trade routes, and the famous raids of the Hawakhaba. Also stories from his own life. He explained the bitter tangle of his parentage and what had happened to the families involved, and if Lill had trouble following the details, he didn’t show it. He told Lill about the tricks he’d used to defeat the Zashian king’s armies, the times he’d been brilliant and the times he’d just been lucky. He told him about raising his own army in the villages and how they’d gone down to face that fanatical shit who’d been leading the king’s troops.

He spoke in hand language most of the time, adding words aloud whenever Lill needed them (a “gloss” was what Lill said you called that), and Lill responded in a mixture of signs and spoken language, Hawada and Zashian, slipping from one to another like a stream of water making its own channel over grass and rocks. He used Zashian words that Vanu didn’t know more often than Vanu said anything in his native language that Lill needed translated, and he had learned the signs for the Zashian letters from Atari and would occasionally forget that Vanu didn’t know them. His cleverness delighted Vanu, the way it bubbled clumsily out of him sometimes when they were alone together. When Vanu told stories, Lill peppered him with sharp-eyed, technical questions: How did they get the rocks to stay up there? Where were you hiding? What kind of sword? Why didn’t he suspect a trap, do you think?

If Vanu took out a piece of carving to occupy his hands, he could get Lill to talk more. The boy seemed eager to talk, but there weren’t many things he’d allow himself to talk about. He never spoke about his family or even about Davanu, except once or twice when he mentioned something he’d seen or tasted, he’d add a little stiffly, “That was at Shawa House.” He didn’t seem to miss Torakand or have much love for the city where he’d spent most of his life. Vanu had thought he’d been born there, but from some offhand comments he gathered that was not true. He’d been at one of the royal courts as a very young child, but he didn’t say why.

He liked watching Vanu carve and would ask interested questions about the design and the techniques, but he did not seem to want to learn to carve for himself. Towards the end of the second week of their marriage, he brought one of Atari’s Zashian books, The Legend of Prince Batan, out onto the balcony, and asked almost shyly if Vanu would like to listen to him read aloud. Vanu knew the story from a Hawa version he’d heard recited, but of course he said yes. Lill had a lovely voice and read beautifully. Even better, he seemed to love doing it.

“I’ll do the milking myself this morning,” Vanu told him after they had taken the breakfast dishes downstairs. The girls had already dispersed. “Susami told me she wants your help cleaning their house.”

Lill looked uncertain, and at first Vanu thought it was because he hadn’t caught all the hand language. He was becoming so proficient, Vanu sometimes forgot to sign slowly for him these days.

“Are you sure?” Lill said aloud, before Vanu could repeat himself. “It’s just that I’ve noticed Susami doesn’t like to be around Khatu and Barda, and they are only a little older than I am … ”

“Khatu and Barda?” Vanu repeated. “They’re not even the same type of animal as you. I mean⁠—”