Page 91 of The Boy Bride

“He said ‘supposed to.’” Lill felt it was important to clarify this.

“Don’t you want to know why I said that?” Tirtu asked, his expression looking more and more like a demon in a wall-painting.

“I’m sure he doesn’t. I’m sure neither of them does.”

“Don’t you want to know why he’s holed up in Umtúshta with the rest of us, when he wasn’t in Lord Vanu’s service or Lord Faru’s when we were walled in?”

“This is my home.” Padunu was jabbing the table again. “I have every right to be here.”

“But why do you want to be here?” Tirtu turned back to Lill and Halza. “Don’t you want to know?”

“I do,” said Lill. “I really do.” He really did.

Padunu threw out his arms and rolled his eyes heavenward. “Fine. Fine. Yes. I did, I broke my oath, I besmirched myself—and it wasn’t. Even. Nice. I didn’t like her. I did it to save my life.”

Lill took another swig of his wine. “It doesn’t usually do that. Does it?”

Tirtu shouted with laughter. “We’re doing it wrong, Na Riru, we’re doing it wrong!”

“Shut up, you inconsequential clown! I was up on the Korukhura doing divinations in the villages. They’re savages up there—fucking beasts. No respect. This headman in one of the villages, this, this hairy ignoramus, he didn’t like what the spirits had to tell him, and he imprisoned me in his hall. I had to do something—I thought I was going to die up there! I made overtures to a young woman who I thought was his daughter, they were well received, and she assisted me in making my escape. In return for certain favours. Forbidden to me, yes, but what choice did I have? It was, as I say, not enjoyable, not an experience I reflect upon with satisfaction. The young woman turned out, to my surprise, to be not the ignoramus’s daughter but his wife. The liaison was discovered—she did not, I may say, do a very good job of concealing it, for some reason of her own—and I was forced to flee the whole peak. I needed somewhere to … to … ”

“Lie low,” Lill supplied. “That’s the term.”

“Thank you. Yes. So I came here.”

“And then,” Tirtu chimed in again, “after hiding out here for a year or more, he decided he’d had enough of us, and he left—and a fortnight later, he came crawling back! Because they’re still talking about him out there—about how he besmirched himself.” He dissolved into unsteady giggling.

“Is that true?” Lill asked.

“It is not true,” said Padunu. “It was three weeks, and … It was three weeks.”

Lill couldn’t prevent a little bubble of laughter escaping his lips. “Poor Padunu.”

“Thank you. I never get any sympathy, you realize. It isn’t as if—I mean—I purified myself, I spent a year doing all the correct rituals, I assure you I can perform satisfactorily as a shaman again. But that, that savage from the Korukhura Peak has come down the mountain and is raiding out of Dukka. I can’t work in any of the villages in the Spring Valley.”

“How unfortunate!”

“I know, it is. Thank you, Na Urárti—you are so understanding. I am sorry I tried to make Barda and Khatu throw you over the fortress wall.”

Lill lifted his wine cup and found that it was empty. He set it down carefully on the table. “I forgive you, Shaman. You were following orders. Tirtu!”

“Eh?” Tirtu seemed to have been dozing off. He roused himself.

“I am sorry I jumped on your head and held a knife to your throat.”

“When … did you do that? Did I miss something?”

“When he was saving me from being thrown over the fortress wall,” Halza supplied.

“I’m not sorry I did that,” said Lill.

“Just that it wasn’t somebody else’s head you jumped on.”

“Right.”

“Faru’s head,” Tirtu suggested.

Padunu slapped the table weakly. “Lord Faru’s my patron, won’t hear a word against him. Fucker.”