Page 23 of The Summer Pass

“I’m not currently working as a spy for the Zashian king, no.”

Enu’s eyebrows rose toward his hairline. “Ahhh. All right, that makes sense. I guess.”

“I needn’t have shown you that I can fight,” Lill pointed out. He handed the practice sword back to Enu.

Most of the able-bodied men of fighting age left Tsuruva the following morning, bound for the bridge of boats across the Rakhiri and the steep road to Tagra Degra. Zaraz and Shan walked with the group, singing a song about saying goodbye to your sweetheart. A few of the men clapped in time, though they couldn’t understand the words.

“I’m glad you’re not going with them,” said Firuduna, who had gotten out of bed to watch the departure from the doorstep of the house at the top of the meadow. “I’d miss you.”

Lill pretended not to have heard that.

“Do you want me to talk to him for you?” Lill had asked Zaraz and Shan before they left. “Explain anything about what really happened?”

The two of them looked at one another and then shook their heads.

“I think he knows,” said Zaraz. “I think he realized we weren’t trying to rob him, and with everything else that happened afterward … I just want to put it behind us.”

“Me too,” said Shan.

There was no sign of the Great King’s army yet, so the people left in Tsuruva remained in their homes, but they were beginning to make preparations for the time when they would retreat into the towers. They had all been through this before and did not seem panicked.

Lill went to visit Nakhana’s mother, whom he had met before, and asked if she wanted him to come and stay with her. He thought that was probably the right thing to do. But she had a houseful of neighbours and cousins when he got there, and though she said she would find a place for him to sleep, she couldn’t accommodate Firuduna.

“Only because he’s so big—not that I wouldn’t have him in the house or anything, no, nothing like that. He’s really a very good fellow. Very steady, in spite of, you know—and a good provider. Muni would be the first to tell you so.”

Lill didn’t know who Muni was, but he felt as if Nakhana’s mother’s defence of her nephew’s character was a little pointed, as if maybe she thought Lill was looking for “a good provider,” and she wanted him to know Firuduna qualified. He was trying to think of a way to say something about “my husband” without sounding crazy. But she was loading up a basket with food and scolding one of the neighbours’ children in a mixture of hand language and shouting, and Lill began to see why Nakhana preferred to live over the forge rather than here. Even if you weren’t bothered by noise, this house couldn’t feel peaceful.

He went to Firuduna’s mother’s house next, because he hadn’t met her officially, and Nakhana had asked him to look out for her too. He wondered if he would find her house full of children like Nakhana’s mother’s, but it was completely different. The door was opened by a red-haired young woman, and Nakhana’s Aunt Dani was inside, alone, working at her loom. She was a tall, thin-lipped woman who spoke in clipped sentences.

“Nakhana has asked you to do what?” She looked sceptically at Lill.

Behind her, the red-haired woman had taken the shuttle which Dani had passed to her, but was doing nothing with it, just looking over her shoulder at Lill.

“He asked me to stay behind in the village to look after your son—though he’s nearly recovered—and to … to make sure his mother and you are all right.”

This had been much easier with Nakhana’s mother, who obviously looked after people as naturally as breathing herself and took it for granted that her son would appoint his assistant to look after his family. Aunt Dani, on the other hand, seemed to see how absurd it was that Lill should be offering to look after anyone either by word or deed. She glared at him as if the very idea offended her.

“And who are you that you should be ‘looking after’ my son?”

“My name is Lillang.” The full, masculine version of his name felt vaguely comforting. “I have been working for your nephew, at the forge.”

She knew this; it obviously wasn’t the information she wanted. But there wasn’t any other explanation. Nakhana had asked him to help because he was there, that was all.

“Muni should be looking after Firuduna,” said Aunt Dani, gesturing behind her at the red-haired woman, who flinched and began very busily cramming her shuttle between the warp threads of the loom.

Things began to click together in Lill’s mind. Nakhana had said something about Firuduna’s mother disapproving of his divorce. Muni “should be looking after Firuduna” because she was—she had been—married to him. But they were divorced, and given what he understood of how marriages worked in the mountains, that could well have been by mutual agreement, or because she wanted children and realized he was never going to give them to her, or any number of things that wouldn’t happen in Akramarra.

“It’s no trouble,” he said, because he had to say something, and that seemed better than, “Muni is welcome to him—can she come and get him?” He added, “He’s nearly recovered. We’re staying in the house above the forge. But when he’s fully back on his feet, I’m sure he’ll come down here.”

“He knows he is not welcome in my house while he refuses to do his duty,” Firuduna’s mother said stonily. “And from the look of you, I can see he has not resigned himself to that yet.”

Lill had no idea how to defend himself or Firuduna against this. Admit that he knew what she meant and protest that he had no interest in her son? But that was surely beside the point, from her perspective. If she thought Firuduna preferred to stay up at his cousin’s house being nursed by Lill rather than come home to Muni, well, she was clearly right. All he could think to do was pretend he didn’t know what she was getting at.

“Well, I’m sure you can both take comfort in knowing he is recovering well,” he said, with a smile that made him feel ridiculous.

He lingered outside the house for a minute and walked away slowly, in case Muni should want to slip out and say something to him privately, though he couldn’t guess whether it would have been different from what her mother-in-law had said or just more of the same. But either she felt the message had been adequately conveyed or she couldn’t get away—maybe she was too busy untangling the mess she’d made of the weaving—because she didn’t come after him.

Chapter 9