Page 26 of The Summer Pass

Firuduna looked at him with what could only be described as awe.

“So what’s it like?”

“It’s like being married.”

“No no, I mean—do people give you trouble over it, or is it normal down there?”

“I don’t actually know what it’s like in the lowlands,” Lill admitted. “I was married up here, in the mountains. In the Spring Pass.”

“You mean your husband’s one of the Hawakhaba?” Firuduna’s eyes were now so wide they looked ready to fall out of his head.

Lill nodded.

“And he brought you up the Spring Pass to be his bride?” He whistled. “Who is he?”

Lill looked at him a moment, then thought why not? He’d been wanting to tell someone this for weeks. “Vanu Urártu.”

Firuduna slapped his knee. “Heart of the Blue Heaven! In another moment I’d have guessed. Who else would have the solid bronze balls to do a thing like that? He’s a legend. Everyone knows he likes men, and no one thinks less of him for it. No one would dare!”

Lill couldn’t control his reaction; he felt a warmth blooming in his chest and a smile tugging at his lips. He hadn’t known it was quite like that for Vanu, but it made sense. What had he thought? That everyone who wasn’t raised in the Order was free to love as they pleased? Of course it was more complicated than that. Of course it had taken courage for Vanu to be so open about his desires.

“I’ve always wanted to know his secret,” Firuduna went on. “Even when we were boys—he’s about my age, and he came to Tsuruva to learn hand language after he got shot in the throat, so I knew him pretty well. He never gave a fuck that everybody knew. He went with a friend of mine, Akhanu, and Akhanu told me about it afterward. He said he’d never come so hard in his life.” Firuduna looked wistful. “Akhanu made me swear never to tell, but I don’t guess it matters, he’s long dead, killed in a raid when we were in our twenties.” He sighed. “So what are you doing here, if you’re Vanu’s bride?”

Lill snapped back to reality from a moment of envying dead Akhanu. This was why he’d never told anybody about Vanu and had been right not to.

“It’s hard to explain. I had to leave Umtúshta, and … I came here to practice hand language.”

Firuduna nodded. “They don’t know who you are here, do they? Nakhana wouldn’t be making you work in the forge if he knew who you were.”

“Nobody’s making me do anything. I have to earn my keep.”

“Vanu Urártu’s boy wife?” Firuduna looked indignant. “You don’t have to earn anything. You just mention your husband’s name. You haven’t, have you?”

“No,” Lill admitted. “I … didn’t want to take advantage.”

Firuduna looked at him as if this made no sense at all. There was no way Lill could admit now that he’d left Vanu of his own volition—run away, in fact. Firuduna might do him violence.

“It’s hard to explain,” he repeated desperately.

Firuduna seemed to accept that. Maybe he thought the doings and reasons of someone so exalted as Vanu’s wife were none of his business. “So that’s not Vanu over the way in Tagra Degra, is it?”

“I don’t think so. That is, he was in Umtúshta when I left. As far as I know, he had no plan to leave.”

“But he could. I mean, you left. There’s a way out. I don’t think it’s him in Tagra Degra either. Well, he’d have fetched you over if he was there. He wouldn’t leave a beauty like you alone with the invader king’s army on the way. Not the Vanu I knew.”

“No,” Lill agreed, though in the circumstances it made no sense, “he wouldn’t do that.”

Overall, Lill was glad he’d told Firuduna at least part of the truth. He seemed to be revealing bits of himself to different people these days. He’d told Zaraz and Shan he was married; he’d as good as told Enu he was a trained spy of the Great King. Now he’d told Firuduna that Vanu was his husband. Each time it felt exhilarating and right, but it made him long for the one revelation he’d denied himself: telling Vanu everything. I love you; I want you; I was hired to kill you.

But telling Firuduna did change things for the better in the present. Firuduna stopped trying to flirt and instead began treating Lill almost as a legend in his own right, as if Lill was someone he could learn from, inducted into some mysteries or possessing some secret knowledge.

(He wasn’t entirely wrong. Lill did know what it was like to lie down with Vanu Urártu. He could have been the last person ever to learn that, if he’d stayed with Vanu. He had never thought about it before, but when he did, he had no doubt Vanu would have been faithful to him. Of course he would.)

“You know what they say about Tu and Naturi?” Firuduna asked one evening a couple of days later. They were eating at the table outside the house, now that Firuduna had stopped pretending to be too weak to get up.

“Um … no?”

“They were the first man and woman, you know? They say the Earth and the Blue Heaven created them as two halves of a whole. So a man needs a wife to be complete.” He shrugged his big shoulders with an uncomfortable look. “‘A man who wants another man is only half a man.’ That’s the saying. Truthfully, most people don’t care. Some will laugh at you but don’t mean anything by it. Same way they might laugh at you for, I dunno, having a big nose, but it doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have your back in a fight. But there’s some who take it to heart.