Page 62 of The Summer Pass

It was much easier carrying Lill when he was fully awake and not soaked in cold water. Vanu picked his way through the camp to Lill’s couch, laid Lill on it, and tucked the covers around him. Lill smiled up at him in the dark, and Vanu wished they were alone.

“I’m actually wide awake,” said Lill.

“I’m not,” Vanu signed. He yawned hugely. “But we have things to do.”

He sat on the edge of the couch. The camp was stirring now, woken by their entrance. Tirtu stood up and stretched and introduced himself to Firuduna and Nakhana. He began explaining who everyone was while Barda made himself useful lighting the lamps.

“ … and Halza is over there, and Au–Ausana here is his betrothed. They’re here with us because … well, it’s complicated.”

“Why are they here, anyway?” Lill whispered.

“No clue,” Vanu signed back. “Been meaning to ask.”

Lill laughed, one of the most beautiful sounds in the world.

“We know Susami, of course,” Firuduna was telling Barda. “And—is that little Atari? Earth’s heart, she’s grown!”

Atari was rubbing her eyes blearily, but Susami was wide awake by now.

“Good morning,” Nakhana signed stiffly. “I have been worried about you.”

“Is that the real reason he wanted to come in here?” Lill whispered.

“Maybe,” Vanu signed discreetly, hands in his lap. “They were friends when they were kids.”

“Good morning, my lord,” said Gurti, approaching. “We don’t have any hot food for Lill, I’m afraid, but we found these little cured sausages that I’ve told the others to save for him. He needs to eat well to recover.”

“Very true,” said Vanu, accepting the sausages, which were on a silver plate—they’d looted the lord’s chamber as thoroughly as any raiding party before coming down here. “Thank you.”

Lill was already struggling back upright. Vanu slipped an arm under his shoulders and helped him to sit up. He set the dish of sausages in Lill’s lap.

“You’ll like these. Local specialty. Spicy. Well—not spicy like you do in the lowlands, but … ”

Lill laughed, but then Vanu thought: What had Lill grown up eating in the Order? Nothing good, he imagined. Raw meat and tree bark or something.

He wanted to pull Lill into his lap or lie down on the couch close to Lill and just be with him, listening to Lill talk, if Lill wanted to talk, ignoring everyone else in the fortress and the world. He also needed to know a few things that Lill had not yet explained. And his strategy of letting Lill choose when to reveal his secrets hadn’t worked out very well for either of them so far.

“You see we’ve got sort of our own mini-siege going in here,” Barda was explaining to Firuduna. “A siege-within-a-siege.”

“I wouldn’t call this ‘spicy,’” Lill remarked, “but it is good. Here, have one while Gurti’s not looking.”

Vanu looked at him sternly.

“No, really,” Lill whispered. “I can’t eat all of them.”

“Then save the rest for later.” He got up and went to get some of the apples and cheese which the others were eating for their breakfast. He brought them back and shared those with Lill too.

“We need to ration the oil as well as the food,” Halza’s betrothed was telling Tirtu, as smoke curled up from the lamp she had just blown out.

“Good thinking, my dear,” said Halza approvingly. “Now let’s make an inventory of everything we have left.”

“Why did she … I just lit that!” Barda protested.

In the end, Lill ate all but two of the sausages, along with an apple and a big wedge of cheese.

“Gurti and Tirtu,” he said thoughtfully, looking across the cellar. “Are they … Did Faru divorce her, or … ”

Vanu shook his head. “He died.”