Page 70 of The Summer Pass

“Why am I keeping you standing on the doorstep when we should go inside and drink tea?” said Farumi.

After that it went as well as Gurti could have hoped. The Manáshta refugees were eager to hear news from the great house, and the women and children and the men who weren’t on duty guarding the walls gathered around for a chance to talk to Gurti and Otoni. The two of them repeated the story about Lord Vanu’s banner on the mountain, since it seemed not everyone here had heard it. They blackened Darma’s name, saying no more than the truth, and asked if the villagers didn’t think it would be better for Lord Vanu to take back Tagra Degra. The women and old men of Manáshta agreed that it would. The young men, many of whom had followed the Lion in his campaign against the invader king, wanted to know where he was camped so they could sneak out of the fortress and join his army.

Gurti’s mind kept straying to what Otoni had said about Lord Vanu being happier, and how she herself had not noticed. When had it happened that she had come to consider unhappiness the natural state? Some time in the years of being married to Faru, it must have been. She had never been happy with him, but it hadn’t seemed unusual. Who would look to a husband for happiness? Most of the women she knew lived like that, not particularly loving their men or expecting to be loved by them. Faru was worse than some and not nearly as bad as others.

“I heard you were living in Umtúshta in the Spring Pass when Vanu Urártu was imprisoned there, Gurti,” said a pretty young woman with a baby on her knee.

“Yes, that’s true,” said Gurti. “We were there for three years.”

“How did you live? And how did you get out?” Her eyes shone with curiosity.

“We planted gardens and slaughtered our pigs and lived quite well,” said Gurti blandly. “And when we decided to leave, the men broke down the gate and fought the guards outside.” That was the story they had agreed to tell.

“Earth’s heart! Is that really how it was?”

“That’s how it was,” Otoni agreed cheerfully. “I was there too, of course, as Khatu Gukhártu’s wife.”

“Is that how you lost your husband, Gurti?” Farumi wanted to know.

“It was around that time, but he was wounded in a skirmish down the mountain in Sakka,” said Gurti. She felt suddenly tired.

The whole purpose of her journey to Manáshta had been to retrieve her bride price so that she could go on being a widow. But when they fled the village, running from the King of Zash’s troops, all that had been left behind: the jewellery and the swords with names that Faru’s family had solemnly handed over to her parents when they wed. It was all probably in the hands of the Zashians or their hired Sukiyans now. They might use those swords when they stormed Tagra Degra, to cut down the men defending the walls. It was all so foolish.

“I am not making it up!” Barda protested. The way he was grinning while he said it made Firuduna doubt him more than ever.

Firuduna shifted on the steps where they were sitting so that he could frown down at Barda more effectively. It didn’t do much good.

“So he told you this himself?”

“Who? Lord Vanu told all of us—not me by myself, but I was part of his household—still am—so yeah, obviously he told me.”

“I wasn’t asking if he told you, I was asking if—never mind.” There was no point quibbling when this was all clearly a joke. “You expect me to believe that Lord Vanu told you that his husband⁠—”

Barda snorted. “Lill’s not the husband in that marriage.”

“Aren’t they both husbands?”

Firuduna regretted the words as soon as he’d spoken them. He almost slapped a hand over his mouth with shame. He remembered now that they called them boy brides—he’d known that, it was just that privately he’d been imagining a different situation, one which had nothing to do with Vanu and Lill. Because he, Firuduna, didn’t personally want a bride of any sort. He’d gotten his fantasy confused with reality, and Barda would quite rightly laugh at him.

Barda wasn’t laughing. He was staring into the middle distance, looking like he was considering Firuduna’s words.

“I guess they could be—but Lill’s pretty wifely, you know? I mean, any way you look at it, he makes your mouth water, right?” Now Barda laughed. He had the dirtiest-sounding laugh Firuduna had ever heard.

“Yeah. Yeah, he is,” Firuduna agreed quickly. “Does. Yeah.”

Obviously Barda must think of Lill as basically a girl—Vanu’s wife—to say something like that. Firuduna tried to add a hearty chuckle of his own, but it came out sounding strangled.

Barda gave him a concerned look.

“Hey, you two!” A scrawny fellow in an oversize helmet yelled up at them from below. “You’re supposed to be on the wall, not lounging on the steps!”

“Yeah yeah,” Barda called back, bouncing to his feet. “On our way!”

Firuduna got up too, and they climbed the stairs under the glare of the scrawny guard.

“I know we were supposed to blend in,” Barda muttered, “but this is a bit much.”

“We are part of the defending force, though,” Firuduna pointed out. “I mean, we’re not working for the Zashians.”