Page 77 of The Summer Pass

He moved around behind the prince to attack the rope binding his wrists. There was no way to undo it with only one hand, so he put his teeth to use, and the knot gave quickly. Artayarasha shook off the rope and rubbed his wrists with a look of relief. But his expression when he looked at Lill was still, for some reason, surprised.

“Your name,” he said. “Forgive me for asking. Your name isn’t Lillang-Ghan, is it?”

“Yes, it is,” said Lill easily.

A man of Prince Artayarasha’s status had every right to ask for anyone’s name, and of course, Lill thought, Vanu must have mentioned him. But Vanu hadn’t known Lill’s full name the last time he saw Artayarasha.

“You are wondering how I know,” Artayarasha said. “We have not met before, but you look just like your mother.”

Lill remembered his mother, vaguely: an ethereal, sweet-smelling presence, a beautiful laugh, smiling dark eyes. He couldn’t have said whether he looked like her because he couldn’t really have said what she looked like. He remembered the court, but it was like a series of glimpses through a lattice, and none of them showed a clear picture of his mother. Instead she was there in all of them, like a quality of the light.

For a moment all he could think of was that Artayarasha could tell him about his mother, and how much he would like that. Then it occurred to him what the prince was actually saying. He’d known Lill’s mother and knew about Lill. There could not be many men who did. There might be only one.

“I was never able to see you,” Artayarasha went on, “even when you were an infant. But she did tell me the name she gave you.”

Lill wondered frantically if he could claim he’d been joking when he admitted to the name. The prince would go along with it, surely. He couldn’t want to know the truth of who Lill was. If Lill said, “I was lying, Lillang-Ghan isn’t my name,” Artayarasha would pretend to believe him.

“We should go,” he said instead. “We need to get down the ladder and back out of the house without disturbing the geese.”

Artayarasha grimaced. “The geese! May the hounds of the Dark Valley take them.”

“Can you climb down, Your Highness?”

“Of course, yes. I’m a little stiff, but otherwise well. You are injured, I see.”

“I am still serviceable,” Lill quickly gave the standard response expected in the Order when your fitness for duty was questioned. “Your Highness.”

The prince raised his eyebrows as though he’d never had anyone report to him like that before. Lill wondered fleetingly what it was like to serve in his personal guard.

Lill went first down the ladder and held it steady while Artayarasha descended.

“Now where—” the prince started, but Lill held up a hand to stop him. He’d heard voices from below and now footsteps on the stairs. He grabbed Artayarasha’s sleeve and dragged him to the hiding place that he’d identified, as a matter of routine, when he first entered the room.

The woman who had answered the door downstairs came in and gasped when she saw the ladder propped against the loft.

“Now what is that doing there?” she scolded. “Those foolish boys, can’t be trusted to do anything. Hello up there! Are you awake? Tcha—going to make an old woman climb a ladder, are you? That’s lowlanders for you.”

From the look Artayarasha was giving Lill as they crouched behind the clothes-chest, Lill guessed he didn’t understand Hawada and wondered what the woman was saying.

Before she had a chance to begin struggling up the ladder, Vanu entered the room.

“My lord, will you go up and get him? I think he must be fast asleep up there.”

He glanced around and then signed, in view of Lill’s hiding place but not the old woman, “Come out. It’s all right.”

Lill put his hand on the prince’s shoulder. “He says it’s safe to come out.”

Artayarasha gave him a worried look, but he stood up along with Lill.

The old woman yelped in surprise. “What are you doing there, sir? And who are you?”

“He’s with me,” said Vanu aloud. “I told him to look for the hostage for me, in case I could not convince you to part with him.”

The old woman laughed heartily. “Well, my lord, that was very shrewd of you, I must say.”

“Can you explain to Prince A that I’ve arranged to ransom him?” Vanu signed.

Lill translated the message. Artayarasha crossed the floor to clasp Vanu’s hands with as much dignity as if they were in the Zashian court and he didn’t have bits of decayed thatch stuck in his beard.