Page 79 of The Summer Pass

“It sounded like a battering ram hitting the gate,” Lill answered.

“The assault has begun,” said Artayarasha.

“I was wondering when it would,” said Vanu.

“Tcha! Why does it have to be so loud?” Na Tsunakhari complained. “Scared me half to death!”

That was part of the point. Vanu didn’t say that. “Time for us to be on our way,” he said instead.

“Let me get the Zashian’s coat,” said Na Tsunakhari as they followed her slow steps downstairs. “The boys took it, but I wouldn’t let them wear it. Silly fools. Everyone would have wanted to know where they got it!”

Vanu wanted to get going and not bother with Artayarasha’s coat—they’d wasted enough time—but he also hated to let the Tsunakharu boys profit from this dumb stunt by even the value of a princely coat. So he followed Na Tsunakhari as she hobbled out to her front room, leaving Lill with Artayarasha by the back door.

It took Na Tsunakhari several minutes to find where she’d hidden the coat. When she did find it and shook it out, it was crumpled and stained, and she tutted over it for another minute, assuring Vanu that it had been like this before it came into her possession. He could hear the geese honking outside, but they calmed down quickly, which must mean someone familiar had come in. Vanu took the prince’s coat out of Na Tsunakhari’s hands, not quite snatching it but not waiting for her to finish her commentary either, and strode back into the hallway.

Lill stood between Artayarasha and two large young men who had come through the back door. They looked vaguely like two little boys Vanu remembered running around in the yard with the geese years ago. Lill had picked up a broom and looked coolly prepared to defend himself and the prince with it against the young men’s swords, one of which was drawn already.

Na Tsunakhari made a noise not unlike the geese, and everyone in the hall except Lill flinched.

“Put those away, you fools, don’t you see this is the Lion?”

The Tsunakharu boys stared lumpenly at Vanu.

“Is he?” said one of them doubtfully.

“That’s good,” said the other. “Get out of the way, Grandma—we’ll take him hostage too. Darma will pay well for him.”

“Yeah, smart thinking, brother.”

Darma likely wouldn’t pay anything for him, Vanu thought, because Darma wanted him dead. But he didn’t care to point that out.

“Earth’s heart!” cried their grandmother. “You stupid boys! You can’t take the Lion hostage!”

The two young men were between Vanu and the only exit. The front door of the house was completely blocked by carts belonging to the refugees who crowded the streets. The hallway was narrow, and Lill and Artayarasha were in the middle of it. Also, he couldn’t cut down Na Tsunakhari’s grandsons in front of her, no matter what they intended to do to him. (If they hurt Lill, he would kill both of them.)

Na Tsunakhari was still shouting at the boys, and Lill looked as though he was listening. The young man in front of him was listening, and his sword drooped in his hand, just slightly. Lill swung the broom around and jabbed the head of it into his face. He dropped his sword with a grunt, and Lill stamped down on it with a bare foot. What had happened to his shoes? Artayarasha plastered himself against the wall, Vanu leapt forward, and Lill passed him the broomstick as if he’d expected him to be there.

Vanu laid into the Tsunakharu boys with the broom. The dropped sword rang against the flagstones as Lill kicked it out of the way. Vanu disarmed the second brother a moment before the first jumped on his back and tried to strangle him. He slammed his attacker against the wall, kicked the brother in front of him in the stomach, and glanced around to see that Lill was already pulling Artayarasha past them to the back door. He shook off the man who was clinging to his shoulders and followed.

They crashed out into the yard, to be met by a storm of honking and flapping as the geese objected to all three of them. They charged through, batting away wings and dodging beaks. Artayarasha was laughing like a child. Lill looked at him and cracked a smile. Vanu shook his head with a grin and pulled open the gate to the alley.

“I have never seen such effective use of a broom as a weapon,” Artayarasha gasped, wiping his eyes.

“That’s Lill for you,” said Vanu.

“This way,” said Lill, beckoning them toward the back of the great house. He had retrieved his shoes from somewhere, and they dangled by the laces from his good hand.

“So ‘Lill’ is the name you go by, then?” said Artayarasha, when they had taken refuge inside the half-collapsed shed where he had come down from the great house roof.

Vanu turned to Lill, thinking to tease him for being so focussed on his mission that he hadn’t even introduced himself to the prince, but something about Lill’s expression, some tension that showed itself in his eyes, stopped him.

“Yes, that is generally what people call me, Your Highness,” Lill said stiffly.

There was some Zashian protocol about introductions that Vanu had never fully understood, but he thought it was basically that you told your name only to your social superiors. Surely that meant the king of Zash’s brother was someone almost everyone would introduce themselves to. Maybe that wasn’t what Lill was tense about at all. There was certainly something, though.

A group of men-at-arms came past from the direction of the dungeon stairs, swords rattling in scabbards, arguing in loud voices. The three of them pressed themselves back further into the shadows of the shed. Vanu slipped an arm around Lill’s waist.

He wanted to find out what was bothering Lill—did it have something to do with Vanu’s foolish joke out by the gate, when he’d pretended he was going to forge ahead without explaining the plan?—and more importantly, do something to fix it, whatever that might be. But they were being actively besieged now and probably hunted by two different parties in the fortress, and it wasn’t the ideal time to be talking about feelings.