Page 82 of The Summer Pass

“No … ”

Vanu looked from Lill to Artayarasha and back again. Their expressions were oddly similar—no, not their expressions. Their faces. It was hard to spot it, because one of them was bearded and middle-aged and Zashian to his fingertips, and the other one was Lill. But there was a resemblance. Something about their eyebrows.

“Are you—” He stopped and turned to Lill. “Is he your father?” he said aloud.

“Yes,” said Artayarasha.

Vanu spun back and glared at him. “And why did you leave him in that fucking place?”

Artayarasha held up his hands. “You are right to be angry. I am blameworthy in the matter. But I did not know he was alive. Neither did your mother,” he added, looking at Lill. “It was your grandmother who sent you to the Order—you know that, do you not?”

Lill nodded.

“Your mother made such efforts to get you back that your grandmother lied and told her you had died, to make her stop. She didn’t stop—she wanted to see your grave. She tried for years.” He shook his head. “She did not tell me that, at the time. I rarely saw her—she is married to my brother the king now. It was only a year ago that I heard—I saw her at court, and she told me that your grandmother, shortly before her death, had been wandering in her mind and said things that made her believe you had not died after all. Though of course, as she said herself, that did not mean you had survived the intervening years in the brutal environment of that school. I confess I was inclined to think you hadn’t, and that there would be no use in looking for you. I … feared what she would find, even if you were alive. I don’t expect your forgiveness for that.”

He glanced up at Vanu, as if to say he didn’t expect his forgiveness either. But Vanu was thinking he found that story pretty exonerating. He knew what sorts of men the Order turned out. He’d probably have done the same thing in Artayarasha’s place. That didn’t matter, though, because forgiveness was only Lill’s to give here.

“No,” Lill said. He looked almost dazed, as if he’d gone somewhere else inside his head. He went on slowly: “No, that’s … that makes sense. Why you would think that. I never thought that you ought to have done anything. I wasn’t angry. I thought I belonged there. I was ashamed not to be a better servant of the Great King. I thought if I ever met my father, he would be ashamed of me, too. I thought you must be. Ashamed.”

Artayarasha drew in a sharp breath. “Of course not! I know of nothing that you might have done to cause me shame.”

“I thought you would be ashamed just to look at me,” Lill clarified. Before Artayarasha could reply he added, “I thought that because of what I was taught in the Order. There are many things in my life now for which they did not prepare me well.”

“I see,” said Artayarasha. “I do have high expectations of my children—all the rest are daughters, incidentally. I expect them to behave with the utmost integrity. But as I did not raise you … ”

“He does that,” Vanu said. “What you said. Ingretity.” He knew what it meant even if he couldn’t pronounce the Zashian word. It was Lill all over.

Clearly, from the look he was giving Vanu, Lill didn’t think so.

“You do,” Vanu signed. “You should recite that Martial Virtues thing for him. He’ll love that.”

Lill turned back to his father, looking as if he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “He’s saying … uh, you know the Twenty-One Martial Virtues?”

“Not by heart. But I approve of its sentiments, by and large.”

“Oh yes, some are better than others, certainly. He heard me recite them once, and he—he was just making a joke.”

“I see no reason why I should not be proud of you, Lillang. Lill. On your own account. Quite apart from the fact that you’ve made Vanu Urártu my son-in-law.”

At that, Lill finally did laugh. “I—I have, haven’t I?”

He reached out and clasped Artayarasha’s hand for a moment, before he had to take his own hand back to wipe his eyes.

Chapter 28

Words of Comfort

Vanu knew he’d made mistakes with Darma—who hadn’t he made mistakes with? He only wished he knew where the mistakes in this case had started.

The last time he saw Darma—what he’d thought was the last time anyone ever saw Darma—was at Alazani. Vanu had conceived the plan to take the fortified temples earlier that week. He had talked to the men the day before, trying to get them excited to do it, telling them what a blow it would be to the Zashians. It appealed to him because it would be an impressive conquest without much bloodshed. They were tunnelling in, but they’d convinced the Zashians that they would try to scale the walls, so they should take them handily by surprise. All the defences of Alazani were concentrated on the walls, and they were lazy, as impressive as they looked. No one had seriously tried to take the place in decades.

Darma was supposed to be leading the false assault with ladders. He’d seemed pleased enough when Vanu assigned him the task. It was the first time Vanu had put him in charge of any operation in a good while, after Darma had made a couple of poor choices that convinced Vanu to keep him out of command positions. But his friends had argued recently that he’d earned a chance to prove himself again, so Vanu gave him the mission with the ladders. Then the morning of the assault, Darma came into Vanu’s tent with a scowl on his face.

“Is it true you put Akhanu in charge of the attack through the tunnel?” he demanded.

“He’s leading the men through, yeah,” Vanu replied.

“I thought you were leading them.”