Page 86 of The Summer Pass

“Not right now!”

“Ever, though?” he pressed.

“Sure, if I had to. I’d just close my eyes and think of a good-looking man.”

“Who would you think of?”

Vanu shrugged. “Depends on my mood, I guess. You realize this is a made-up thing I’ve never had to do, right?”

“You wouldn’t think of me, would you?”

Vanu frowned at him. Why was he being like this? Did he want to sour Vanu’s good mood? “You’d be disgusted if I did.”

“Too right I would.”

“I wouldn’t. Of course I wouldn’t.”

Darma fell silent, and Vanu hoped he’d leave it at that. But then: “It’s not because I’m ugly. You went with Bamuru from Taskhabara, who looks like he was fathered by a wild boar. So what is it?”

“You don’t want to sleep with me. I get enough cock, I don’t need to pine after the one man who doesn’t want me.”

“The one man?”

“Maybe that came out wrong.”

“There are plenty of men in your hearth circle who don’t want to fuck you.”

There were perhaps fewer than Darma realized who hadn’t given it a try, for the novelty of it or because they thought it was a way into Vanu’s good graces. Sometimes it was—sometimes it was the opposite. You could tell a lot about a man by the way he fucked.

He’d learned early in life that men wanted this from him. They would trade things for it, sometimes, and sometimes those were things Vanu wanted. But he also knew, in his heart, that the men who didn’t want him that way were the worthiest ones. How could it be otherwise? They were free of this flaw—whatever it was—that made him the way he was. They were proof against the compulsion he laid on men, making them want something disgusting. (His uncle had explained it to him once, a long time ago.)

“I’m glad you don’t want to fuck me,” he told Darma. “You’re my friend—it’s better that way.”

Darma shuddered showily. “Don’t even talk about it. You want a drink?”

“Always.” Particularly just then, though.

Darma shoved himself up from his seat. “I’ll bring back a whole bottle for you,” he signed. “I know what you’re like.”

At the entreaty of Auxshna’s mother, everyone in the wine cellar sat down for a meal together. To her credit, she had done a truly impressive job of turning the rest of the local sausages and some parsnips and dried mushrooms into an approximation of an Akramarran-style curry, which she served in their stolen silver dishes over some kind of chewy mountain grain that was definitely not rice. Lill didn’t think Artayarasha was being merely polite when he praised it and asked for seconds. Auxshna’s mother’s name was Maraz, and Auxshna’s familiar name was Ziya. Maraz introduced them both to the prince.

Halza kept trying to start a conversation with Artayarasha by bringing up subjects that Lill thought he’d found in some handbook of “How to Ingratiate Yourself with Royalty.” Is the hunting in Akramarra at this time of year to your liking, Your Highness? and so on. Artayarasha seemed more interested in talking to Lill and not especially concerned to hide it.

Lill had never imagined meeting his own father as anything other than a waking nightmare. There had seemed only two possibilities: either his father was a fine, respectable man who would be ashamed of Lill, or he was a worm, and Lill would be ashamed of him. Probably, he’d thought, if he met his father, he’d see where all of his own worst traits came from.

It wasn’t like that at all. Artayarasha plainly wanted to know all about Lill. He asked questions in a way that seemed to Lill puzzlingly familiar, until he finally realized that it was like the way he would ask questions.

Talking to the prince made Lill feel as if his mother, too, was closer than she had been in years. And all this was because of Vanu being Vanu: because he’d rescued Princess Artamiya and then called in the favour from Artayarasha when he needed help. Artayarasha might say that Lill had done him a favour by making Vanu his son-in-law, but the way it seemed to Lill was that Vanu had found his parents for him.

They had all finished their curry and were clearing up the dishes when the banging at the door to the wine cellar began.

Vanu crossed the room in long strides. The main entrance to the wine cellar was the most securely barricaded, both the outer door and the inner, and from the sound, Lill judged that the banging was at the outer door. It was accompanied by muffled shouts.

Lill ran to join Vanu by the pile of casks and crates blocking the inner door.

“Do you think they know we’re in here?”

Vanu listened for a moment more, then shook his head. “I think they’re trying to get wine,” he signed.