Page 99 of The Summer Pass

“Speaking of parents, where is your mother, Barda?” Padunu asked, sitting down at the table with his eyes barely open.

Barda looked around as if he might have mislaid her. “Dunno. I haven’t seen her since last night.”

“Tirtu’s missing too,” Otoni pointed out. “So … ” She reached for some bread in the middle of the table and handed a piece to Nomi.

It was strangely normal, sitting with these people again, elbows on the table, eating breakfast, listening to them gossip like this. Atari was feeding her cat bits of sausage under the bench. Susami was making sure everyone had enough to eat and water for their hangovers and not exactly ignoring Nakhana, who was not exactly trying to start a conversation with her. Halza was lecturing his fiancée’s mother about something at the far end of the table. Enu sauntered over, and the discussion of Lill’s parentage and everyone’s headaches began again.

“I don’t know why any of you find it surprising that he’s a princess,” Padunu remarked, poking mournfully at his porridge.

“You mean a prince,” said Halza’s fiancée, as if Padunu might have mistaken the word.

“Mm, do I?”

Lill was grinning. Vanu put his hand on Lill’s knee under the table and squeezed.

“Did he say ‘princess’?” Atari signed. “It’s more like … ” She sketched out a new sign, combining “royal” and “young” and “person who might be male or female.”

“I like that,” Lill told her, tapping her shoulder and speaking carefully so she could read his lips.

Artayarasha joined them. He’d stayed at the feast after Lill went to bed, told Vanu the substance of their conversation, and then downed a considerable amount of Sukiyan wine and impressed the Hawakhaba by making an effort—not very successful—to learn the burira. He didn’t look hungover, but he had exchanged his Zashian clothes for Hawa black wool and tied back his curly hair. All the men of Tsuruva greeted him heartily.

And there was Gurti, after all. Alone. Huh. Tirtu turned up some time later, coming from a different direction. Either they were being very discreet—why?—or they hadn’t been together after all.

“I’m going up on the wall to look over our defences,” Vanu signed to Lill, when he had seen that Lill was finished eating. “Come with me?”

“Of course.” Lill popped up from the bench, smart as the well-trained soldier that he was, but with a smile that had nothing of the soldier about it.

They walked up on the wall to do a circuit of the fortress, checking on the state of the defences—was everyone awake and at their posts, did they have enough arrows, had they seen or heard anything in the night?—and chatting with the men and the boys and women who were aiding them, thanking them for their hard work. Lill played his new role to perfection. It was hard to believe that there was a time when Lill’s smile had been a rare thing. He smiled so readily and so beautifully now—smiled at compliments to his appearance that Vanu thought would have made him flinch a few months ago.

He smiled at the questions: “Is it true you fought a duel with Enu of Tsuruva and disarmed him in two blows?” and “Did you really beat the Tsunakharu brothers off with a broomstick?” and “I heard you shot seven men in the raid on Tsuruva and scaled the slope behind the west postern in the dark and got in without being seen, twice. That’s not true, is it?”

He smiled and answered: “We were just sparring,” and “Vanu helped,” and “It is, actually.”

It didn’t make it any less impressive that Vanu knew he was being himself. It was a self he had not been in the habit of putting on display, and he was doing it now strategically. He’d worked out that the Hawakhaba found him, with his combination of startling beauty and deadly skill, the perfect wife for the Lion of the Summer Pass.

Lill stood next to Vanu and looked down at the camp of the besiegers below their walls. It was the first time he’d seen them from this vantage. The Sukiyan troops were camped further back in orderly plain canvas tents. The Zashians were closer to the walls, still well out of bowshot, their half-finished earthworks scarring the ground between their camp and the walls of Tagra Degra. The remains of the wicker cover of their ram lay charred and crushed on its side in a ditch. The ram itself seemed to have either been rescued from the wreckage or rolled out of sight.

“We’re working on mining under the ramp.” Vanu pointed.

Lill had to boost himself up on the wall, wedging the toe of one shoe between the stones, to get a good view.

“Want me to lift you up?” Vanu offered.

“They’d like that,” said Lill, nodding toward the men further down the wall, near the gate. “But no, I can see.”

It was certainly good, strategically, that everyone seemed to like him and to think that he and Vanu made an attractive couple. But he did find it rather exhausting.

“And I’m organizing a couple of sorties for tonight,” Vanu went on. “Aiming for maximum disturbance, minimal risk to our men.”

Lill nodded. “Distraction, right? Keep the enemy busy and make them think we don’t have any better plan.”

“That’s it.”

“When will our reinforcements arrive? Now that we’re not waiting on the ransom ploy with Artayarasha, it should be soon, right?”

“Mm. I have sent a runner, but … I need to lead them myself. I’m sorry to say it.”

“No, I understand,” Lill said immediately. “I agree that’s the best plan.” After a moment he admitted, “I didn’t realize you would be going, but it does make sense.”