Suitably Bloodied
The family was sombre as they gathered in the main room of the girls’ house.
“I have been thinking,” Vanu said. “Our friend Davanu is dead, and the last thing he did for us was to send me a bride he had chosen. It is in my mind not to refuse his last gift.”
The girls all nodded. Susami and Mikhi, in their different ways, looked resigned. Atari tried to suppress a smile, not very successfully.
“I have not made my decision,” Vanu said. “I won’t bring him home if we do not all agree.”
“Are you sure you can trust him?” Susami asked. “I know Tirtu is trustworthy, but Tirtu didn’t choose him. And Davanu was trustworthy, but Davanu has been killed. Are we sure the boy really comes from him?”
Vanu shook his head. She was voicing thoughts he’d had himself.
“Who else would he come from?” Mikhi scoffed.
“Da has many enemies,” said Susami. “Or have you forgotten why we are living inside Umtúshta these three years?”
“I haven’t forgotten! But why would anyone send a little doll like that to try to harm Da?”
“Because they were hoping Da would like him,” said Atari, giving Mikhi a look as if she couldn’t believe her sister was so na?ve. “They know Da is not easy to kill and that they must use trickery.”
The three girls looked at Vanu for a moment, and he felt he ought to say something.
“He had a set of throwing knives on him when he came over the wall,” he admitted.
“He’d just come up the mountain. It can be dangerous on the roads,” said Susami reasonably.
“They were hidden under his skirt.”
“Nice,” said Mikhi. “I’ve always wanted to do that.”
Susami tsked. “You’d have to flash your legs at everyone before you could throw your knives.”
“Sure. Distract them.” Mikhi wiggled her eyebrows.
“Maybe,” said Atari, sticking to the topic at hand, “you should ask him what he wants, if he wants to marry you or not. He might not realize he can go home. If he really was sent by one of your enemies, I think he’d probably rather do that.”
It was a simple solution, and no one could find fault with it.
“Atari is wise as usual,” said Susami.
“And if he says he doesn’t want to go home?” Vanu prompted.
Susami smiled. “Then I say he’s welcome here.”
“Me too,” said Mikhi.
“Will we have a wedding?” Atari asked.
“If he says yes,” said Vanu. “We will have a wedding. I’ll bring him home to live with us, and we will see how we all suit one another. If he’s unhappy and wishes to leave, I’ll send him home. If any of you are unhappy and he is the cause, I’ll send him home. Fair?”
“Fair,” said Mikhi, and the other girls nodded.
“What if you are unhappy?” Susami asked.
“I don’t foresee that,” he said.
That made her smile again. Atari laughed and said something too quick for him to catch. He looked at her questioningly.
“She said, ‘See? He does like him,’” Mikhi told on her.
“Whether I like him or not, if he doesn’t behave himself around the three of you, he goes.”
Mikhi made an arc in the air with her hand, ending in a splat gesture. Susami frowned at her.
“What will we serve for the wedding feast?” Atari asked, ignoring all this.
“Will he need bridal clothes?” Susami asked.
“He came in wedding clothes,” Mikhi reported, “but Khatu shot an arrow through the skirt and it tore all the way up to here. But I still couldn’t tell that he was a boy!”
“What does he look like?” Atari asked. “Is he really like a doll, as Mikhi said?”
“He’s a young man,” said Vanu. “About Susami’s age. He’s very … ” What could he say? “He’s small and pretty.”
“Is he deaf?” Atari asked.
Now that was a question. Davanu had sent him, so maybe, just possibly …
“No,” said Mikhi. “I talked to him—talked out loud—and he can hear. Though … ” Something seemed to occur to her. “I don’t think he speaks Hawada. He may not have understood anything I said. I didn’t think to ask if he knows hand language.”
“It’s unlikely he will,” said Vanu. “He is from the lowlands—it’s not like in the Summer Pass.”
Atari nodded, still holding onto her enthusiasm. “We’ll find some way to talk together. I am so glad you’re going to marry him after all. I mean—ask him to marry you.”
Vanu was beginning to feel rather cheerful about it himself. He tapped Mikhi’s arm. “Let’s go together and tell Tirtu.”
Halza started up in bed as Lill burst through the door of the infirmary.
“What is it? What’s going on?”
“Can you stand? What about walking?” Lill demanded.
“I can try.” He grabbed Lill’s hands and hauled himself awkwardly up. “All right, I’m up. Now what?”
“Now we have to get out of here before they come to throw us both over the wall.”
Halza gasped. “I thought—”
“I know. It turns out Vanu doesn’t want a bride—doesn’t want me, anyway, and he gave orders to dispose of me. I don’t know what orders he gave about you, but let’s not stay here to find out.”
He’d actually been surprised to find Halza still in the infirmary when he got there. It had taken him long enough to cut through the rope and escape from Vanu’s house that he’d expected Halza to have been thrown over the wall already.
They left the infirmary with Halza leaning heavily on Lill and dragging himself along at a maddeningly slow pace.
“Where can we go? Do you have a plan?”
“Shh. Yes.”
If there really was a way out of the fortress, it had to be a tunnel.
And the exit had to be somewhere fairly far away, out of sight of the soldiers standing guard by the gate.
If you had to dig a long tunnel like that, you’d want to start it as close to the wall on this side as you could, rather than adding extra length by tunnelling under the village too. So that was where they should look.
Lill hadn’t seen any obvious signs of digging, any big piles of dirt, for instance. He remembered the birds-eye view he’d had of the village from the top of the wall and wished that at the time he had known what he was looking for.
With any luck, he wouldn’t be noticed missing for a little while yet.
Khatu and Barda thought he was in Vanu’s house, and Vanu thought he had been thrown over the wall, so until they talked to one another, they wouldn’t realize anything was wrong.
Padunu would have told Faru what his sons had done, and Faru might tell Vanu—but apparently that hadn’t happened yet.
Maybe the brothers had stopped Padunu from telling, or maybe Faru didn’t want to confess that he’d failed to carry out Vanu’s orders.
Halza needed to stop for a rest, so they dropped down to crouch behind one of the ruined houses. They had not got very far.
“What did they do to you?” Halza whispered anxiously. “Did they hurt you? How did you get away?”
Lill glared and put a finger to his lips. They’d only just gained their position; didn’t the fool have sense enough to remain silent to listen for pursuit?
He’d got away simply by climbing back out through the second-storey window of Vanu’s house, easy enough once he was unbound. He’d brought the rope with him, wrapped around his waist, and he had Vanu’s dagger. White Viper’s dagger.
He wished he hadn’t remembered that he needed to come back to look for Halza.
He’d made up his mind to stay in Vanu’s cupboard and come out when Vanu was sleeping.
But Halza was a comrade of sorts, and you shouldn’t leave a comrade behind—that was one of the Twenty-One Martial Virtues, which Lill had memorized once in lieu of a week’s worth of sparring practice while he was recovering from a broken rib.
So he’d get Halza out safely, and then he’d see about salvaging his mission.
“What are we doing?” Halza whispered.
Lill was satisfied there were no sounds of pursuit by this time. “I think there’s a tunnel. A way out of the stronghold.”
“No! How do you know?”
“Shh! I don’t know. But it would explain some things. Like why they don’t seem to be short of food or fuel.”
“That’s true! Sorry, sorry—that’s true. I never thought of that.”
“We have to find a place to hide you, and I’ll go look for the tunnel.”
“But surely that’s dangerous!”
“You can barely walk. If I need to hide in a hurry, I can do it if I’m alone.”
Halza looked sceptical, which irritated Lill.
“Come on, let’s find a place where you’ll be safe on your own.”
He had a place in mind, one of the ruined houses that had an intact lean-to on one side.
He led Halza there, sneaking cautiously close to walls and keeping low to the ground.
The temple where Halza had trained obviously hadn’t taught even the most basic techniques of stealth.
Or maybe he just hadn’t learned them properly at all.
That kind of thing had always been Lill’s strength.
They made it to the lean-to without incident, and Lill got the door open and peeked inside. There was a step down to a chill, empty space that smelled of root vegetables.
“Good,” he said, holding the door open for Halza. “You should be well hidden in there for a while.”
Halza hesitated. “Are you sure you’ll be all right?”
“Of course not,” Lill said impatiently. “How could I be sure of that?”
Halza swayed back, eyes widening, as if he found Lill’s attitude a shock. But what did he expect?
“I’m sure I want you to get in there and hide,” Lill said, since the man seemed to want certainty about something. “Every moment we stand here talking about it is one more moment they could see us.”
Halza gulped and ducked through the low doorway into the root cellar. Lill closed the door behind him, positioning the latch so that it could be pushed open from the inside with a little effort, but wouldn’t look obviously undone to a passerby. Then he took off for the fortress wall.
“Marvellous! Splendid!” Tirtu rubbed his hands together, beaming. “I knew you would come around. What made you change your mind, if I may ask, my lord?”
“Learning of Lord Davanu’s death,” said Vanu. He said the same thing that he had told the girls: “I will not refuse his last gift to me.”
Mikhi, who was interpreting for him, gave the words quiet dignity, as if what he was proposing to do was noble and self-sacrificing, which it wasn’t.