Doubly Married
Lill was hiding. At least that was what Khatu and Tirtu had said he was doing.
He had pointed out, as mildly as he could, that there were much better hiding places in the village—better places within this house, even—and that it would really be trivially easy for Lord Vanu to find him once he came up onto the top of the house.
There was virtually no cover here, he was hidden from view of the ground only if he stayed sitting in a certain spot, and as soon as anyone came up the ladder from below, he would be not only spotted but cornered, with no viable escape route.
Khatu had laughed and slapped Lill on the back, and Tirtu had looked rather alarmed and explained that they weren’t actually trying to prevent Vanu from finding his bride, it was just part of the wedding ritual.
Lill had known that, of course; he’d thought he understood the whole thing pretty well, after five days of listening to Halza hash out the details with the shaman.
He said gravely, “I know. That’s why I wasn’t suggesting I cover myself in mud and lie down in the pigsty.
” Khatu laughed until tears streamed down his face, and Tirtu left looking uneasy.
The house where he was “hiding” was the one with the curtained doorway where he had seen Vanu Urártu on his first day—or second day, he couldn’t remember anymore—in Umtúshta.
It was being used as a storehouse, but it was decorated as if it had been intended as something grander.
It had three levels, with ladders connecting, and a kind of lookout platform, with a low wall around the edge and a conical roof elevated on posts above it.
There was an excellent view of the village from up here, which was perhaps the point of it.
So here he was, more or less out in the open, and he’d just realized he still had his trousers on under his bridal costume. This was probably the last time today that he’d be alone. He could wriggle out of them while still remaining seated behind the wall, but then what would he do with them?
He heard Khatu’s loud voice from down below. “Why no, my lord! I haven’t seen him all this day!”
He sounded like he was putting on a voice, playing a part.
Lill had to see this. He got to his feet, gathering up his skirts, and leaned out across the wall to look down toward where Khatu’s voice had come from.
Sure enough, he spotted Khatu standing in the doorway of one of the ruined houses, hands on his hips, wearing an apron and headscarf that he had probably borrowed from his mother.
He twisted a lock of his hair around a finger and said, “I wish I could help, by Earth’s bosom, my lord! ”
Mikhi, transformed by a dress and neatly braided hair, was doubled over with laughter.
Lill couldn’t see Vanu’s expression from this vantage, though the Lion of the Summer Pass was there all right, wearing a long black coat with a red sash and two braids in his hair, pinned together at the back, exactly the same style Gurti had put Lill’s hair in, though it looked different on him because his hair was much shorter.
When she said it was a wedding hairstyle, had she meant for the groom?
“Here, let me do one!” Barda clamoured, trying to take the apron and scarf away from his brother.
“Stop it! Play your own part, brother.” Khatu had bundled up the elements of his costume and was holding them out of Barda’s reach and backing away.
Then he turned and sprinted toward the next house.
Someone began singing and shaking a tambourine.
It was Halza, following Vanu and forming part of his small retinue.
Lill rested his elbows on the stone wall and his chin on his hands and watched their progress from house to house, Khatu clowning around in the role of different imaginary villagers, Halza singing, Mikhi laughing, Barda becoming increasingly impatient until he finally stole Khatu’s apron and did a very overdone performance as a sultry village woman trying to flirt with Vanu.
It was hard to tell, from up here, what Vanu was making of any of this.
Lill never heard him speak, though he could hear the voices and laughter of the others clearly enough.
Vanu seemed just to be putting up with it all; if Lill had to guess, he’d say he was tolerating it because the others were having fun.
Maybe this was how a groom in the mountains usually approached this strange bit of playacting on his wedding day.
Normally, it had been explained to Lill, a bride in Hawakhurta hid with relatives on the morning of the wedding, and the groom went through a ritual of asking everyone in the village where she was, at the request of her father.
If he was a fighting man, her male relatives might challenge him when he got to the right house, but of course it would be a sham fight.
Sure enough, when they reached the storehouse where Lill was waiting, Khatu had discarded the apron and headscarf and was playing a very different character.
Lill had found a hole in the wall through which he could peek out at the scene in front of the storehouse while remaining hidden from view.
He watched as Vanu approached the door, flanked by Barda and Mikhi, with Halza bringing up the rear.
For some reason it was Mikhi who spoke, repeating a formula which Lill had heard her say before: “We are seeking Riru, who has gone missing!” Maybe she was acting as a herald or something.
“He is here, but I will never hand him over to you!” Khatu declared with relish.
Vanu made a gesture of impatience, but he didn’t look genuinely annoyed.
He said nothing. He unknotted and unwound the red sash that held his coat closed and handed it to Barda.
He shrugged off the coat and handed it to Mikhi.
He motioned for the two of them to step aside, and they did.
He raised a hand and beckoned to Khatu: Come at me.
It should have been the other way around; Khatu was the defender and should have stood his ground waiting for an attack. But Vanu very clearly would not have attacked him. He’d just have pushed him out of the way. Khatu was the one who wanted a fight, and Vanu was letting him have it.
They were about the same size; Khatu was maybe a shade bulkier, a hair shorter. A decade younger. They circled each other, Khatu prowling like an animal, Vanu nonchalant. Lill saw no sign of weapons. Did they practice wrestling up here?
Clearly they did. Khatu attacked with what Lill would have called an immaculate Eagle From a Branch, and Vanu slipped easily out of his grasp.
Again Lill was impressed by how fast he moved, catlike, light on his feet.
Dodging attacks was something of a specialty of Lill’s, and he judged it very well done for such a big man.
Khatu stumbled and roared with affront, but he recovered quickly and made a second attack.
This time Khatu clamped onto Vanu, gripping handfuls of his black shirt.
They grappled for a moment, arms locked and heads together, booted feet braced in the dirt.
Then Vanu slipped a hand free, seized the front of Khatu’s shirt, spun around, and tossed Khatu forward over his shoulder.
Khatu’s huge body flew flailing through the air.
He tried to drag Vanu down with him as he fell; Vanu went neatly to one knee as Khatu landed like a felled tree, then shook free of Khatu’s grip and sprang back to his feet, dusting himself off.
Mikhi and Barda whooped. Lill put his fingers to his lips because he’d felt a fleeting impulse to join them. It had been such an impressive display of skill. He only wished the fight could have gone on longer. But of course Vanu had been impatient to end it. He had other things to do.
For a moment, enthralled by the match, Lill had forgotten that too. It came back to him with a nauseating lurch in his stomach.
“Hsst, Lill!”
He whipped around to see Halza’s head poking out of the hatch from the lower floor.
“What are you doing?” Lill demanded in a whisper. He flapped a hand. “You’re not supposed to be in here.”
“It’s all right, they won’t notice!” Halza whispered back boldly. “I wanted to tell you we’ve thought of a way to help—Tirtu and I. We saw how bad you were looking in the house earlier. We’ve got something—I can’t say more now. You’ll see. I only wish there were some way I could help her.”
“Who?”
“Her.” There was something about the way he said it that Lill didn’t like at all. “I have to go!”
He disappeared down the ladder with a faint jingling of his tambourine.
Looking back through the chink in the wall, Lill saw Vanu retying his sash and patting his braided hair to check if it had been disarranged by the fight.
Khatu was dusting himself off and grinning like a man who had won the match instead of suffering an ignominious defeat.
Lill could understand that. He used to feel something like that sometimes when Master Hadda caught him unawares in one of their stealth-craft training sessions.
It was satisfying to provoke a master to show off his skill, sometimes, even if you’d been trying to show off your own.