Lightning & Thunder
“The twenty-first martial virtue is cunning. With a sharp mind and a quick wit, the warrior can outmanoeuvre his foes.”
The wedding had passed for Lill in a series of strange, over-bright images, like coloured illustrations in a book.
A man in a white cloak and headdress of black fur dancing, his face hidden behind an animal mask.
Angels with bright hair closing in on him, offering food.
Everyone seemed to be talking with their hands.
Voices rose and fell around him in every language he had ever known.
Halza was singing, praying aloud, inviting the attention of the Almighty, and there was nothing Lill could do.
Nowhere he could hide. Thickly fragrant smoke.
Sweet-tart slices of apple, juice bursting brightly on his tongue, and the warmth of a strong hand enclosing his.
And then, as the pieces were beginning at last to cohere, time beginning to flow in a stream again, he heard Gurti explaining, “They lit up some of the shaman’s incense … They meant well … ”
So that was what had happened. He’d thought he was going mad. Some kind of divine punishment, he’d thought.
It could still have been that, but perhaps it wasn’t permanent. Perhaps it had only been a warning. Go back to where you belong. He would as soon as he could.
He felt like a wrung-out rag, but he was able to think clearly now and stay on his feet without wobbling. The food and the cool well water that Vanu had given him had probably helped. The touch of Vanu’s hand, oddly, had certainly helped.
Halfway through the Twenty-One Martial Virtues, he saw a flash of distant lightning and heard thunder.
When he finished, the lightning flashed again, much closer, and the thunder rolled, echoing off the mountains, a colossal noise.
Lill flinched. He felt Vanu standing up beside him, offering his hand again, unspeaking, as he had done before.
The veil was no longer between them; Lill was looking into Vanu’s pale blue eyes unprotected.
Standing on the bench made him only a little taller than Vanu.
“Here comes the rain!” someone announced, sounding almost gleeful.
And here it came: fat drops plopping down on the wedding feast and the guests around the table.
Lightning flashed searingly, and the thunder crowded after it, terrifyingly loud.
Lill put his hand in Vanu’s and hopped down from the bench.
He felt calm now. If he was going to be struck down, he would be. At least it would be quick.
The wedding guests were grabbing dishes off the table and bundling things away from the rain. Vanu gestured to his daughters, and they ran ahead toward his house. He slung an arm around Lill’s shoulders. They ran together after the girls.
They reached the shelter of the house just before the rain began sluicing out of the clouds in earnest, one roll of thunder treading on the heels of the last. The door opened into a narrow entry hall, dark in the gloom of the storm.
Deeper into the house, Lill could hear the girls running and laughing breathlessly, then the sound of a back door opening and closing as they went out into the yard.
He’d already surmised that they had their own separate house in the compound.
He and Vanu Urártu—his husband—were alone.
This, what faced him now, was the part that Halza and even Tirtu had thought would be easier for him if he were in a drugged stupor. Maybe it would have been. He felt himself trembling and could have blamed it on the cold and his rain-spotted clothes, but it wasn’t that really.
He summoned his courage. He had seen this done before, by women in the marketplace bidding farewell to their husbands. He reached up and put his hand firmly on the back of Vanu’s neck, under his hair. He stood on his tiptoes. He couldn’t reach.
There was no way he could bring his mouth to Vanu’s to kiss him unless Vanu cooperated and bent his head. Which he did.
Their lips touched. It was less strange than Lill had expected, not so different from any other kind of touch.
Vanu’s lips were surprisingly soft against his, warm and dry.
There was no taste, and he had a good smell, faint and clean.
Vanu broke the kiss but did not move away from Lill.
Preparing his next move like a wrestler—no, don’t think of it in those terms, that’s not helpful.
He touched Lill’s cheek lightly with the knuckles of his right hand, brushing aside the beads of the bridal headdress. He kissed Lill again, his mouth lingering, a hint of something wet. His tongue? It felt … A shiver ran down through the core of Lill’s body.
The strings of beads rattled. Vanu’s hand was cupping the side of Lill’s face, his long fingers curving around Lill’s ear.
With his other hand he gathered Lill toward him, gently, a suggestion rather than a command.
Lill offered his lips again, parted this time, not thinking—carefully not thinking. It was …
Vanu kissed him again, deeper, accepting the invitation. Lill felt he needed to do something with his hands. Anything—he didn’t know what—but they should be involved somehow, not hanging by his sides as they were now.
Vanu pulled back, smiling down at Lill, and inclined his head toward the inside of the house, glancing upward. The message was clear. Lill nodded.
Thunder crashed and rumbled over the steady beat of the rain.
Vanu took Lill’s hand, and they walked through the house.
It was dim inside, the shutters closed. Lill saw a large room with a raised platform at one end, covered with carpets and cushions for seating, a soot-stained stone vault underneath showing where a fire could be built to warm the platform from below in the winter.
Things hung on the walls: a basket, a long sword, a roughly carved wooden plaque with words in the strange Hawa alphabet that he hadn’t known existed.
Along one wall was a row of low cupboards that also served as a step up, and two sets of wooden stairs, one at each end, leading to a pair of landings with carved wooden railings.
The nearer one must have been the landing that Lill had seen through the door of Vanu’s bedchamber.
They were heading toward the farther one.
Lill followed Vanu up the stairs, still holding his hand, his own feeling tiny in Vanu’s vast grip. Vanu pushed open the door at the top and gestured for Lill to enter.
The room was smaller than the one Lill had hidden in before, without the raised platform for the bed, but with the same cupboards in the wall and a large chest next to the door.
The bed was smaller too, but covered with a quilt of deep blue silk, an amazingly lovely thing.
A silver lamp hung on a hook, and a round, low table held an arrangement of other beautiful objects: a round mirror, a bone comb, a dish of dried flower petals, an inlaid box.
The walls were decorated with painted bands of flowers.
Vanu closed the door behind them. The sound of the rain on the roof filled the small room, but the thunder had quieted now, and the rain’s rhythm was softer.
Vanu’s hands were on Lill’s waist, warm through the layers of fabric.
Something hot flared in Lill’s groin, and his mind reached automatically for the familiar rituals of self-control: the breath, the incantation, the—he fumbled and lost his hold on all of it.
He ought not to use any of that here. To seem willing was part of the mission. He was of course not truly willing, but he must seem so. He let himself sink tentatively into the sensation, so unwelcome, so shameful. He stood on tiptoe again to offer Vanu his mouth.
Vanu twisted the strings of beads around his hand as he kissed Lill.
He found one of the pins that held the bridal crown in place, slid it out of its mooring in Lill’s braided hair, and let it drop soundlessly to the carpet.
One by one he found the other pins and drew them out.
Lill tried to help, but his hands fluttered uselessly around his head instead, as if he couldn’t command them while Vanu’s mouth was on him—on his lips, his forehead, his throat.
Vanu’s tongue slid against his, Vanu’s teeth caressed the side of his neck.
Lill’s insides seemed to strain toward the touch like a plant reaching for the sun.
Vanu plucked the amber and silver ornaments from Lill’s hair, and they dropped like overripe fruit to the carpet.
He released Lill’s lips and lifted the headdress gently off.
He gathered up the veil, stuffed it into the hollow of the crown, and bowled the whole thing into the far corner of the room.
Lill made a little noise of surprise, and Vanu grinned at him.
No one could deny that he had a handsome smile, broad and bright and tugged a little off-kilter by scar tissue, transforming the stern planes of his face.
The Lion of the Summer Pass straightened up and rubbed the back of his neck, and Lill realized how much he had to lean down for them to kiss.
They should change position somehow. Lill could feel the bed gaping like a pit behind him.
But this was the mission. They have to consummate the marriage some way, Gurti had said.
Vanu wasn’t moving toward the bed. He took a step backward instead, drawing Lill by the hand, and took a seat on the top of the chest against the wall. Lill found himself standing between Vanu’s long legs, looking down at him.
Vanu put his hands on the knot of Lill’s sash and looked up into Lill’s face.
“May I?” he whispered, the words, in Zashian, barely a breath.
Lill nodded mutely. He thought that was the first time he had heard Vanu speak. Though he must have said something at the wedding. Maybe Lill had been too groggy then to notice.
Vanu’s long fingers made quick work of the knot. The silk hissed as he unwound the sash and let it fall.