Lightning & Thunder #3
“No! I—I mean, it’s not your fault. Someone ought to have told me.
” Quite a few people, starting with Arsha in Torakand, ought to have thought of mentioning it.
“You don’t have to force yourself to talk more or differently than you usually do.
I don’t mind. Also, I was thinking—if you sign at the same time as you speak aloud, as you were doing a moment ago, it will help me pick up the hand language. I’d like to. I’ve heard that—”
He stopped himself, realized he’d been about to launch into a recital of everything he’d heard about Tsuruva and its residents and their unique language, and remembered that he and Vanu were supposed to be consummating their marriage.
“I suppose we … should … ” He gestured vaguely.
Vanu raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? Sort of seemed like we shouldn’t, there.”
“Oh? Oh.” They’d come back to that; of course they had. Vanu had stopped touching Lill because Lill had told him to stop. It had never occurred to Lill that he would.
“Could tell you were nervous. Scared, maybe? Thought you were having a good time too, though. Until you weren’t. Is it that you don’t like men? Or sex? Or just me?”
It was all of those things and more. It was that he was terrified he might like all three. How could he possibly answer that question? He didn’t try.
“Please. You should continue. Don’t worry about what I … ”
Vanu’s face has gone stern, all the good humour gone out of it.
“What you want? Nah. Done that before. Taken men who didn’t want it. What you do to enemies in defeat, sometimes.” He looked away for a moment, then added, “Been taken that way, too—not by the enemy, mind. Long time ago. Before I got big. You ever … ? Is that why?”
“N-no, I … no, nothing like that.”
“Good. Won’t happen.”
This was a disaster. Gurti had made it very clear that they were not truly married until Vanu had fucked him. The seed and the flowing and all of that. And the marriage was part of the mission.
Lill’s hands were shaking as he untied the knots holding his trousers together.
He slid them down his legs and off. He was making a shambles of this, and he had to regain control of the situation.
He felt Vanu’s gaze on him, rather pointedly directed toward his private member, which was limp beyond any possibility of revival.
“Not in the mood myself anymore, either,” Vanu said. His voice was gentle again.
“Oh. I am sorry, my lord.”
“Don’t be sorry. Don’t call me ‘my lord,’ either.”
“What … would you like me to call you?” He hadn’t been using a title at all up until now, he realized with some shock. He’d been babbling away about languages as if to an equal.
“Vanu,” said Vanu, dryly. He made a sign: right hand with fingers curled like claws or teeth, left behind it, fingers spread, like a lion’s mane. “We’ve got one for you, too.” He sketched an S-curve with his right hand and made the sign for “little” with his left.
Lill suddenly felt his throat close up, tears gathering behind his eyes. He didn’t know what it was. He felt as if he was in free-fall. He was so confused.
“You know you were drugged,” Vanu said.
Lill nodded, swallowed hard, got control of himself again. “Yes. That is, I didn’t until I heard Na Gurti telling you—but it explains a lot.”
“Yeah. You’re probably still feeling off.”
“I—I probably am.”
“Should have gone easier on you. Sorry. Did try, but … ” He made a rueful face. “How I am.”
He was a monster, a beast, Lill reminded himself. This was all somehow an illusion. It had to be.
“I’m inexperienced,” Lill said. He needed an explanation that wouldn’t put Vanu off, and the truth seemed like it would work as well as anything.
“Yeah.”
“Very—er, completely. I’ve never … with anyone.”
“Yeah? Wanted to? With a man?”
Lill wanted desperately to lie. In any other circumstance he would not have thought twice. Here, a lie would not serve him.
“Yes.” He spoke as quietly as Vanu.
“They told you you shouldn’t, hey?”
“What?”
“Someone told—”
“No, I—I heard you. I … ” He could not talk about this. He could not. Vanu would make some grotesque suggestion—They were wrong, or some such—and what could Lill say?
“It’s all right,” said Vanu, waving a hand. “Pants on. Gonna start bothering you again, have to keep looking at all that.” He grinned.
As Lill fumbled his way back into his trousers, Vanu rose from the bed and went to pick up the pieces of their discarded clothes from the carpet.
He opened the chest and folded articles of clothing away tidily, then pulled out a shirt and took down another garment that hung from a peg on the wall.
He tossed the shirt to Lill, who caught it awkwardly.
It was blue wool, with bands of mountain-style decoration, flowers and stylized animals woven at the opening of the neck.
“Girls decided blue suits you,” Vanu said, throwing the robe that he’d taken from the peg around his own shoulders. It was made of white wool with wide sleeves decorated in red, rather faded and patched neatly along a side seam. “Hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course not,” said Lill automatically. He looked at the shirt in his lap. So Vanu preferred him to dress in men’s clothes. That was a relief. Was that a relief?
Vanu prowled around the room, tidying up. Barefoot, with his hair down, in what was obviously his favourite house robe, which he or one of his daughters had left in Lill’s room for him to put on after he’d finished consummating his marriage. Which he hadn’t done.
Reluctantly, because hiding his bare skin felt like admitting defeat completely, Lill pulled the blue shirt over his head.
It was loose on him but not absurdly so.
It couldn’t have belonged to any of the men in the village, and there certainly hadn’t been time since he arrived to weave a new garment to his size.
It had come from outside the fortress, like the henna and the spices and any number of things at the wedding.
Khatu had said you had to make your clothes last in here, but if you were Vanu’s bride, that didn’t seem to apply.
Clearly these people could come and go as they pleased. Why were they still living in here at all?
“This room’s yours,” said Vanu. “If you want anything for it, just say.”
He could ask for something that they clearly wouldn’t have and hear what the response would be, whether Vanu would admit to having access to the outside world. But he didn’t; he just nodded.
He’d never had a room to himself before. The idea was strange.
“My room’s on the other side of the house—but you know that.”
Vanu flashed him a wry smile. He opened a pair of shutters that Lill had thought must lead to a closet or another room.
Instead, they opened onto a covered balcony that ran the length of the house.
There was a large step down, and the balcony held cushions for seating and a low table with covered dishes.
Vanu walked out and patted the cushions against the wall.
“Dry,” he announced. “Come sit outside.”
Lill unfolded his legs, got up from the bed, and went out onto the balcony, into the wet afternoon sunlight, to sit with his husband.