Ordinary Sisters #2
“Where Vanu—Da—is from,” she said when she had swallowed her food. “They do them different in every village. We’re not all from the same place.”
“Ah,” said Lill.
He wasn’t sure how much he wanted to hear about their family background.
The three girls looked so dissimilar that he thought they probably had three different mothers, none of whom seemed to be part of Vanu’s life anymore, and Lill was trying hard not to do the sums in his head to figure out what age Vanu had been when he fathered his eldest daughter. It was all rather daunting.
“Hey, you’re speaking Hawada!” said Mikhi suddenly. “We thought you only spoke Zashian.”
Lill nodded. He put down his half-eaten pastry to sign, “I know a little, little hand language too.”
The girls gasped, and the youngest began bouncing excitedly and signing at an incredible speed. Lill saw Mikhi signing, “Little, he said, little little little.”
The eldest girl had not put down her pastry, but she smiled across the table at Lill, a polite but guarded expression.
Mikhi stuffed the last fragments of plasinta in her mouth and licked her fingers.
“Allow me to introduce my sisters properly,” she said indistinctly.
“Atari is my younger sister. Susami is the eldest. Oops, I should have done that the other way around. Susami—elder sister. Me, Mikhi. Atari, youngest. Do you want to see the signs for our names?”
From a little outburst on Atari’s part, Lill gathered that she wanted to be the one to show him.
He turned his attention to her and repeated the signs that she showed him for her own name, Mikhi’s, and Susami’s.
She seemed delighted to learn that he already knew the signs for his name and Vanu’s.
She seemed delighted by a lot of things.
The sign for Atari’s name did look like it could be the word for “mouse,” just as Vanu’s sign was presumably the one for “lion.” And the sign they’d chosen for Lill was … surely the word for “snake.” Of course that was a coincidence—it had to be.
“You know how they call him the Lion of the Summer Pass?’ said Mikhi, signing the words as she spoke them aloud. “I’m the Roar of the Lion. Because I interpret for him. I was apprenticed to his old interpreter, Darma, who was killed by the invader king’s army.”
There was a conversation going on between Vanu and his eldest daughter, Susami. She was trying to tell Mikhi something, asking her to say something to Lill, and Vanu was trying to dissuade her. Good-humouredly, almost laughing, with an expression that showed he did not expect to be listened to.
“Susami wants me to tell you,” Mikhi began when she had got the message, while Vanu covered most of his face with one hand and shook his head, “that Da is supposed to be careful to eat slowly.” Vanu signed something else.
“He wants you to know that he always does and you don’t have to worry about him. ”
Now that she mentioned it, Lill noticed that it was true; Vanu was eating his pastry in much the same way as his daughters, sitting up straight and taking small bites. It was slightly incongruous. Lill would have expected a bandit lord to slouch and wolf his food.
“He can’t always swallow properly,” Mikhi explained. “Because of his throat. He could choke if he eats too fast.”
Vanu waved this away with an eye-roll.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Lill solemnly. He knew how to tease, and it seemed to be the thing that was called for here.
Could he use that? A weakness that might be exploited? He would have to bear it in mind.
Atari tapped Lill on the shoulder and signed something at him.
“Do you think we look like sisters?” Mikhi translated. She didn’t have a specific voice to signal that she was speaking for Atari; she probably didn’t do it often.
It was an awkward question, and he didn’t have an answer ready, but it didn’t matter because Atari was off and signing again, looking intently up at him with her little mouse face.
“We’re not ordinary sisters. Da brought us home like treasure from a raid—pff!
Adopted us, she means,” Mikhi added. “She’s clever, Atari, but she can be silly.
” She flapped a hand dismissively at the younger girl and turned to Lill.
“All it is, is Atari is Susami’s cousin, and Da adopted her at the same time Susami came to live with us, which was six years ago, after Susami’s uncle—who was Atari’s father—was killed in battle.
” She paused, then added, “Susami is Da’s daughter in the ordinary way.
“And me, I’m no blood relation to any of them, but my elder brother was one of Da’s hearthmen, and I’ve been with Da for seven years, since my real parents were killed in the siege of Taskhabara.
That’s where I’m from. I was sent to live with my kin in Tsuruva to learn hand language because of being hard of hearing.
And then—” She broke off as both Susami and Vanu were signing at her.
“Da, I know, but—ugh!” She turned back to Lill with an aggrieved look.
“I’m just trying to explain all this to you, hey?
It’s not my fault if it’s all about people’s kin being killed, which she thinks isn’t suitable talk for a wedding day. ”
“I understand,” said Lill. “My own kin have mostly been killed.”
Out of the corner of his eye he caught the expression that flickered across Vanu’s face at that. Huh. Did he somehow know? Already?
Mikhi nodded sympathetically. “It’s like that. It’s the times we live in. If the king of Zash would leave us alone, it wouldn’t keep happening.”
If your people didn’t live by banditry and hostage-taking and would simply submit to the peaceful rule of the Great King, it wouldn’t keep happening. Lill didn’t say that.
Susami rose from her seat to pick up the platter of plasinta and offer it to Lill, pointing to some that were folded in a different shape than the others.
“They’re a different kind,” Mikhi explained, reaching across to help herself. “Try one.”
“Thank you,” Lill signed to Susami and took one too. It was filled with honey-sweetened cheese, moist and delicious.
Atari tapped him on the shoulder again and asked another question.
“Did she say, do I know how to read?” Lill guessed. “Yes, but only in Zashian. Well, and other languages, but not Hawada.”
Atari smiled excitedly and began signing again without waiting for Mikhi to interpret Lill’s reply, which she couldn’t do while eating anyway.