The Language of Love #3
“I do. You jumped on me and pulled my hair.”
“You were sneaking around in the dark.”
“So were you.”
“See? Friends! We have so much in common.”
“We absolutely do not.”
“You’re friends with Khatu.”
“I have had conversations with Khatu that did not involve violence. I would not say we’re friends.”
“We’re having a conversation that doesn’t involve violence right now!” said Barda triumphantly. “And I won’t tell Khatu what you said about not being friends—it’d hurt his feelings. He’s got feelings, Khatu, more feelings than sense.”
“You were going to ask me a favour,” Lill prompted.
“Was I?”
“Yes, you said, ‘We’re friends, right?’ and you were going to follow that with, ‘So I can ask you … ’ whatever it was. Something to do with my husband’s private affairs, I assume. Or have you got a charm for magical fog that you want to teach me?”
Barda snickered in a highly self-satisfied way.
“Halza told you about that, hey? I hope you didn’t disillusion him.
Oh, you did. Well, that’s all right. It was fun while it lasted.
Look, Lill. Is that your whole name, by the way?
Is that short for something? Never mind.
I know I tried to bully you when you first got here, but I’ve seen enough since then to know you’re not one to be bullied. ”
“So you want to be friends instead.”
“I always wanted to be friends! Still wouldn’t mind being a bit more than friends, if you know what I mean—you do, yeah, and you’re not interested, I can see that. No hard feelings. I could tell at the wedding Lord V is the only man for you.”
That, Lill thought, was obviously bait, and he knew better than to take it. He said nothing.
“Yep,” Barda went on with a kind of smug wistfulness, “you’re a one-lion sort of boy, and you found your mate. I can always tell.”
At that, Lill could not stop himself giving Barda a scornful look. The fool just smirked back.
Once he had those knives, life in Torakand became easier for Lill.
He made a target out of a cracked wooden tray that he found discarded behind a cook shop, which he would hang up in the square and throw the knives at.
This had always been one of his better skills.
People would gather to watch, and enough of them would toss him copper coins or buy him buns from the market vendors that he rarely had to resort to stealing anymore.
Sometimes he could join one of the travelling troupes for a day or two of performing in the squares, and that was even better.
He was able to make himself a better target with some wood and paint that they let him use, and he bought himself a better coat.
Still none of the troupes seemed inclined to take him on as a permanent member, and he didn’t press the issue.
He got through the winter, which was mild that year in Torakand, without snow or threat of frostbite. The days were lengthening, and the sun was just starting to feel warmer when the day came that changed everything.
He was on his own that afternoon, in the square where he performed (and slept) these days, on the south bank of the river, a quieter neighbourhood but with plenty of large houses.
The porters and eunuchs and veiled women who came out of them on errands were often generous tippers, and now that he’d got himself a good coat, he had faint hopes of being invited into a nobleman’s home to perform.
So when a silver Sukiyan coin rolled and spun to a stop at his feet after he’d thrown his last knife, of course he looked to see who had thrown it.
It was a youth, Lill’s own age, Chiddang or maybe half-Chiddang like himself, wearing his black hair in long plaits in the style of a Chiddang man of good birth.
He was well dressed, but not like a princeling or a courtier—Lill had seen that kind of wealth on display—and the coin he had thrown, though silver, was not large.
Lill bent to pick it up, without taking his eyes off the person who had thrown it.
The young man strolled across the square toward Lill, who stayed on the ground, gathering the few other coins that his performance had earned him.
There was something at once familiar and strange about the newcomer, though it took Lill some moments—until the young man had arrived in front of him—to work out what it was.
The stranger had an attractive face, with narrow dark eyes and pale skin.
He wore a Zashian-style hat with a feather and was doing his best to grow a beard—it was working better for him than it ever had for Lill, which wasn’t saying much.
Lill straightened up and found himself eye-to-eye with the newcomer.
They were the same height. Well, not quite—the stranger was wearing thick-soled wooden clogs to keep his shoes out of the mud of the street, so he must have been an inch or two shorter than Lill.
“You’ve noticed it too,” the stranger remarked.
“Noticed what?” said Lill guardedly, in case it wasn’t what he was thinking.
This smartly dressed young man with his respectable braids and hard-won stubble might rightly feel insulted to be told by a dirty street performer, “Yes, I’ve noticed that we look remarkably alike.”