Plum Wine #2
“Shut up, you inconsequential clown! I was up on the Korukhura doing divinations in the villages. They’re savages up there—fucking beasts.
No respect. This headman in one of the villages, this, this hairy ignoramus, he didn’t like what the spirits had to tell him, and he imprisoned me in his hall.
I had to do something—I thought I was going to die up there!
I made overtures to a young woman who I thought was his daughter, they were well received, and she assisted me in making my escape.
In return for certain favours. Forbidden to me, yes, but what choice did I have?
It was, as I say, not enjoyable, not an experience I reflect upon with satisfaction.
The young woman turned out, to my surprise, to be not the ignoramus’s daughter but his wife.
The liaison was discovered—she did not, I may say, do a very good job of concealing it, for some reason of her own—and I was forced to flee the whole peak. I needed somewhere to … to … ”
“Lie low,” Lill supplied. “That’s the term.”
“Thank you. Yes. So I came here.”
“And then,” Tirtu chimed in again, “after hiding out here for a year or more, he decided he’d had enough of us, and he left—and a fortnight later, he came crawling back! Because they’re still talking about him out there—about how he besmirched himself.” He dissolved into unsteady giggling.
“Is that true?” Lill asked.
“It is not true,” said Padunu. “It was three weeks, and … It was three weeks.”
Lill couldn’t prevent a little bubble of laughter escaping his lips. “Poor Padunu.”
“Thank you. I never get any sympathy, you realize. It isn’t as if—I mean—I purified myself, I spent a year doing all the correct rituals, I assure you I can perform satisfactorily as a shaman again.
But that, that savage from the Korukhura Peak has come down the mountain and is raiding out of Dukka.
I can’t work in any of the villages in the Spring Valley. ”
“How unfortunate!”
“I know, it is. Thank you, Na Urárti—you are so understanding. I am sorry I tried to make Barda and Khatu throw you over the fortress wall.”
Lill lifted his wine cup and found that it was empty. He set it down carefully on the table. “I forgive you, Shaman. You were following orders. Tirtu!”
“Eh?” Tirtu seemed to have been dozing off. He roused himself.
“I am sorry I jumped on your head and held a knife to your throat.”
“When … did you do that? Did I miss something?”
“When he was saving me from being thrown over the fortress wall,” Halza supplied.
“I’m not sorry I did that,” said Lill.
“Just that it wasn’t somebody else’s head you jumped on.”
“Right.”
“Faru’s head,” Tirtu suggested.
Padunu slapped the table weakly. “Lord Faru’s my patron, won’t hear a word against him. Fucker.”
“Who?”
“He’s a fucker.” Padunu shook his head sadly.
“Does he mean me?” Tirtu asked Lill.
“I think he means Faru. Shh.”
“I think we may be very drunk,” said Halza thoughtfully.
They sat and considered that in silence for a minute. Lill remembered hearing that it helped to drink water and eat if you’d had too much wine. He clambered over Halza and got down from the seating platform.
“Privy’s that way,” Halza called after him, pointing.
“Not going to the privy.”
But when he was on his feet, he realized he did need to.
The room was listing gently to and fro as he made his way there.
The night air was cool on his face when he stepped outside.
On his way back from the privy, he found some flatbread in Halza’s roofless kitchen.
He drizzled a piece with honey from a small crock and carried it very carefully back to the table.
He stepped over Halza and resumed his seat.
“Who needs more wine?” Tirtu asked, brandishing the bottle.
“Bear plant, broadleaf, purple rockbloom, giant cow parsnip.” Padunu appeared to be rhyming off a list of plants. He paused in counting on his fingers to hold out his ram’s horn.
“Me,” said Halza, pushing his cup across the table.
“Heart of the Blue Heaven,” Lill murmured. He took a bite of his bread and honey, holding his free hand over the mouth of his cup so that Tirtu couldn’t fill it.
“Spotted catspaw,” Padunu resumed. He took a slug of wine.
“That one’s especially dangerous—it could be dissolved in this cup right now, and I would taste nothing amiss.
Consume a fatal dose without noticing. Drop down dead.
And I know where to get that one. Fact of the matter, I have some, dried. Back at the house.”
“All right, all right. You’ve proved your point.” Halza waved his hand wearily.
Lill didn’t know what point Padunu had been proving, and he didn’t care.
A poison that you couldn’t taste? He knew of a few, not tasteless exactly, but mild-tasting, easily masked by a flavourful wine.
And Padunu had such things on hand, did he?
It was useful information. Something to keep in the back of his mind.
He took another large bite of bread. The honey tasted shockingly sweet after the wine.
Poison interested him less than it had two weeks ago. There were plenty of ways to do the job. An arrow might be the easiest. It could be done from a distance, which would greatly lessen the risk.
He wouldn’t be able to call for help, if he was attacked in his house. He couldn’t raise his voice enough to be heard outside his compound, and inside there was no one who could hear him. If it took more than one arrow …
When the time came, it would be good that Halza was here. He would look after the girls. He wanted to look after Susami, and maybe he wouldn’t like taking responsibility for her sisters as well, but he would do it. He was a good man.
When the time came …
He just needed one more thing in place before he would be ready for the signal, whenever it came. He needed to know the way out of Umtúshta. He had an idea, but he needed to find out for sure. He’d been wrong before.
“Let’s hear a song, Halu,” Tirtu said, slamming his empty ram’s horn onto the table. “Sing us a song!”
“All right, but you must all sing with me. I’ll teach you an easy one.”
They were all belting out the chorus of a song about a girl that they’d lost by the banks of the Green Vuilla when someone knocked on the door. Halza half-staggered, half-rolled off the seating platform toward the door while the rest of them went on singing.
“Lill!” Halza bawled from the door. “Your husband’s here!”
Vanu was standing in the doorway, a warrior angel in his black clothes, the colour bleached from his hair by the moonlight.
“Lord Vanu!” Tirtu and Padunu shouted raggedly. Padunu raised his ram’s horn and sloshed wine over the table.
“ … by the banks of the beautiful Gree-een Voo-ee-ra!” Tirtu roared.
“We’ll make room at the table for you, my lord,” Halza was saying, trying to make Vanu a low bow and hanging onto the door to avoid falling on his face.
But Lill was already scooting across the cushions to get down from the seating platform.
“He hasn’t come to drink, you goose. He’s come to walk me home.”
“Ready to leave?” Vanu signed as Lill reached the door.
Lill nodded. He slipped out into the night beside his husband. “Thanks for inviting me, Halza. Thanks for the wine, Tirtu! Good night, Padunu!”
“Good night!”
“Is he leaving? Na Urárti, are you leaving?”
“Good night!”
Vanu pulled the door closed after them, since Halza was already weaving his way back toward the table. Vanu’s hand was warm on the base of Lill’s neck, gently steering him onto the path homeward.
“Were you singing? Haven’t heard you sing before.”
Lill smiled in the moonlight. “I’m full of surprises. But being a good singer is not one of them.”
“I thought you sounded fine. Happy to hear you sing any time.”
Lill laughed and butted his head against Vanu’s upper arm.
“Drink too much?”
“Yeah. Can’t you tell?”
“With you? No.”
“I ate some bread and refused a third cup, so hopefully I should be all right.”
Vanu rubbed his hand between Lill’s shoulder-blades. “You’ll be fine. Drink some water before you go to bed.”
They reached the door of their house. Vanu unhooked a key from his belt and unlocked the door. He held it open but did not go in.
“You can take yourself up to bed all right? I’m going over to the great house to get Gurti to look in on the other three in a bit, make sure they don’t do themselves any harm.”
“That’s so thoughtful of you.”
“Nah, shouldn’t foist it on her. Should go back there and keep an eye on them myself—but I don’t wanna.”
Lill nodded. “Na Gurti will be happy to help. Yes, I can put myself to bed. I’ll remember to drink water.”
“Good.” Vanu leaned down and kissed him. When he straightened up, Lill saw him subtly lick his lips.
Lill went inside, and the door closed behind him. He heard Vanu’s key turn in the lock.
He went to the kitchen and poured himself a generous drink of water from the pitcher that they kept in the window embrasure.
He went up the stairs to his room slowly and stood for a minute at the foot of his bed.
He should go to sleep—he would—but this was too good an opportunity to pass up.
He opened the door to the balcony and went out.
There were no lights burning in the girls’ house, but he went cautiously all the same in case one of them was awake and looking out a window. He made his way down the exterior stairs and around to the far side of the yard. He reached the round hut with the broken roof beyond the girls’ house.