Happy Marriages #2
That afternoon they sat out on the balcony together, as they did almost every day.
Vanu had started carving a new wooden bowl, this one with handles.
Lill enjoyed watching him as a pleasing round shape emerged from the chunk of wood that he had started with.
He worked slowly and methodically, with smooth motions of the knife that looked small in his big hands, though it was actually a sizeable blade.
They had been silent for several minutes, Vanu focussed on his carving, Lill watching him. Suddenly Vanu said aloud, “The temples at Alazani. You hear people say what happened to them?”
“Of course,” said Lill.
It was one of the worst things the Lion of the Summer Pass had done—was said to have done.
Three ancient temples burned, priests slaughtered, and treasures plundered: typical business for a mountain bandit lord, but on an audacious scale.
And now—Lill felt a sudden lifting of his heart, because Vanu was about to reveal that he hadn’t done it.
“Regret that,” Vanu said, not looking up from the wood, though his knife had stopped moving. “More than anything I ever did.”
“Oh,” said Lill. An odd mixture of feelings swirled inside him.
“Should have had better control of my men.” He frowned.
“Or I should have known that I wouldn’t be able to rein them in and shouldn’t have taken them down there.
It was supposed to be a strategic thing—take the temples to show that we could.
You ever see them? They’re fortified. Hard to take.
I did figure there’d be a bit of robbery, if there was anything to take—wasn’t going to try telling a force of Hawakhaba not to steal shiny things.
Be like telling the snow not to fall. But setting fire to the buildings, cutting down holy men when they tried to flee? ”
“You didn’t order that.”
Vanu looked up with an expression of hopeful surprise. “You knew that?”
“Not before I met you.” Not until that moment, when it had popped out of his mouth.
“Well, no.” Vanu was silent for a moment, carving again, concentrating on the motion of his knife through the wood.
“It was like—in the steppes, the wild horses, when one of them starts to run, they all go in a flood, you know. You can’t stop them.
The men were like that, falling on those temples.
That was where I lost Darma. My interpreter.
He and I had quarrelled that morning, and I …
regret I never got to make things right before he was gone. Died in the fire in the main temple.”
“What was he doing, trying to put it out?”
Vanu looked up again. His pale eyes could be so bleak sometimes. “No. Setting it.”
“Then … why did you want to make up with him?”
“Yeah … I guess I wanted to make up with the Darma who hadn’t done that yet. If that makes any sense. He’d been loyal. I thought I’d provoked the quarrel.” He shrugged.
For some reason, Lill was conceiving a strong dislike of this Darma. But he said, “That does make sense,” because it did.
After another minute of silence, he said thoughtfully, leaning forward and resting his forearms on his knees, “You said you regret the sacking of the temples more than any of the other things you’ve done.
Why that? Because they were temples? But you must have raided other things, villages and caravans, and when it comes to death, innocent people being killed, were those not worse? ”
“They would have been, if—yes. The raids on villages can be much bloodier than what we did at Alazani. I’ve never done a raid like that.”
There it was. Lill had been pretty sure, when he’d asked the question, that was going to be the answer.
“The raids aren’t as old a custom as people think.
In my grandfather’s time, they were rare, only used to settle feuds and when villages were facing starvation—not for plunder in times when there was plenty to eat.
Now they happen all the time. I wanted to put a stop to them.
I wanted to go to the King of Zash and say, ‘If I can get my people to stop raiding in the foothills and robbing travellers through the passes all the time, can we have a peaceful alliance?’ I think I could have done it.
I thought I could have done it. But word got out that was what I wanted, and someone set the king’s men on me.
I think the king’s men had heard, too, what I wanted, and they walled me up instead of killing me because they hope I can be useful to them later.
I don’t much want to be the King of Zash’s puppet, though, so I’m staying put. ”
He’d said all that aloud, and when he stopped, he winced and rubbed his throat.
Lill reached across and slid his fingers under Vanu’s to release the knife he was holding.
“Use your hands,” he admonished, setting the knife on the table.
Vanu smiled.
“Is that why you were close with my father—because you wanted his help approaching the king?”
“That’s right,” Vanu signed.
“And when he turned on you … do you think it was because he thought you were going to turn on him?”
“I’ve thought that. I’ve wondered if someone said something to him.”
“Who?”
Vanu sat for a moment with his arms folded, looking out into the empty space beyond the balcony. He made an unfamiliar sign with his left hand. Then he shook his head.
“Wrong to slander the dead,” he signed.
Probably Lill, as the son of a man accused of betrayal, should have something more to say about that. Probably he should want to get to the bottom of this, should insist on knowing the name of the real traitor. But he was getting mightily tired of being Madurasha’s son. He changed the subject.
“I’ve been wondering. The Blue Heaven that you all swear by—what is it?”
“You should ask Padunu about that.”
Lill snorted. “Nobody should ask Padunu about anything.”
Vanu laughed in that way he did, mostly silent. “True.”
“Do you know why he’s in here? Padunu. He told us last night.”
Vanu rolled his eyes. “He fucked somebody’s wife by accident on Korukhura Peak. The whole mountain knows about it. Don’t know how he managed that.”
“He said he can’t work anywhere because of it—do your shamans work for hire like, uh … ” Like assassins?
“They can. Or they can attach themselves to a lord or a village headman like he’s done.
So if you’re not going to ask Padunu about the Blue Heaven …
It’s what we call the spirit of the sky.
The lord of the spirit world. You know how everything has a spirit?
I don’t know what you call that in Zashian … ”
Lill realized belatedly that this conversation could turn dangerous for him. He did know something of Zashian religion, from his reading, but there were many aspects of it he was not supposed to talk about, names he was not allowed to invoke.
“Their religion is organized differently,” he said vaguely, and then kicked himself for not saying ‘our religion.’ He spoke at random: “So he’s the lord of the sky—is it not a bit scary, being up in the mountains where he’s so close?”
Vanu’s eyebrows went up. “I guess, if you had things to hide.”
“Well, you could always go down inside the mountain, couldn’t you?” He should just stop talking. “Maybe that’s why you don’t like going down there, because you’ve nothing to hide. Me, I love the idea that the mountain is hollow inside.”
Vanu was running his thumb along the scar on his cheek.
“There’s another entrance to the caves,” he signed after a moment.
“Under the granary behind the great house. That’s the one the Gukhártus use when they come and go.
If you want to go out on the mountain with Khatu and Barda some time, I’m sure they’d take you. ”
Lill stared, astonished. “Really? You would let me do that?”
Vanu nodded. “Of course. Just in the forest, not down to Sakka. Not yet. You’re too striking to go into a village without a story about who you are and what you’re doing there.”
“Oh, I can do that! I’m—” He stopped himself from explaining how good he was at stealth-craft. “But I don’t need to. I can be patient. I’d just like to see the caves, that’s all.”
Vanu smiled. “Why don’t you go see if they’re free to show you?”
Lill had popped up from his seat before he registered that it wasn’t an order. Now he’d made himself look overeager, as if he was more interested in seeing the caves than sitting with his husband.
“I don’t have to go right now,” he said, but when he was already on his feet, it wasn’t convincing.
Vanu grinned and waved him off. Lill went, unsure whether that had been success or failure.
On the short walk over to the great house, Lill felt his enthusiasm ebbing.
He wanted to see the caves, yes, but shouldn’t he have waited to see them with Vanu?
It would have been more … suitable. Or perhaps, he reflected as he approached the imposing doorway of the Lord of Umtúshta’s house, he was just looking for excuses not to trouble the Gukhártus at home.
He’d managed to avoid Faru almost completely since the wedding, and he was fairly sure Faru had been avoiding him too. It was a satisfactory state of affairs.
The door to the great house stood wide open, as it often did.
It wasn’t because Faru was hospitable; it was a tradition of Hawa lords, as Tirtu had explained.
Their houses were supposed to be open to the whole village during the day.
Somehow it seemed extremely typical of Faru that he kept up the tradition when there was almost no one in his village to appreciate it.
When Lill brought the milk in the mornings, he would usually just set it inside the door and leave; he’d never gone all the way inside the house. He did now, because it was what he had come here to do.