Pretty But Deadly
Lill would have preferred to sleep in the house—he’d had enough of sleeping outdoors—but at least there was a bed on the roof.
“When you get back from the mission,” Arsha said when he showed him the sleeping arrangements, “you can have your own room like I do. If you’d like that.”
“I would like that,” Lill said. He hoped Arsha could not tell just how much he would like that.
He doubted he could hope to get it, because the mission as Arsha had described it to him sounded impossible. Kill the Lion of the Summer Pass? Hadn’t the Great King’s entire army been trying and failing to do that for ten years?
Still, when he woke that morning after a better night’s sleep than he’d had in months, he felt as if he could do this. He knew he wanted to do this. Vanu Urártu deserved death; everyone knew that. And Lill would be proud to be the one to kill him.
Arsha came up with fresh bread and sausages for breakfast, sat on Lill’s bed, and talked desultorily about life at Shawa House, without addressing any of the details of the mission that Lill wanted to hear.
Not that he needed to know why he was being hired to kill Vanu Urártu, but he did need at least some guidance about how.
Presently they heard voices down in the street at the front of the house, and Arsha got up and looked over the parapet to see who was there.
“Shit,” he muttered under his breath, dropping down. “Uh. Lill, breakfast can wait. We need to go down now. Lord Davanu’s arrived home early. I’ll do all the talking, you understand? I mean, obviously.”
Lill had been giving him a wide-eyed, incredulous look at the idea that he might need to be told to stand respectfully silent in front of the master of the house.
Why had he said it, actually? As Lill followed Arsha down the stairs, he wondered if there was something Arsha was trying to hide from his patron.
Lill had never been hired for a mission before, so he had no idea what he expected a man who hired assassins to look like, but somehow Lord Davanu wasn’t it.
He was a tall, bulky man with greying blond hair and a disorderly grey beard, laugh-lines around his bright blue eyes, and a cheerful, booming voice.
He wore Zashian clothes and jewellery, but as his name suggested, he was from the mountains.
He was one of Vanu Urártu’s people. Why did he want to kill him?
Arsha had called Lord Davanu his patron, but the way it looked to Lill, watching from the edge of the courtyard as the household greeted the returning master, Arsha was more of an adoptive son.
He went up to Davanu along with several girls of different ages and a Zashian woman who seemed to be their mother, and there was a lot of chaotic, undisciplined hugging and affection, of which Arsha seemed very much a part.
In fact, Arsha got extra attention, because Davanu’s wife, after giving her husband a kiss that Lill found startling in its intimacy, herded the girls away and left Arsha alone with his patron.
Arsha turned and beckoned to Lill, who came forward obediently.
“This is Lill.”
“Hello, my dear,” said Lord Davanu, faintly puzzled. He looked at Arsha. “Is she a cousin of yours? I know you don’t have any sisters.”
“No relation,” said Arsha, a touch impatiently—there was just a hint of an eyeroll that Lill thought disrespectful. “And he’s a boy.”
“Earth’s heart, I am sorry!” Lord Davanu boomed, and looked it, which startled Lill.
No one had ever apologized to him for such a thing before.
“I see it now, of course. My eyes aren’t as keen as they used to be.
So you’re no relation to Arsha here—I daresay that’s just an old mountain man still not being able to tell lowlanders apart after all these years. I’m hopeless, clearly.”
Lill began to see why Arsha had felt the need to warn him not to speak; Lord Davanu was the sort of person who invited informality.
But Arsha took over before Lill could be too tempted. “You know how you’re looking for a boy bride for Lord Vanu?”
Ah. So that was their plan for getting him into Vanu’s stronghold. Why hadn’t Arsha just said? Did he think Lill would object?
Davanu was frowning, a mixture of doubt and disapproval. “You haven’t been going to the hostels looking for boys like Tirtu suggested, have you? That’s much too—I don’t need you concerning yourself with this, Arsha.”
“But—”
“Where do you work?” Davanu asked Lill, ignoring Arsha.
It was a direct question, which he would have to answer, unless Arsha did it for him. But Arsha was busy glaring at his patron, behind his back, with a look of dark loathing.
“I am … available for hire, my lord,” Lill said, hoping that he had understood the question. “I was trained in the Order of the Sworn Defenders.”
“You were—” Davanu let out a huge laugh. “You’re joking! You’re not joking. Pretty but deadly, hey? You may do very well!” He looked back at Arsha, who managed to compose his face into something merely sullen rather than openly murderous. “I think you’re onto something here, my boy.”
The sun was beginning to go down; the little bit of sky that Lill could see outside his window was a brilliant pink with streaks of blue cloud.
He was lying on his back on his bed. Vanu had gone off after dinner to read his letter alone—he’d said he knew who it was from and that there might be things in it that he wouldn’t want to share with the girls immediately—and Lill had gone to his own room to wait for him.
To wait for him? Yes, that was what he was doing. He was lying on his back on his bed, hands tucked under his head, hoping that when Vanu was finished with his letter, he would want to mess around again and would come knocking on the door.
Except that Lill had heard the front door open and close some time ago, which probably meant Vanu had gone out. Maybe he had to talk to Tirtu about something in the letter. Maybe Lill should get up, while there was still light, and do something useful.
He hoped the letter didn’t contain bad news. Did he hope that? It could be inconvenient; he didn’t need Vanu having to deal with a crisis just now. Though perhaps if it was bad news, he’d want comfort, and so …
Lill pulled his braid over his shoulder and started lazily undoing it.
How many betrayals had Vanu actually suffered?
There was Madurasha, who had been an ally and then participated in an ill-fated ambush; he’d certainly turned on Vanu, but Vanu himself thought that might have been because someone else betrayed him first. Lill remembered the name sign Vanu had used—a modified form of the sign for “wild boar”—for the person he thought might have turned Madurasha against him with lies.
Lill could show it to Mikhi and ask whose name it was.
He’d bet she knew, because he’d bet it was the name of her predecessor, Vanu’s old interpreter, Darma. So he didn’t really need to ask.
But what about Davanu? He had been Vanu’s friend, Vanu’s lover, and had he hired Lill to kill Vanu?
This was something Lill had not thought about much in the weeks since he left Torakand.
At first it had been because he didn’t care; once it was clear that he was hired, the details of exactly who he was working for didn’t matter to him.
Later, he’d reminded himself that it wasn’t his place to question his mission.
But now. Well, he was just thinking about this.
He’d never actually heard Davanu say anything about killing Vanu.
Davanu had been asked to find Vanu a bride, and Arsha had suggested Lill.
Davanu himself hadn’t said anything about assassination.
It was Lill who had mentioned the Order, disobeying Arsha’s command to say nothing, and Davanu had seemed highly amused.
What had he said? Pretty but deadly—you’ll do, or something like that.
Of course he would say that. He knew what Vanu liked.
Vanu had got … like a fire wanting something to burn … over watching Lill shoot, over discovering that Lill was a better shot than he was himself. Of course pretty but deadly was what you’d look for in a bride for Vanu. If you knew him well and—as maybe Davanu had—loved him.
“I don’t think,” Lill signed to the empty room, “he wanted you dead, Vanu. I don’t think so.”
He must have drifted off for a little while after that, because he found himself opening his eyes to a dark room, the sky outside the window no longer pink but a uniform deep blue.
He lay for a moment thinking how nice it was to be able to fall asleep like this, on a comfortable bed, whenever he wanted.
And how strange that he was already beginning to become used to it.
Then he realized that the thing that had woken him was the sound of Vanu coming back to the house; he could hear small noises from downstairs.
He rolled up and off the bed, shaking out his hair, and ran to the door, completely forgetting that he had meant to lie in his room and wait for Vanu to come find him.
Vanu was sitting on the edge of the seating platform in the front room.
When Lill did that, his legs dangled, but Vanu was so tall that he could sit there with his legs stretched out and his feet planted on the floor, which was how he was sitting now.
He had something in one hand, hanging loosely by his side. He looked up at Lill on the stairs.
It was dark in the front room, but not so dark that Lill couldn’t see Vanu was angry. Maybe he didn’t even need to see that; he could just feel it, like a chill in the room, like that feeling that runs down your back when a knife scrapes against stone.
He was something else besides angry, and Lill didn’t know what.
“Is everything—is something the matter?” He came down the stairs to the top of the cupboards. He registered that his heart had begun beating fast.
Vanu set down the thing he was holding. It was a bottle—unstoppered—one of the bottles of Tirtu’s plum wine.