A Peaceful Life
“Lill seems happy,” Atari remarked at dinner that evening.
“He is happy,” said Vanu. “He told me so.”
He winked at Lill, who sat on the other side of the balcony. Lill could feel his cheeks heating as he smiled back.
Vanu had made plasinta for dinner again, cheese ones with fresh mint.
And there was salad with the greens that Gurti had brought by after things had cooled off at the great house.
At least Lill assumed things had cooled off.
She’d only said vaguely that all the men were gone, and Lill, who had answered the door while Vanu was making the dough for the plasinta, hadn’t asked for further details.
“Da said you sparred with him this afternoon,” said Mikhi. “He said you’re really good. You’ll spar with me next, right? I would love to have an opponent my own size.”
“He used your practice sword,” said Vanu. “I’ll have to make him his own.”
Before that afternoon, Lill thought, he would have flinched inwardly when Vanu said something like that.
The way it suggested that Lill was part of the family, needing his own wooden sword to lean in the rack between Vanu’s and Mikhi’s—it was still daunting and strange, but it was no longer unwelcome.
Of course Vanu didn’t know that. He didn’t know that Lill had only that afternoon discovered his own heart and realized that he was going to stay in Umtúshta.
He should know—Lill needed to tell him—but that would require more courage than Lill currently possessed.
“I’d like that,” he said, swallowing the urge to start crying again, which had been bobbing up at intervals all afternoon.
“You can make him a spindle, too,” said Susami.
“Don’t be silly!” Mikhi huffed. “He doesn’t want to spin.”
“He said he’d be willing to learn.”
“I did,” Lill admitted. “It looks … ” He didn’t know the sign or the Hawada word. “Meditative?” he said out loud.
Vanu shrugged; he didn’t know the Zashian word. He signed something about “thinking.”
“You do too much thinking already,” Mikhi signed at Lill. “I can tell.”
“Better too much than too little. And it’s not thinking that I mean, exactly. It’s … ”
Lill spelled the Zashian word out for Atari, and the two of them tried to explain meditation to the others. Behind the mountain peaks that defined their skyline, the sun began going down.
After dinner, when they were almost finished washing the dishes, Vanu disappeared somewhere and returned with a rolled-up bundle that Lill didn’t recognize at first. It wasn’t until Vanu handed it to him that he realized with a jolt it was his holster of throwing knives.
“Talking about sparring and spindles,” said Vanu aloud. Mikhi was too far away to hear. “Remembered those. Thought you should have them back, considering.”
“Considering … what?” Lill looked from the rolled-up holster back to Vanu’s face, off-balance.
“Business down the mountain. Faru’s bullshit.”
“Oh, oh yes.”
There was a moment’s silence that Lill knew he should fill with an explanation: You see, the reason I had these knives is …
But Vanu had taken the knives from him and had them all this time. He knew.
And even that wasn’t a surprise, somehow. Of course it was Vanu who’d had the knives. Of course he knew.
Lill remembered when he’d felt desperate to get these knives back, how he’d felt the lack of them like nakedness, like missing one of his senses.
Now he wanted to hand them back to Vanu and say he didn’t need them anymore.
But Vanu was right; if they had to defend the stronghold, he should be armed.
“Too dark for a demonstration?” Vanu said with a little sidelong smile.
Lill looked toward the archery butt at the far side of the garden, which was still lit by the rays of the sinking sun. Not that he couldn’t have hit it even if it had been dark, but possibly his audience wouldn’t have been able to appreciate his aim if they could barely see the target.
“Of course not,” he said.
He wrapped the holster around his thigh and buckled it on. The weight of it, once so familiar, felt odd. He walked toward the end of the archery range, and Vanu beckoned to the girls to come watch.
“Throwing knives!” Mikhi signed excitedly. “Where’d you get those?”
“I gave them to him,” said Vanu.
Lill began the way he always had when he performed on the squares a lifetime—a few weeks—ago in Torakand.
An acrobat he’d worked beside for a time had explained how you had to get people’s attention at the beginning of a performance with something flashy.
So what he used to do was gather four knives in his hand—the maximum number he could hold at once—and start out facing away from the target before spinning to release them all one after another.
Then he’d grab the two remaining blades from his holster and throw two-handed.
In Torakand he used to do all this fairly close to his target, because it was dangerous otherwise; you couldn’t fling knives in public without being quite sure the space between yourself and your target was clear.
Here, with his spectators all accounted for and safely behind him, he could throw from much further away, so he did.
The setting sun flashed on the blades where they landed in a tight cluster at the centre of the target.
The other thing that acrobat had told him was, “You should really smile, especially when they applaud.” He’d never even tried to follow that advice; what did he have to smile about?
But now, with Vanu and his daughters watching, he understood why you might feel like smiling.
Vanu whistled. Mikhi whooped. Atari and Susami both gave audible gasps.
Lill jogged down the archery range to retrieve his knives and drop them back into the holster.
He ran halfway back and did the trick where he backed up a little further for each successive blade, throwing with alternate hands and increasing amounts of spin.
He did a couple of others, ones that the Akramarran crowds used to appreciate.
When he finished, stopping only because the sun had sunk below the mountain and the whole range was now draped in shadow, Mikhi and Atari were beside themselves, and even Susami looked seriously impressed.
Vanu put his arms around Lill from behind, pulling Lill back against his chest and kissing Lill’s hair, which was unbraided now and rather tumbled from all the running and spinning of his performance.
After a moment’s surprise, Lill leaned back into the embrace, some tension that he hadn’t been aware of relaxing out of him.
“All right?” Vanu whispered, head bent to rest his cheek on the top of Lill’s head.
“Of course. Yes.”
“Thanks for showing us that.”
“That was amazing!” said Atari.
“Incredible!” said Mikhi out loud.
“I used to get my living doing that,” Lill signed. “In Torakand.”
“You mean as a travelling performer?” Atari was delighted. “Like Shanza Firehand?”
Shanza Firehand was a character in The Legend of Prince Batan, a cunning juggler who went on a mission for the prince and received a magical horse as a reward.
Lill grinned and nodded. “Like Shanza.”
“I thought you lived with Lord Davanu in Torakand,” said Mikhi, frowning.
“This was before that,” Vanu signed.
It was what Lill would have said, but to have Vanu say it instead meant one less lie he had to tell.
He felt like he was about to cry again. Vanu tucked his arms back around Lill, a comforting weight across his shoulders and chest. For a moment Lill let his eyes fall shut.
He felt Vanu laugh gently at something one of the girls had said.
Then his eyes popped open as he heard a noise.
“Is that someone knocking on the door?” he asked, turning to look up at Vanu.
“Sounds like.” Vanu frowned.
It sounded like someone pounding frantically on the door. Vanu signed an explanation to the girls and strode back toward the house. Lill ran after him. He caught up inside the house and was beside Vanu when he opened the door to find Gurti and Tirtu outside.
Tirtu was the one who had been pounding on the door. “My lord, there’s trouble,” he said breathlessly. “Serious trouble.”
“There’s been a raid on Sakka,” said Gurti. “Faru is wounded, and Khatu has been captured. Barda came back with the news—he was hurt too. Padunu is tending to him up at the house.”
“What were they all doing in Sakka?” Vanu signed.
Gurti twisted her hands together. “Faru had gone down to see Ganda Dugundu about the raid that they intended to make on Dukka. Khatu had gone down to see the woman who is carrying his child—or so he told me, and I believed him, but seemingly he followed his father into the village to Ganda’s house instead.
Barda … told me that he was going to gather mushrooms. Even I did not believe that. ”
She drew a shaky breath, obviously holding back tears. Tirtu put an arm awkwardly around her shoulders.
“My lord,” Gurti began, “I know I have no right to ask—”
“You have every right,” Vanu signed. “Your people are my people. Their troubles are mine.”
Gurti’s face crumpled, and she began to cry.
She shook off Tirtu’s arm, and he stood there stupidly.
Lill, moved by an impulse he didn’t quite understand, stepped out of the doorway and grasped Gurti’s hands in both of his.
She squeezed his hands and gave him a tearful smile, which shocked him—as if she was thanking him for doing that small, strange thing that he didn’t even know why he’d done.
Vanu stepped outside too and drew them both into an easy embrace. He patted Gurti on the back and rested his hand on Lill’s shoulder.
“We’ll get Khatu back,” he said. “Where’s Faru?”
Gurti sniffed and let go of one of Lill’s hands so she could wipe her face. “In Sakka. I don’t know how badly he was hurt. Barda couldn’t find that out.”
“I hear you say they were going to raid Dukka?”