Epilogue
A week after the Sakka raid, Faru’s condition had improved enough for him to be carried up through the caves. He arrived back in Umtúshta a different man than he’d been when he left. No one quite knew why, but a week of lying in a cave halfway down the mountain had changed him.
He was still too weak to walk and spent most of his time sitting by the hearth in the great house or propped on pillows in the sun on a settle that Tirtu and Halza carried out into the gathering place for him.
But he had almost stopped complaining and hardly ever ordered anyone to do anything.
He treated Gurti with a stiff and clumsy affection.
He was now firmly in favour of the marriage between Otoni and Khatu.
He asked for Vanu on the afternoon after he came back up the mountain. Barda, back on his feet by this time, came with the message. Faru was lying on his settle in the sun when Vanu arrived. Barda had dragged over a bench, and Vanu and Mikhi took seats facing Faru.
“My lord Vanu … I owe you a debt I can never repay. Whether I live or die … I want Umtúshta to be yours. I should have given it to you long ago.”
“I accept,” Vanu signed gravely. “There is no debt between us.”
Faru’s gaze flicked to Mikhi as she translated, but without the usual look of disgust.
“You honour me, my lord.” Faru closed his eyes for a moment as if gathering strength. “I and my family … are also in Lill’s debt. And I have treated him shamefully in the past. I beg your forgiveness … I must also beg his. Will he be willing to hear me?”
Mikhi sniffed and glanced uncertainly at Vanu.
“I am sure he would be,” Vanu signed. “But he has left Umtúshta.”
“For how long?” Faru asked.
“For good!” Mikhi spat, unprompted. “He ran away. And he’d better stay away because if he comes back, I’ll—” She broke off at a look from Vanu. “Sorry, Da,” she muttered.
She had been the angriest about Lill’s departure.
Susami and Atari were purely sad, and the others were mostly confused.
Gurti, Vanu thought, was angry too, but she was trying not to show it.
He wasn’t surprised no one had told Faru yet.
They knew he’d never liked Lill, and no one wanted to give him the opportunity to gloat.
Vanu had already decided there would be no more secrets about this in Umtúshta. Aloud, he said to Faru, “Turns out Lill was an assassin. Thought from the beginning he might have been, but I took my chances. In the end he left instead of completing his mission.”
Faru stared, too shocked to look even a little smug. “I … I am sure he would not have been able to … complete such a mission, my lord.”
Vanu laughed harshly. “Nah, he could’ve done it.”
“I think Faru’s right,” Mikhi said on their way back to Vanu’s house. “Lill couldn’t have killed you.”
“Because he didn’t want to,” said Vanu. “He was raised in the Order of the Snakes. They have something they call stealth-craft, and I think he was a prodigy at it. And you saw how he was with knives.”
“But—” Mikhi looked on the verge of tears. “He couldn’t have killed you.”
Vanu shook his head. “He chose not to.”
He held the house door open for her, and she stomped through. “I don’t understand why you’re not angry with him,” she muttered as she walked away. “You don’t even act like you care.”
He didn’t try to reply to that. He could see how it would look that way.
When Mikhi was gone, he went up the stairs to Lill’s old room.
Eventually he would have to put everything in here away, maybe send some of it down the mountain for trade—if only so he could stop coming in here and looking at all the things Lill had left behind and wondering if there was anything he could have given that would have made Lill stay.
He wished Lill had taken more with him, too.
It worried him how much Lill had left behind.
All the jewellery, even the wedding clothes that he’d brought with him, which he’d had every right to take and which would surely have fetched a good price down the mountain.
Even Vanu’s mother’s ring had a rare stone in it and was worth a fair bit.
He could have taken that and sold it instead of leaving it for Vanu to find in the cupboard.
Surely that would have been more sensible.
He had at least gone away wearing his sturdy boots, leaving behind the flimsy shoes he had worn when he came. But the shoes were molded to the shape of Lill’s little feet, and they sat at the side of the bed where he’d last stepped out of them, and Vanu couldn’t bear to look at them.
Lill had also taken White Viper’s dagger, but Vanu did not think he would sell that. If he had to guess, he’d say Lill had taken that because, by rights, it belonged to him.
This should all really be packed up and put away, Vanu thought again, looking at the bed, with its blue quilt tidily spread the way Lill had left it, the clothes chest against the wall, the items neatly arranged on the round table.
If he packed it all up, shook out the bedding and the clothes in the chest, moved the table and looked under it, he was sure he would find the bowl he had carved for Lill that said You have a home with me forever.
Then he could stop wondering if there was any possibility that the reason he hadn’t yet found it was because Lill had taken it with him.