Doubly Married #2
Vanu’s bride was sitting on the floor of the lookout platform, against the far wall, his blue and silver dress spread out around him like a glittering pool of water, his hands folded in his lap, the veil on his headdress pulled forward to conceal his face.
As Vanu stood at the top of the ladder looking at him, he was thinking of the last time they had faced one another, Lill snarling and lunging for White Viper’s dagger under the trees.
The ring Vanu had sent to him winked on the slender middle finger of his left hand.
It had belonged to Vanu’s mother, one of the few things of hers he had, exactly the sort of thing one would give to one’s bride—unlike the necklaces and bracelets he was wearing, which Tirtu had brought up from Sakka.
Vanu’s mother had been killed by her own husband, so perhaps the ring was ill omened.
Vanu had not expected Lill to accept it.
He climbed up the last couple of rungs of the ladder and stood towering over his bride.
Here the ritual deserted him, and he wasn’t sure what to do or whether there were words that should be spoken.
He held out a hand. Lill gathered his skirts in a graceful motion and reached up to take his hand.
He weighed almost nothing and popped up to his feet without the slightest effort from Vanu.
His dark eyes were just visible through the veil.
They had been decorated with paint when he came to Umtúshta but were bare now.
They bored into Vanu, giving nothing away.
Vanu slipped his arm around Lill’s waist and scooped him up.
He felt the slight body tense, but the boy let himself be carried down the ladders to the ground floor and out the door.
Vanu would have liked to carry him all the way back to the feast in the gathering place, and it would have been fitting, since he didn’t have a horse to seat his bride on in front of himself.
But he thought Lill wasn’t entirely comfortable with it—and why should he be?
—so he set him on his feet once they were outside the door and instead offered his hand again.
Lill hesitated a moment before putting his own slim hand in Vanu’s.
They walked back to the gathering place side by side, the rest of the party following them. Whether anyone talked on the way back or the lowland guide took up singing again, Vanu honestly did not notice. He had attention only for the quiet, tense figure walking beside him.
Madurasha’s youngest son. At the very least, it must seem strange to him that he was pledging his life and his loyalty to his father’s killer.
Maybe it seemed monstrous. There had been such ferocity in his eyes when Vanu took that dagger away from him.
But Vanu would swear that had not been specific to him.
That had been a reaction to being cornered and captured, and thinking Vanu wanted him dead.
That had been because however small and pretty he was, Madurasha’s youngest son was very, very fierce.
I gave him a chance to go home, and he didn’t take it, Vanu reminded himself.
He is here now. In the days before the wedding, Vanu had thought several times about going to the boy—even though by custom he wasn’t supposed to see his bride that week—and asking if he was here because he had no place else to go, if he would rather be anywhere else, if this whole situation horrified him.
This was even before he realized Lill was the son of Madurasha.
He didn’t do it, either before Gurti showed him the seal or after, because Madurasha’s son was a man, and no man could answer a question like that honestly and keep his honour.
More than likely he would lie and resent the questioner, and Vanu would have gained nothing.
Besides, with no one to interpret for him, there was a real possibility that Vanu wouldn’t have been able to make the boy understand the question.
They arrived back at the gathering place, and the absurd wedding continued.
If Vanu had thought that Khatu’s antics in the bride hunt, putting on voices and costumes and popping in and out of deserted houses like a madman, was the most ridiculous this day was going to get, he’d have been disappointed.
Gurti, Susami, and Atari met them, now in the guise of the women of Vanu’s household—well, that is what Susami and Atari were, of course, but Gurti was just taking on all the women’s roles that required speaking.
Mikhi seized Lill’s free hand and marched him over to join the women, which was what was supposed to happen at this point.
Halza also detached himself from Vanu’s party and drifted toward the women.
Vanu was going to catch his eye and glare at him again, but he was distracted by Padunu.
“My lord, I had no idea that Lord Faru was unaware of your wedding plans,” the shaman said reprovingly as he appeared at Vanu’s elbow.
“I had assumed that he was away on some errand connected with the wedding and that he had given his consent for the ritual to take place in his stronghold. It is highly irregular. Lord Faru is your host and—”
Vanu turned the glare that he’d intended for the lowlander on Padunu, and the shaman’s smooth voice came to a strangled halt.
“Of course he has not precisely forbidden the wedding,” he went on quickly. “He would not be within his rights, as you correctly—er—but we will have to relocate some of the ceremonial preparations, and it has been quite inconvenient. Er, however, I’m sure that it will be all right.”
“I rejoice!” Tirtu declared suddenly. “My beloved daughter—Earth’s tits—son has been restored to me! And I grieve, for sh—he must go to the home of another man. Yet I am not losing a son, I am gaining a, uh, another son. Padunu! Padunu? Where is he—doesn’t he have to do an invocation or something?”
The door of the great house was standing open, and Faru appeared in it again at this point, with an armload of lowland wedding paraphernalia, which he dumped on the doorstep.
“What are you doing with that?” Padunu yelped, running in the opposite direction to snatch an incense burner out of Halza’s hands.
At least the lowlander had not been bothering Susami, Vanu noted.
He was standing next to Lill and seemed to be talking urgently to him.
Vanu stepped over to the table and scooped the last handful out of the bowl of nuts.
Had anyone given Lill anything to eat? He was in the care of the women, still with his veil hiding his face.
They would probably have thought to give him some food.
Padunu began dancing and chanting as Faru brought out another armload of things from inside the house to throw on the flagstones.
Halza gave a yelp of dismay and limped hurriedly over to start gathering them up.
Padunu nearly tripped over him. Vanu took an apple from the table and walked over to the women’s side to offer it to his bride.
Lill put out a hand from under his veil and took it but did not bite into it.
Vanu went back to stand on the men’s side as he was supposed to.
Faru came back out of the great house and stood on the doorstep with his arms folded, glowering like an impotent thundercloud.
The shaman had become petulant. He was all but pouting as he cast the divination sticks, and several of them rolled under the table.
Atari dove to retrieve them, Padunu shrieked at her not to touch them, which did no good as she couldn’t hear him, and the whole thing had to be done over again after Mikhi was finished yelling at Padunu for being rude to her sister and everyone else was finished reminding Mikhi not to be rude to the shaman.
After all that, the divination came out as unclear, neither a good omen nor a bad one.
Padunu looked like he was ready to cry by this time.
Halza and Tirtu were running around trying to recreate the pile of ritual objects that had been assembled inside.
Lill still hadn’t taken a bite of his apple. In fact, at one point he dropped it, and it rolled away from him. He made a move to retrieve it, but he looked unsteady on his feet. Vanu was alarmed.
He would have gone to Lill’s side immediately, but Gurti was there already and had taken the boy’s arm, while Atari picked up the apple for him.
“Is he all right?” Vanu signed.
Gurti looked at Lill and back to Vanu. She had no language in common with the boy. None of the women did.
“I don’t know,” she signed.
“Do. You. Relinquish. Your. Son. To. This. Man?” Padunu said, very loudly, with the air of someone repeating himself.
For a moment everyone looked at him in confused silence.
Then Lill stepped forward, shuffling a little, his long skirt dragging on the ground, and made a rather sketchy version of a Zashian military salute.
Khatu and Barda, lounging behind Vanu, gave appreciative barks of laughter. Their father glared at them.
“Not you!” Padunu wailed. “You’re the bride!”
“Ah, ah!” Tirtu jumped to his feet from where he’d been arranging things under the trees, and dusted off the knees of his trousers. “This is me, hey? Right. Uh—yes! I relinquish my … You know, I don’t feel right calling him my son in the sight of the ancestors like this, Shaman.”
Padunu made a noise that could have been a sob and turned away. Khatu and Barda snickered loudly.
“But yes,” Tirtu went on, “I relinquish him to Lord Vanu. It is my great honour.”
Padunu turned back and composed himself hastily. “Lord Vanu, do you accept this man into your household as your bride?”
“I accept him,” said Vanu. He had meant just to say it aloud, but he found himself signing the words at the same time without thinking. He often did that.