Madurasha’s Son #3
The sun was setting; the sky above the fortress wall was purple, with brilliant pink-lit clouds hanging above the dark blue shapes of the mountains.
The shadows stretched long over Vanu’s yard as Lill walked beside him around the garden plots, the small duck pond and cisterns for gathering rain-water, the outdoor kitchen, the exterior of the girls’ house, which was a similar size to Vanu’s, with a matching balcony running the length of one side and a half-finished design of flowers painted in white around the window frames.
On the other side of the girls’ house the yard continued, delineated by the dry stone wall that Vanu confirmed he had built himself soon after their arrival.
There was a small round building in poor repair, the roof half missing, but with a sturdy door that had a lock on it.
Vanu did not identify or explain this, and Lill didn’t ask about it.
He tried not to think about Vanu weeping for his dead friend.
Weeping. The Lion of the Summer Pass. He hadn’t tried to hide it; he’d apologized to Lill after drying his eyes, but he hadn’t seemed ashamed.
He’d accepted whatever nonsense Lill had said about sharing their feelings because they were married.
Lill wasn’t even sure what he had meant by that.
And what had Vanu and Davanu been to each other, anyway?
It didn’t matter at all to Lill, but he couldn’t help wondering about it.
The two men had been far apart in age, and Lill couldn’t imagine them having been lovers except maybe when Davanu was much younger, when Vanu would have been very young … He would stop thinking about it.
He had seen this part of Vanu’s domain before, when he climbed the wall from the other side, looking for a way out of Umtúshta.
But he saw it differently now. He noticed how vines had been trained on trellises against the wall on this side, how the pot of paint and brushes were sitting out waiting for whoever was working on the decoration around the windows.
Equipment for a ball game was lying in the grass, and a target and straw dummy for sword practice stood in a bare, sandy area.
It struck Lill that he was being shown around a happy home, and that this, under the circumstances, was a very strange thing.
“Where you train?” he signed to Vanu, indicating the area with the target and dummy.
He knew the signs for all the martial disciplines, for various sword techniques and terms relating to punishments and stealth-craft, because these were the things they’d talked about in the Order, where he’d begun learning the language.
He’d have been able to explain to Vanu in hand language that he was here to assassinate him and describe the methods he had so far considered using.
“Every morning,” said Vanu. “Tomorrow you can join me, hey?”
“I’m sadly in need of exercise,” said Lill. “I was tired out just by the dancing this afternoon.”
“You’ve been recovering. Taking it easy. Right thing to do.”
At some point as they walked around the yard, Vanu had taken Lill’s hand, and now he led Lill back toward his house. He yawned hugely.
“Might go to bed early. You?”
“Oh, that’s … I—I am quite tired.”
What was he supposed to do? Was Vanu talking about going alone to his room and leaving Lill to retire alone to his?
He was. He led the way up the stairs to the balcony along the side of his house and opened the shutters to Lill’s room.
“Good night,” he signed, and he lifted Lill’s hand to his lips before letting it go.
“Do you … want to come in?” Lill asked uncertainly.
“Not tonight,” said Vanu, already moving away down the balcony.
Vanu’s own room had shutters onto the balcony like Lill’s, and he opened them and disappeared inside.
Lill stepped up into his room and closed the shutters behind him.
He collapsed face-down on his bed with its rumpled blue coverlet.
He was tired, but not in the right way, his body weary, his mind alert, and he knew another sleepless night awaited him.
When he got to Torakand he had a sort of plan.
He left the carter at the hostel on the edge of the city where they had stopped, and he took the road into the heart of Torakand.
The buildings on either side of the street leered at him, and every person he passed, every single one, looked at him with suspicion and atavistic fear. He was becoming almost used to it.
Torakand was a sprawling, unimpressive city, situated in a valley, with no royal palace or temple rising above the houses, no hilltop monument or harbour, just a sluggish river looping through the centre of it.
Lill remembered how to find his way to the square near Lord Xshaka’s house.
Perhaps it was not the best place to revisit; he had tricked the night watch and killed a rich man in this neighbourhood, but that was nearly four years ago now.
And what he remembered about this square was that there had always been entertainers here, playing to the passersby or waiting for invitations to the noblemen’s houses that lined the nearby streets.
He would pretend he was on a mission, which would make it easier to think of what to say and how to act.
He would find a troupe which needed a new member and ask for a job.
The troupe would have a leader who would tell him what to do, and that would feel familiar.
He didn’t need to make much money; he was accustomed to sleeping on a thin mattress, to eating plain food and little of it, to bearing cold and discomfort without complaint.
There were no street entertainers in the square when he arrived that morning. It was deserted. Lill didn’t know what that might mean. He found a corner out of the strong sun and sat down on the pavement to wait.