Waiting
He didn’t bother finding out how much the merchant selling the knives wanted for them; whatever it was, he didn’t have it, and he didn’t want the man to remember his face. His plan was to wait until after dark and break into the knife shop and take them.
Getting into the knife merchant’s shop was not difficult.
It was only a matter of scaling one wall, dropping down the other side onto a flat roof, and from there a short run across rooftops deserted because it was too cold to sleep outside, to reach the yard behind the shop.
He knew the technique for releasing barred shutters from the outside without making a sound, and although it was undeniably more difficult to do it with a sharpened stick than with a blade, he managed it, got the back window of the shop open, and climbed inside.
He stood in the dark back room of the shop with the gleam of iron all around, and as his eyes adjusted to the lack of light, he realized that it was not just knives that the merchant stocked.
Back here there were swords: curved Zashian blades with tassels hanging from their hilts, straight Chiddang swords, even a couple of strange, foreign-looking swords whose origins Lill could not place in the darkness.
He moved purposefully toward the front room, found the throwing knives which he had seen on display from the street, and rolled them up into a bundle in their leather holster for easy transport.
But that room full of swords kept nagging at him, and when he went back into it on his way to the open window, he paused, tempted.
Swords were expensive. If he took one, he might be able to sell it.
He could tell a story about how it had belonged to his father, how the family had fallen on hard times and his widowed mother had finally been forced, with tears in her eyes, to send him out to sell it.
He would choose one of the plainer Chiddang swords so the story would not seem outrageous.
He had some idea of how much such a weapon was worth and thought he could avoid being too badly cheated.
And that was when it hit him, the shame of what he was contemplating.
He had been trained in stealth-craft to serve the Great King, not to break into shops and steal swords in the marketplace.
How far he had already sunk into dishonour by using the skills that Master Hadda had taught him to sneak in here and take the throwing knives so that he could earn his bread as a common street entertainer!
If he took a sword to sell, with a false story, for his own gain, how much further he would sink.
He could see the way that Master Hadda would frown, the cold look in his eyes, if he heard that Lill had done such a thing.
Not that Master Hadda ever would hear. He would not allow Lill’s name to be spoken in his presence, these days.
It had been the same way with Zish, after he—after what had happened to Zish.
And Zish, like Lill, had been one of Master Hadda’s best pupils.
But you no longer existed, even as a memory, once you had failed.
Lill was halfway back out the window when he realized that he had let his thoughts distract him from maintaining proper vigilance. There was someone in the yard.
It was a big man in labourer’s clothes, a servant or tenant of the knife merchant, come out into the yard to relieve himself. He had just finished and was tucking himself back into his trousers when he looked up and saw Lill.
Still Lill should have been able to get away; he had only to swarm up the wall to the roof.
Instead, as he reached up to begin the ascent, his foot slipped on the window sill, and he fell down into the yard.
He landed well, scrambled up, and bolted for the back wall, but the man caught him before he got there, a huge hand coming down on the back of his neck.
Lill twisted in his grasp and tried slip out of it, but the man was ridiculously strong. He was balling up a massive fist to strike Lill, and it was going to hurt.
“Caught in the act, little thief,” the man rumbled.
It was the last thing he said. Before he could land a blow, before he could yell and rouse the neighbourhood, he was choking and crumpling to his knees, loosing his hold on Lill, because Lill had slid the straight, plain Chiddang blade that he’d taken from the knife merchant’s shop into his heart.
In the end, Lill wasn’t able to sell the sword because he had to leave it behind, stuck in the man’s body.
He didn’t try very hard to pull it out; he’d have had to step on the dead man’s chest for leverage, and he felt shame enough at what he’d done without that.
He got away over the wall with the knives he’d come for.
Lill was indeed up early the next morning, and he came down to meet Vanu in the yard, though he looked slightly haggard, as if he had not slept well. Vanu made no comment. He wanted to suggest Lill go back to bed, but he didn’t want to offend him.
He showed Lill the safety precautions he used around the archery range: ropes with scraps of cloth tied to them that he strung between a couple of trees to cordon off the range when it was in use.
He amused himself by letting Lill try to string his bow, which Lill could not do, and then offered him Mikhi’s much lighter bow.
That didn’t get a laugh or an arch comment out of Lill, which surprised Vanu.
Then he watched as Lill failed to hit the target, several times in a row, in a way that Vanu found highly suspicious.
But again he said nothing. He was fairly sure the boy was pretending to be a poor shot.
He’d hit Khatu in the face with a shoe from the top of the fortress wall.
But maybe he wasn’t used to shooting with a bow.
In the lowlands, it was only the nobles who hunted, and maybe Madurasha’s son had lost his access to that world when his father died.
Maybe that was something else that Vanu had taken from him.
His sword technique was surprisingly poor, too.
Vanu was disappointed. He watched as Lill imitated him in the drills, whacking Mikhi’s wooden practice blade against the straw dummy.
He hardly seemed like the same young man who had picked up the dance steps so quickly yesterday that Padunu had been sure he must have done them before.
When Vanu tried to suggest that Lill show him some of the lowland techniques he knew better, he mumbled some excuse.
Vanu wasn’t sure what was going on. Was Lill just tired? Or had this been a bad idea? Maybe the boy was trying to hint that he didn’t want to do this, that Vanu should not ask him to join his morning exercise again.
Lill remained withdrawn all that day. Vanu’s chore for the day was repairing the thatch on the roof of the girls’ house, using some fresh straw that Tirtu had brought in for him.
He’d meant to ask Lill to help, but when he mentioned this at breakfast to Susami, she said a husband shouldn’t ask his bride to mend thatch two days after the wedding—if ever—and then it turned out Atari had brought over her Zashian books to show Lill, so Vanu left him to that and went up on the roof by himself.
When he came down to get water halfway through the job, he found Lill sitting on the balcony by himself, staring into space, Atari’s books lying unopened on the table in front of him.
He didn’t see Vanu looking at him, and Vanu didn’t know what to say.
He went and found Mikhi and told her to find something for Lill to do.
“A wifely thing,” he specified.
She gave him a doubtful look. “Like what—spinning?”
“No … ” Actually, he had no idea. Offer a Hawa man a spindle and he’d stab you with the sharp end for the insult—but Lill wasn’t a Hawa man, and he’d come up the mountain in a bridal gown. “Ask Susami. She’ll know what’s fitting.”
A little while later, back up on the girls’ roof, he looked down and saw Lill helping Mikhi and Atari in the garden.
Lill was making himself useful, though he did seem to need constant instruction in what to do.
That reminded Vanu of how he had been three years ago when they were shut in here.
He hadn’t known anything about gardens or raising animals.
The girls had known some, Gurti much more.
Without the women, the men would have had precious little to eat.
Lill’s mind felt foggy all day, and it was hard to focus on the tasks the sisters assigned him.
It was lack of sleep, and this constant feeling of instability, of the ground not being solid under his feet—like being on a boat, only in his mind.
(He’d only ever been on a boat once, just a river boat, but he hadn’t liked it.)
He needed a plan about Vanu. In fact, he needed two plans.
First, how he would kill Vanu; and second—actually, the killing was second, the first was how he would get Vanu to like him.
Something had gone wrong, several somethings perhaps, and damage control was needed to get the mission back on track.
He would downplay his fighting ability; he had decided that this morning.
It wasn’t an attractive quality in a bride, and it might make Vanu suspicious.
He needed to try harder there, though, because he wasn’t sure he’d been convincing that morning.
Perhaps he should somehow ensure that they tried some activities that he was truly bad at.
Though he couldn’t see Vanu actually agreeing to wrestle him.
Befriending the two younger girls would be easy, and staying away from Susami wouldn’t be too hard either, since she seemed inclined to stay away from him—maybe for the same reason.