Failure as a Monster
“Tell me again.”
They were sitting on the roof in the shade. Somewhere below, in a courtyard or beside an open window, someone was playing the sampan, soft notes rippling through the air.
“I am Arsha,” said Lill, “Son of Madurasha son of Dasha of the clan Kuro. Vanu Urártu killed my father and my three elder brothers, Sharaya, Dashavaya, and Yarasha. I was taken in by Lord Davanu Shawa of the Summer Pass, and he sent me to become Urártu’s bride. May I ask a question?”
“Sure.”
“Why am I keeping all this secret?”
“Because he won’t marry you if he knows who you are! He’ll kill you, as he killed my brothers.”
“Yes, I understand that. That is why I, Lill, am keeping this secret. But why am I, Arsha, concealing my identity?”
Arsha frowned impatiently. “Why does it matter?”
“Well, when I let him find your father’s seal, as you instructed me, and he realizes who I am, I will have to tell him some story to explain why I gave him a false name.”
“Oh. Say you were scared or something—you thought he’d kill you if he guessed who you were. It’s the truth.”
It wasn’t that, but Lill nodded. “‘Always use the truth when it will serve as well as a lie,’” he quoted Master Moon.
“Sure. But remember, you’re not going to let him find the seal until you’ve been married a good long while and you’re sure he’s very attached to you.”
“I remember. You are sure he’ll recognize the seal?”
“I think so, but if he doesn’t, you’ll find some other way to make sure he knows that you’re me. And make sure you please him.” Arsha gave him a doubtful look. “You do know what I mean by that, don’t you?”
“I do,” said Lill stiffly. “You mean that he must find me a satisfactory occupant of his bed.”
“More than satisfactory!”
“He must desire me and be able to use me in ways that please him.”
“Right. Have you got much experience of that?” Arsha asked. His distaste for the question was obvious.
“Enough,” Lill lied. Or maybe it wasn’t a lie; how much experience did he need for such a thing? It was surely only a matter of suffering through it.
“Good,” said Arsha briskly. “Better you than me. My patron likes that sort of thing, I’ve heard, but he’s never tried it on with me—he wouldn’t get far if he did. I’m not your sort.”
Lill felt they were getting off track. “And then I kill him.”
“What? No, I’m going to—oh. Yes, Urártu, you kill Urártu. When you get my signal.”
“May I ask another question? Why do you want me to wait?”
Arsha’s expression darkened. “I want him to die in the right way.”
“You want me to kill him in a certain way.” This had not been part of the initial instructions.
Arsha shook his head. “I don’t care how you kill him. I care who you are when you kill him.” He leaned toward Lill, his gaze so intent it might have seemed frightening to someone who hadn’t grown up around the masters of the Order. “Me. His beloved wife. And his doom.”
Lill nodded crisply. He could not imagine why any of this mattered, but it was clear enough what his orders were, and it was a mission he knew he could achieve.
In fact, it might have been made for him.
It needed someone “pretty but deadly,” as Lord Davanu had put it, someone who could play the part of a desirable bride and then become a skillful assassin at the crucial moment. He would do it, and when he returned …
“No more knife-throwing in the streets for coins for you,” said Arsha, breaking into a sudden, beaming smile. “You’ll come live at Shawa House in comfort when you’ve done this job.”
When he thought clearly about it later, Lill wasn’t sure he’d ever really believed that.
Why would you take a hired blade into your household just because he’d done one job for you?
And whatever Arsha said, it hadn’t seemed quite clear that Lord Davanu wanted this job done in the first place.
None of that mattered much. He had his orders.
He had a mission. That was all he’d wanted.
Lill stood at the foot of his bed and retied his trousers with trembling hands. He had bolted upstairs without thinking about it, as if he could escape the memories tumbling down in his mind like pieces of a collapsing building. But—he faced the truth sternly—that wasn’t even something he wanted.
He wanted to let that building collapse around him. He wanted to stand in the wreckage and look at the sky.
There were practical things he needed to do first. He opened the door of his room, which he had closed behind him, and looked back down at Vanu lying on the floor.
He had moved, burying his face in the crook of his arm.
Was he all right? The other night, when Halza, Tirtu, and Padunu had been drunk, Vanu had sent Gurti to check on them. What had she been meant to look for?
Lill made a decision and went back into his room to put on his shoes.
He went out through the balcony door, down the outside stairs, and across to the girls’ house.
He could see a light burning inside in the front room.
He pulled the rope by the door; it was connected to a shiny bell inside with no clapper that would swing and catch the girls’ attention.
Vanu had rigged this up for his daughters, not so much because they needed it as to make them feel special; it was something all the deaf people in Tsuruva had in their homes.
Atari came to the door, yawning, and held it open for Lill to enter.
“Can I talk to Susami?” he signed.
Atari nodded and trotted back inside to fetch her sister. Susami arrived at the door already looking concerned.
“Is everything all right?”
Lill swayed a hand in the sign for “sort of.” He felt disloyal doing this, but he also felt certain it was the right thing to do.
“Vanu’s been drinking wine.” He didn’t know the sign for “drunk.”
Susami gasped. “He hit you.”
She pointed to her own cheek, then at Lill. He realized there must be a bruise showing already.
“No! It was an accident.”
Susami looked as if she’d never believed anything less. Somehow Lill liked her tremendously for it.
“I swear,” he signed, putting his whole body into it, trying to convey his sincerity. “By the Blue Heaven. He did not do anything bad to me.”
She relaxed. “He never has, to any of us.”
“What should I do? I don’t know what to do for someone when they’re … like that.”
To his surprise, Susami reached out and pulled him into a tight hug for a moment. He was too flummoxed to hug her back, and then she’d released him so she could sign again.
“I can look after him. Where is he?”
Lill heard a door bang somewhere and looked around. “Back there?” He pointed.
They set off toward the back of Vanu’s house, which was where the privy was located.
By the time they got there, Lill could hear sounds of retching from inside the privy.
He stopped, and Susami looked at him questioningly.
She made what was either the sign for “throwing up” or just an explanatory gesture. He nodded.
“Leave it to me,” she signed.
“I’ll go get him some water,” said Lill. He set off for the kitchen.
He didn’t much want to be there when Vanu discovered that he’d fetched Susami. He brought out the pitcher of water from the kitchen and a towel, gave them to Susami, and accepted her suggestion that he could go up to bed.
He lay down in his room and stared up at the dark ceiling. His mind felt crowded, like a busy marketplace where you could only make out snatches of conversation. There was no chance he was going to sleep.
Instead he tried to face certain scenes from his past without flinching.
He had a sharp memory, when he wanted to, and he could take punishment without making a sound; he could do this too.
And he needed to, because his understanding of the past, the things that had happened to him and reasons they had happened—it was a jumbled mess. How had he not seen that until now?
After a while, he heard Vanu coming up the stairs to the balcony and going into his own room.
He seemed to have come up alone; Lill could imagine Susami waiting at the bottom of the stairs, dutiful enough to obey when he told her she didn’t need to come up and put him to bed.
Or maybe she was angry enough with him that she hadn’t offered.
Will he think I sicced his disapproving daughter on him because I was angry with him myself?
A while later, still not asleep, Lill thought he would get up and check on Vanu.
He padded along the balcony, eased open the door to Vanu’s room, and slipped inside.
Vanu was sprawled on his back on the bed, sound asleep.
His clothes and boots lay in a tangle on the floor, and he was naked.
The moonlight silvered the hair of his body.
Lill glanced over him, his strong body lying so exposed and vulnerable. His sleeping face didn’t look peaceful.
Lill looked away. He felt strangely torn; he wanted to look at Vanu, and the wanting didn’t bother him. But Vanu was asleep and didn’t know he was being looked at. Lill bent to pick up the quilt from the side of Vanu’s bed and drew it over him.
Vanu woke with a jerk, grasping Lill’s wrist painfully hard before recognition dawned and he let go as if burned.
“Lill,” he gasped, lurching up to sitting. He looked pale and unwell.
“Sorry, sorry—I didn’t mean to wake you. Just—” Lill tucked the covers around Vanu’s hips.
“No, I—” Vanu looked as if he was going to protest that Lill hadn’t woken him, but realized in time that didn’t make sense. “You all right?”
“Me? Yes, of—” Lill stopped, thinking about it. “No. But it’s not your fault.”
“Think it’s got to be my fault. Don’t remember exactly what I did … but … ”
“It was nothing, Vanu. You didn’t hurt me at all. It felt … it was … ”
He couldn’t say it; he was alarmed that he’d even said that much. But he had to explain somehow.
“Do you remember,” he said, speaking quickly so he would get the words out before either Vanu or his own mind stopped him, “on our wedding day, you asked me if anyone had ever, had ever … taken me against my will?”
“Yeah. You said nobody had.”