Not a Strong Enough Word
Vanu sat in bed for a while after Lill left, trying to dredge up some coherent memories of the previous night.
He’d read Makhi’s letter and gone to Tirtu’s to ask for a bottle of plum wine.
Tirtu, who thought that drinking was good for him, had handed it over happily, and Vanu had gone to sit under the trees in the gathering place, where he’d read over the letter five or six more times and drained the bottle.
The wine had not helped. He’d thought about going back to Tirtu’s for another bottle, but somehow he had ended up at his own house instead, and Lill had come out of his room. This part Vanu remembered very clearly.
Lill had come running out of his room, barefoot, with his hair loose, and stopped at the top of the stairs, looking shy and eager and like he’d realized the moment he saw Vanu that something was wrong. The words of Makhi’s letter were engraved in Vanu’s mind by that time.
There can be no doubt it was him. He is small and has striking looks: long black hair and a deceptively comely face …
Here his memories grew patchy. He’d accused Lill, and Lill had confessed—only he hadn’t, really. He’d been a bit wild himself. He’d confessed to something—“I’ve killed people. But not as many as you!”—and he’d flown at Vanu and yelled for Vanu to fuck him.
After that … he remembered an overwhelming desire not to hurt Lill, and at the same time being furious that Lill was asking to be hurt. Surprising that he’d been able to hold two such contradictory feelings, as drunk as he’d been.
He remembered Lill popping up from the carpet every time Vanu pushed him away, like a toy that Atari used to have that had a round base so you couldn’t knock it over. He remembered holding Lill down so he would fucking stop doing that.
The next thing he recalled was lying on the floor of the front room himself, needing to throw up, and finding when he staggered to his feet that his trousers were undone. So apparently in that bit that he didn’t remember, he’d done something that Lill “hadn’t hated.” Huh.
He got up and dressed, rather slowly and creakily.
Lill had said several things last night that changed everything—and that seemed to change nothing, because they seemed like things Vanu had already known.
He wished he didn’t have to try to think about them now through the fog of a hangover, but that was his own fault.
He was still lost in thought some time later when he came to Tirtu’s door with the morning’s milk. He didn’t exactly forget to knock—or maybe he did. At the very least, he forgot to wait for an answer before opening the door. Tirtu and Gurti sprang apart, staring guiltily at him.
They were standing at the base of the stairs, where—Vanu wished it wasn’t so obvious—they had been helping each other straighten their clothes after coming downstairs and then got distracted.
“It isn’t what it looks like, my lord!” Tirtu cried.
Gurti made a despairing noise and tugged her shift violently up over her shoulder. “Of course it is—how could it be otherwise?”
“No, but—” Tirtu began helplessly.
“Do you think your lord is a simpleton?”
“Of course not, but—”
Vanu shut the door behind him. “Listen,” he said, trying to speak over both of them, which was difficult. “I don’t care.”
“My lord?”
“I said: I don’t care. Heart of the Blue Heaven. Did you really think I would?”
In fact, saying he didn’t care was understating it a bit. But he wasn’t sure how Gurti would react if he said he was delighted to know she was cuckolding Faru, who deserved cuckolding more than anyone he’d ever met.
“We’re always very careful, my lord,” Tirtu felt the need to say. “Only when Lord Faru is out of the stronghold, and always … ”
Gurti made another despairing noise. Maybe she’d been hoping Vanu would think it was a one-time thing.
“Happy for both of you,” Vanu said, setting down the pail of milk and opening the door. “Carry on.”
And he ducked out and shut the door before Tirtu could tell him more, which he’d looked primed to do.
He was happy for both of them, though, if they were enjoying themselves. By the Blue Heaven, they deserved some enjoyment, especially Gurti.
When Vanu got back to his own house, he found Lill in the yard doing sword drills. Vanu stood under the overhang by the back door, watching. At some point Lill surely noticed that Vanu was there, but he did not stop until he had come to the end of the drill.
He had found the Chiddang-style practice sword that Vanu had made for Mikhi, a light, wooden weapon which was just about the right size for him.
He moved with fierce concentration, graceful as a dancer but serious as death.
Slice, kick, spin, and drop into a crouch, his braids swinging behind him.
Then he was up again, spinning into another precise sequence.
He had lightness and a kind of flow—there was probably a name for it—that would have been all focussed, in a real fight, on evading his opponent.
It would have to be. None of his attacks had any real power behind them.
He was operating right on the edge of what you could do with a body like his.
He finished the drill, standing at attention the way he had after his display of shooting prowess the other day. After a moment he relaxed and looked over at Vanu.
“You’re good,” Vanu signed. “I’m not surprised.”
Lill shook his head as if the compliment bothered him. “I’m out of practice.”
“I could help with that.”
Lill looked him in the eye for a moment. “But you’re not feeling well … ”
“Think that will give you an unfair advantage?”
“Uh. No. Probably not.”
Vanu grinned and pushed away from the post he had been leaning against. “Probably not.”
He picked up his favourite practice blade, a heavy short sword, sized to match his proportions and made of a dense wood that gave it a weight nearly equal to a real sword.
He trained with a variety of other weapons, but that was mostly for fun.
When he had real fighting to do, this was the kind of blade he used.
“Try attacking me,” he suggested.
Lill nodded smartly. He was deep behind the walls of his little fortress now, and Vanu wondered suddenly whether this was a terrible idea. If this reminded Lill too much of that wretched school—that was the last thing Vanu wanted to do. Putting himself in the position of the master? No.
There was no help for it now, though. Lill took a moment to prepare himself, his stance perfectly neutral, giving no clue what attack he planned—very impressive, but really not surprising—and then he was flying at Vanu with a beautifully executed attack, brutal and direct, not like the flashy stuff he had been practicing earlier.
Vanu brought his sword up, and Lill bounced off it. A flicker of surprise crossed his face, which was fair—an attack like that really deserved to land.
He came on again without being prompted, which pleased Vanu. A low approach this time, trying to get in under Vanu’s guard—smart, considering Lill’s size. Vanu sliced down, and Lill’s practice sword clunked on the ground.
Lill hooked the hilt with the toe of his shoe and flipped the sword up to catch it.
Then, probably hoping Vanu had been distracted by that little manoeuvre—he certainly could have been—he plowed into another attack.
This one was sloppier, and Vanu side-stepped, letting the blunt edge of his sword skim Lill’s side just enough for him to feel it.
Lill spun to face Vanu, guard up, taking his time again.
Again he gave barely any hint of how he was going to attack—just enough for Vanu to block the low, left-hand slice when it came.
Next he attacked high. After that he tried lunging.
He spun. He kicked—trying for distraction again, Vanu thought, because he looked gorgeous doing that.
After the fourth time he’d had to retrieve his sword from the ground, Lill stepped back, breathing hard, eyebrows drawn down in a frustrated frown.
“You keep smiling.” He sounded confused.
“Do I?” Vanu hadn’t noticed. He tucked his practice sword under his arm so he could sign, “It’s a treat, sparring with you. I like seeing how good you are.”
Lill looked as if he needed some time to think about this. “I … have worked hard to improve,” he said finally. “You like sparring? It’s … fun for you?”
“Yeah. Always liked fighting. Always been good at it.”
“Good is not a strong enough word,” Lill said tartly.
Vanu laughed. “Yeah, yeah. ‘Best swordsman of my generation’ and all that.”
“Show me some attacks,” Lill suggested.
“Sure.”
Vanu flipped his sword into his left hand and made the attack that had taken White Viper by surprise when Vanu was seventeen. It was something he’d invented, ramshackle and risky, but it had paid off that time.
Lill parried it. Or he would have, if he hadn’t been half Vanu’s size, with those thin wrists. His sword twisted out of his hand, and he had to duck, but he did evade the blow.
“That’s—”
“How you killed—White Viper.” Lill picked himself up from the ground, where he had ended up. “Right?”
Vanu nodded. “He should have parried like you did. Would have worked for him—he was a bit bigger than you.”
Not much bigger, actually. He’d been a surprisingly small man, a Chiddang nobleman with his grey hair in long plaits, the same style Lill wore. The same kind of ferocity in his eyes, too. Vanu wondered why he hadn’t seen that similarity before.
The other masters must have remembered that attack, the one that took down their leader, and taught their students how to counter it.
“Show me another,” said Lill.
They went on until Lill was beginning to look exhausted, the way he had at the wedding dance. Vanu was happy to stop himself. He was still feeling hungover. He saluted with his sword, and Lill made a quaint lowland bow.
“What about Red Asp?” Lill said suddenly.
“Who?”
Lill gave a huff of laughter. “The other Grandmaster of the Order that you killed. How did you strike the killing blow that time?”