The Signal #3
“I know,” Vanu signed. “It makes a difference, doesn’t it? But it’s still cutting short someone’s life. You see another day and they don’t. There’s a … ” He thought for a moment. “A weight to it. Pulls you down. I’m not good at talking about this kind of thing.”
“I think you are.” Lill set down his empty bowl and turned toward Vanu.
Vanu looked at him for a long moment. “Did you bring this up because … ”
“I know you killed those men who set fire to Otoni’s house, and I thought … that must have been the first time in three years.” He didn’t add, And I saw you looking sad.
“Three years. Yeah. I didn’t miss it—that weight.”
He stroked Lill’s hair again and looked as if he would say something more, but then he shook his head.
“You should get dressed,” he signed. “Come help me with the milking.”
Lill felt an absurd impulse to say, Come help me get dressed. He didn’t say it—he didn’t quite have the courage—and he thought about it for a long time afterward, that missed opportunity. It wouldn’t have changed anything, fundamentally; he just wished he’d done it.
Instead he went back to his room and dressed, and they went out together to milk the goats, and that was happiness enough, because Vanu was his husband, and Lill was in love with him, and doing anything together was good.
Lill took a portion of milk to Otoni’s house, which was a small one opposite Halza’s, near the fortress gate. He found Otoni outside in the adjoining garden patch with Nomi.
“Hello, Lill. Oh, milk from the goats? How lovely. Tell me, does that happen often, things flying over the gate like that?”
“Like what?” Lill felt as if he’d missed something.
“Like that parcel this morning. Oh, you didn’t hear about it?
I thought you would have, because it was for Lord Vanu, a letter or something.
It came flying over the gate early this morning, tied to a stone.
And I thought, if that happens often, maybe we should move to a different house, further in. ”
“I don’t think it happens often,” said Lill. “I don’t know that it’s ever happened before.”
He felt as if a shard of ice had formed in his stomach. He’d completely forgotten about Arsha and the signal. How had he forgotten about that? He’d seen Arsha on the road to Dukka. He remembered the lowland-style tablet that Vanu had taken back to his room that morning.
He wanted to run back to the house, but he forced himself to walk casually. Then it was as if, having managed that, it became easy to wait longer. He was alone in the house, but he didn’t go looking for the letter; instead he went out into the yard to do sword drills.
Vanu came back from his chores but went out again soon after, to the great house to talk to Gurti.
Lill thought about going up to Vanu’s room then.
He knew where Vanu kept his correspondence, in a cupboard just above the one where Lill had hidden the first time he entered Vanu’s house.
He could leave an empty milk pail near the front door, where it would be knocked over when the door opened, alerting him when Vanu had come back in, so he could get out of Vanu’s room onto the balcony.
But he didn’t go near Vanu’s room. He left the house and went to find Mikhi for target practice.
He waited all morning and into the afternoon.
At times he forgot about the letter altogether, as he worked in the garden and helped Susami to card wool and Tirtu to gather scraps for the pigs.
Late in the afternoon, Vanu took up the piece of carving he had been working on before the raid on Sakka, and looked ready to settle on the balcony the way he often did, occupying his hands so that Lill would have to carry the conversation.
But then Halza arrived at the door saying that he and Tirtu had noticed a problem with the roof of Otoni’s house, and could Vanu come and see to it.
Vanu went out, and Lill was alone in the house again.
Finally he went up to Vanu’s room and opened the cupboard. The letter that had arrived that morning was there, on top of two others written on parchment. Lill took the tablet out and opened it.
Something fell out and fluttered to the floor, and Lill bent to pick it up. But he was already reading as he moved, and he froze with the motion unfinished.
To Lord Vanu Urártu, from a Friend in the Lowlands, greetings!
Alarming news has come to my attention. The only surviving son of your old enemy Madurasha, Arsha of the Clan Kuro, has conspired with your sometime friend Davanu Shawa to take your life.
This young man Arsha is going under the name of LILL and has come to the Spring Pass for his revenge.
He may tell you another story altogether about who he is and where he has come from—DO NOT BELIEVE HIM!
He is an accomplished liar. He will try some underhanded trick, using his outward comeliness, to get close to you, but his aim is your DEATH.
If you do not believe me, if the imposter is with you, show him the enclosed token and see how he reacts. He will betray his guilt!
Your Friend and Well-Wisher
Lill looked down at the thing that had fallen out of the letter and saw without surprise that it was a scrap of parchment stamped with the seal of a winged man facing a tree: the device of Madurasha, the signal that Arsha had promised to send, telling Lill when to act.
Clearly Arsha didn’t care whether his hired blade survived assassinating Vanu; it would probably suit him well if they both killed each other, each tidying the other away for him.
The betrayal wasn’t even very surprising at this point.
But it was a terribly risky way to go about it.
Warning your target could easily result in the assassin being the only one to die.
Clearly thirst for revenge had driven Arsha far out into fantasy territory, and it was to Lill’s shame that he hadn’t recognized it before now.
He picked up the seal from the floor and stood up, and his gaze fell on the letter that had been under Arsha’s.
He recognized it as the one that Vanu had received the night he went out and drank the bottle of Tirtu’s plum wine.
It was written in Hawa letters, and Lill had to pull it out of the shadowed interior of the cupboard to read it.
Lord Vanu Urártu, Umtúshta.
You know that my father, acting against the advice of his family, took Arsha, the orphaned son of the traitor Madurasha, into his home some years ago.
The day before my father’s death, the boy was seen buying poison in the foreigners’ market.
There can be no doubt it was him. He is small and has striking looks: long black hair and a deceptively comely face with Chiddang features. No one has seen him since that time.
I write you this not because I expect you to seek revenge.
My father was killed in an act of vengeance, betrayed by the son of a betrayer, but I do not want that cycle to continue.
If you should ever cross paths with this wretched boy, please let him go his way.
The ancestors, or the hounds of Dark Valley that the Zashians believe harry the wicked dead, will punish him when the time comes.
Makhi Shawa, Torakand.
It was like a mist lifting on a battlefield to disclose the true strength of the enemy. Lill saw suddenly what he was up against, and he saw what he had to do.
Vanu knew by now that he had a wife whom he could never fully trust. He knew his bride had never told him the truth. Was he Arsha or Lill? Was he seeking revenge or not? Had he killed Davanu or been hired by Davanu or both? Even Lill didn’t know the answer to the last one.
How could he have imagined he had constructed something true on the foundation of all those lies? Arsha wasn’t the only one lost to a fantasy. But Vanu didn’t deserve to live in that kind of uncertainty, and Lill didn’t deserve—had never deserved—to live with Vanu.
He’d seen the sadness on Vanu’s face that morning, after Vanu had read the anonymous letter, and stupidly Lill had thought it was about the events down the mountain.
A very small voice whispered in Lill’s mind: But he didn’t show you the seal; he didn’t even ask you about the letter.
He already does trust you. And that was the most terrifying thought of all.
He put the letters back in the cupboard, laying the tablet open on the top, with the sealed piece of parchment lying across it.
After hesitating for a moment, he drew off the gold ring with the little red stone that Vanu had given him as a betrothal gift and set it carefully on top of the tablet too. He closed the cupboard door.
As he turned to leave the room, something on the opposite wall caught his eye.
White Viper’s snake-handled dagger was back on its nail.
Lill hadn’t seen it there since the first time he’d taken it from Vanu’s room.
He remembered the complicated knot of emotions he’d felt when he saw that there the first time, when he’d laboured to get it down from the nail and finally got his hands on it.
Now all he could think was that if he asked—even if he didn’t explain why he wanted it—Vanu would give it to him.
He went and took the knife down from the wall and left the room.
He packed only a few things from his own room.
He moved quickly, because Vanu might come back at any moment, and he felt that if he saw Vanu again, this would only be harder.
He left by the balcony stairs and crossed the shadow-painted yard unobserved.
He didn’t pause to take a final look around, didn’t look up at the lit windows of the girls’ house, just unlatched the door to the round hut—it had been kept unlocked the last few days—and slipped inside.