Page 76 of The Boy Bride

He got through the winter, which was mild that year in Torakand, without snow or threat of frostbite. The days were lengthening, and the sun was just starting to feel warmer when the day came that changed everything.

He was on his own that afternoon, in the square where he performed (and slept) these days, on the south bank of the river, a quieter neighbourhood but with plenty of large houses. The porters and eunuchs and veiled women who came out of them on errands were often generous tippers, and now that he’d got himself a good coat, he had faint hopes of being invited into a nobleman’s home to perform. So when a silver Sukiyan coin rolled and spun to a stop at his feet after he’d thrown his last knife, of course he looked to see who had thrown it.

It was a youth, Lill’s own age, Chiddang or maybe half-Chiddang like himself, wearing his black hair in long plaits in the style of a Chiddang man of good birth. He was well dressed, but not like a princeling or a courtier—Lill had seen that kind of wealth on display—and the coin he had thrown, though silver, was not large. Lill bent to pick it up, without taking his eyes off the person who had thrown it.

The young man strolled across the square toward Lill, who stayed on the ground, gathering the few other coins that his performance had earned him. There was something at once familiar and strange about the newcomer, though it took Lill some moments—until the young man had arrived in front of him—to work out what it was.

The stranger had an attractive face, with narrow dark eyes and pale skin. He wore a Zashian-style hat with a feather and was doing his best to grow a beard—it was working better for him than it ever had for Lill, which wasn’t saying much. Lill straightened up and found himself eye-to-eye with the newcomer. They were the same height. Well, not quite—the stranger was wearing thick-soled wooden clogs to keep his shoes out of the mud of the street, so he must have been an inch or two shorter than Lill.

“You’ve noticed it too,” the stranger remarked.

“Noticed what?” said Lill guardedly, in case it wasn’t what he was thinking.

This smartly dressed young man with his respectable braids and hard-won stubble might rightly feel insulted to be told by a dirty street performer, “Yes, I’ve noticed that we look remarkably alike.”

Chapter 23

Be What You Are

“My name is Arsha,” the young man said as he dropped down to sit on the bench outside the bakery. “There’s more to it—or there was once—but these days ‘Arsha’ suffices. It’s what I have left.”

“Thank you for the bun, Arsha,” said Lill, tearing off a piece carelessly, as if it wasn’t the first thing he was going to eat all day. “I’m Lill. There’s more to that as well. Or, as you say, there was.”

“I daresay. Fallen on hard times? I know something about that.”

“You seem to be doing all right now,” Lill observed neutrally.

Arsha adjusted the wide cuffs of his coat sleeves and shrugged. “Where did you learn to throw knives like that, Lill?”

Lill took another bite of his bun and considered his answer. In six months, he had never told anyone exactly where he had lived before coming to Torakand. He had named the region vaguely, and no one had ever asked for precise details. He felt an instinct to conceal the truth now—but for what? He was not on a mission.

“The Order of the Sworn Defenders.” You weren’t supposed to pronounce the rest of the name to outsiders.

Arsha arched one eyebrow. “The Snakes? Please. Do I look like a newborn babe?”

“No.” Was he saying that he didn’t believe Lill?

Arsha studied him for a long moment. Lill finished eating his bun and wished he had another.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” said Arsha finally. “You were in the Snakes.”

“I didn’t know they called us that.” It sounded disrespectful.

“Around here they do. They tell all kinds of stories … What happened? You left?”

“I was expelled. You don’t leave.”

“Expelled? For doing what?”

Something about Arsha’s expression told Lill that he was hoping the answer was spectacular. That Lill had set fire to something, gotten someone’s daughter with child, something like that. Arsha clearly knew nothing about the Order. For such things, they wouldn’t simply expel you.

“It was a misunderstanding,” said Lill, trying to convey through his tone that it had been no such thing.

Arsha nodded knowingly. “So you’re what now? A blade for hire?” He looked Lill over critically. “No.”

But he didn’t say it as if he didn’t believe it. He said it as if he was trying to play it cool. As if he couldn’t believe his luck.

“I could be,” said Lill, feeling much the same way.