Page 8 of The Summer Pass

“They, uh … ” Mikhi trailed off.

Vanu frowned at her and repeated himself.

“Sorry,” she signed when she had finished translating for the headman. “I just saw Halza … ”

“I know. Ignore it. Your sister can handle him.”

They went on to discuss how many horsemen to expect from the Steppes and how soon, how long it might take Hegga to raise his troops and how they would get to the Tawa Valley from Korumundi. Down in the yard, Halza had grasped Susami’s hands and was talking earnestly, while Atari, who could read lips a little, was clearly doing her best to translate. Vanu tried to follow his own advice and not watch, though he could have followed the whole conversation from here if he’d tried.

Susami’s response needed no translation.

“Is it all right for me to keep refusing him like this?” Susami asked that evening.

Vanu had gone to the girls’ room in the great house after dinner, the first opportunity he’d had to get away and speak to them alone, in the midst of all the campaign preparations.

“Yes. Unless you want to marry him, it’s more than all right—it’s vital.”

“I don’t want to marry him, but … ”

“Then don’t marry him. I’ve already told him it’s up to you.”

Halza had first declared himself as Susami’s suitor—not that anyone had needed him to do that—the day after Khatu and Otoni’s wedding. They had been drinking after the wedding dancing, and Halza had come swaying up to Vanu and made a little speech, and Vanu had already been annoyed to be sober under the circumstances, but this had made it nearly unbearable. He’d wanted simply to tell Halza to fuck off. But in fact he wasn’t unprepared for this situation. He’d always told the girls that if any man came asking for one of their hands, his response would be, “You’ll have to ask her.” So that was what he’d said, and that was what Halza had, eventually, done. Three times now.

“Anyway,” Vanu added, “we don’t need any more people in this family making ill-advised marriages.”

Susami looked at him sharply for a moment, and he thought he shouldn’t have said that. He was the one who had fenced off the topic of his own marriage. He ought to abide by his rules.

Eventually, she said, “You never talk about Lill, but the rest of us do. Halza has apologized several times for bringing Lill into the stronghold.”

He’d heard this one before too. “Halza likes to make things about himself when they aren’t. He followed Lill into Umtúshta because he thought Lill needed rescuing. And I’d be astonished to learn he had any idea what Lill came for.”

“He didn’t. He’s said that several times too, and I don’t think he’s lying. He seemed more surprised than any of us when we learned.”

Because he’s an idiot, Vanu thought.

“He is a respectable young man,” Susami went on, signing slowly. “I could marry him and go to live with him in Radush or Bezevand or wherever he decides to settle, and … you wouldn’t have to worry about me. I could even take Atari with me. So it wouldn’t be as if I had no one to talk to.”

For a moment Vanu had no response to that. It felt like hitting a rock wall, like all the breath had been knocked out of him. She was not wrong. Halza was respectable, as far as they knew, could probably provide for a wife, and Vanu would worry less if Susami and Atari were safely settled somewhere. But at what cost? They would be two deaf mountain girls alone in a lowland village or a city where they knew no one, and Susami would be married to a man she didn’t like.

“If … ” he signed, and then stopped. If he told her to follow her heart, she would—she’d follow it right into self-sacrifice and never admit that’s what she was doing. “If I change my mind, I’ll let you know,” he said instead. “But for now, you don’t have my permission to marry him.”

She looked at him for a moment, then she nodded. He didn’t believe she needed his permission—they weren’t a normal family—and he would never have withheld it if he thought she truly wanted this. But she’d just said she didn’t. He was trying to help. He hoped she could see that.

Firuduna was a difficult patient. Lill wouldn’t have known, as he had no basis for comparison; he’d never been involved in caring for wounded people in the Order. But Zaraz said Firuduna was difficult, and Shan agreed, and Firuduna himself lamented several times that he was afraid he was being difficult and explained that it was because he hated being laid up. Not a thing that needed saying, Lill would have thought. It wasn’t as if anybody would enjoy it. But it seemed important to Firuduna to insist, in between trying to get out of bed when he shouldn’t and calling for Lill to rearrange his pillows for the seventeenth time, that he wasn’t doing this because he liked it.

Zaraz and Shan tried to help, but they couldn’t talk to the raider and were understandably nervous around him. Shan refused to let Zaraz go into his room alone, even to bring him food, and she took pretty much the same stance regarding Shan. Lill was eager to spare them both. He rather wondered why they didn’t leave, since it was obviously uncomfortable for them here. But he was glad they hadn’t; he liked having them around.

They had interesting conversations in the idle moments of the day and the evenings. Shan and Zaraz talked about their friends—their family, one might almost have said, from the way they spoke of them—at the hostel where they worked. Zaraz brought the conversation around, quite naturally, to boy brides and warrior souls and other things to do with people’s genders so often that Shan teased her affectionately for it.

At night they sat outside, and Zaraz and Shan would sing. Unsurprisingly, since it was how they got their living, they were very good. Especially Zaraz, who could hit high notes that made Lill’s eyes pop wide in amazement. She tried to explain to him how to do it—something to do with singing through your head, which made absolutely no sense to him. She could sing low notes too, though she said she didn’t like to. She had a facility for imitating other people’s speaking voices, the result of practicing to make her own voice sound the way she wanted. This interested Lill, who had often thought that if he wanted to infiltrate some place in women’s clothes, it would be his voice—by far the most mannish thing about him—that would give him away. But why, he asked himself sternly, would he need to infiltrate anything? He didn’t do that kind of thing anymore.

The third day after Zaraz and Shan’s arrival, while the shaman was tending to Firuduna, Lill seized the opportunity to suggest that the couple come with him to pick berries up the hill behind the house.

“It’s not a three-person job,” he admitted as they set off, “but I think you will enjoy the view.”

“How kind of you,” said Zaraz. “You really like taking care of people, don’t you, Lill?”

He laughed, thinking at first that it was a joke, but it seemed not to be. When—how—had he become the sort of person who could give that impression?