Page 91 of The Summer Pass

“He doesn’t know I am, though,” Firuduna remarked as he picked up his bow.

He glanced back over his shoulder. The yard below the wall was clearing out, as Darma’s men headed off to find Vanu and the rest of the crowd jostled after them, yelling at them to leave Vanu alone. Padunu remained standing in the empty space, looking like a flat wineskin. Darma’s attention was still on the gate and the defenders above it. A couple of old men had remained with him, but most of his usual entourage had gone.

In a moment, he might turn on the hapless shaman, if Padunu remained standing there.

“Someone needs to tell Padunu to clear out,” said Barda nervously.

Firuduna passed him his quiver and set down his bow. “I’m on it.”

Barda grinned. “Good man!”

Firuduna tried not to grin himself as he jogged back toward the stairs. What was there to grin about in this situation? Just because Barda had had the same thought as him and congratulated him for acting on it—what was the matter with him today?

“Lord Darma,” he said loudly as he reached the yard. “Should I deal with this shaman?”

Darma glanced at him and frowned. “Firuduna? Where the fuck have you been?”

Firuduna shrugged. It was hard to avoid getting offended by that, because he’d had a perfectly good excuse for not coming into Tagra Degra with the other men of Tsuruva—he’d been injured—but he didn’t need Darma wondering when he had come in.

“Sorry, my lord. Huh—funny I’m calling you that now, and not Vanu, hey?”

Darma glared at him. “There’s nothing fucking ‘funny’ about it, Firuduna.”

“Nah, I don’t mean funny, like—anyway, do you want me to get rid of the shaman, or what?”

Darma looked across the empty space of the yard toward Padunu, who had certainly heard all this. He stood rooted to the spot, eyes widening as one moment and the next past without either of them saying, “Not get rid of the shaman, of course!” Even the old men by Darma’s side began making uncomfortable noises.

“Take him away, I meant,” said Firuduna finally, as if he’d only just noticed what he’d said.

“Sure,” Darma drawled. “That’s what you meant, yeah.”

That gave Firuduna a true chill. He could see exactly how it would play out of he took the bait—if he really was so desperate for “Lord Darma’s” favour that he committed the unthinkable blasphemy of killing a shaman. Darma would let him take the blame, of course, pretend he’d done nothing to encourage it. The old men would probably back him up.

Firuduna had known Darma all his life. He’d been one of those older boys that the younger ones admired and followed around, in the days before Vanu arrived in Tsuruva and everyone switched to admiring him and following him around. Firuduna remembered how surprised he’d been when Darma was the one who left with Vanu to serve as his interpreter.

Surprised and disappointed, because he had hoped he’d get the job himself. He could have done it just as well as Darma—he signed as well as any hearing man in Tsuruva, and better than many. And he hadn’t thought that Darma would want to do it. Darma used to make remarks about Vanu, and about the boys who were known to have messed around with Vanu in the barn.

Vanu never minded what anyone said about him, but he would defend the honour of his friends with force, so Darma never made his remarks very loudly. But they made an impression on Firuduna. They echoed in his mind for years, along with the things his father used to say about the uncle who never married. They formed another thread of the net that had bound his life for so long.

He’d come down here solely to get Padunu safely out of the way, but now he wanted to do something else helpful. (He wanted to look up at the wall to see if Barda was watching, too, but he didn’t.) This probably wasn’t as clever a thing as Lill would have done in his position, but it was the best he could think of in the moment.

“It’s a good thing you sent your men to deal with Vanu, my lord,” he called back to Darma, as he dropped a hand heavily onto Padunu’s shoulder. The shaman flinched but didn’t protest. “Smart, you know? Not risking yourself. I like that.”

“Fuck you,” Darma spat back, and for a moment Firuduna thought it hadn’t worked.

“C’mon, Shaman,” he said to Padunu, pushing him around toward the street where everybody had gone, in the direction of the great house. Padunu turned without resisting.

Then Darma shoved past the two of them. “Fuck you,” he said again, and strode ahead of them down the street.

Padunu looked up at Firuduna, eyes wide. “Nicely done,” he mouthed.

“Yeah, you too,” Firuduna whispered back.

He waited a moment to see if Darma’s two old retainers would follow their lord, but they didn’t. So he nudged Padunu, and the two of them took off down the street.

Darma caught up to the crowd and began shouldering his way through it, so Firuduna and Padunu did too. By the time they all reached the great house and were pouring through the alley toward the dungeon stairs, Darma was up at the front with the henchmen he had dispatched, while Firuduna and Padunu were jammed in among the men and women trying to get through to the yard behind the great house.

“He’s a traitor!” Darma bellowed. “Seize him!”