Page 96 of The Summer Pass

Artayarasha raised his cup and drained it. He nodded. “You are quite right. I should have set myself against my brother years ago. I’ve been delaying the inevitable.”

Suddenly Lill felt cold inside. How was it that he kept finding new bridges that he had not yet crossed? He remembered how he had agonized over not going down to join Pantaresh’s army himself when it arrived. That had seemed like a final, irrevocable crossing. But now he was talking approvingly about a plan to oppose the king. He couldn’t even—didn’t want to—think about what it meant to oppose the Great King when you were his brother.

He’d just been trying to help Artayarasha make up his mind; he wouldn’t blame his father if he chose to wait for absolute confirmation that Pantaresh wouldn’t ransom him. He wouldn’t even blame him if he left, if he was ransomed. But he would be sorry.

“I’m glad we’ve been able to meet, Your … What would you like me to call you?”

Artayarasha smiled. “My other children and I are quite casual with one another—they all call me Father.”

Chapter 32

A Mighty River

Lill lay on his back and looked at the ceiling of Vanu’s bedchamber. Not the lord’s chamber, the one where Darma had put Vanu’s family because he had the key to the door, but the room where Vanu had slept when he was a boy in Tagra Degra. It was a small tower room at the back of the great house, with a narrow slit of a window that looked out on the mountain. The bed, not the one that Vanu had slept in when he was young, took up most of the floor.

Lill turned and looked at the space beside him in the bed. It was empty, the blanket tossed back where Vanu had been. They had slept side by side, in a bed, for the first time in months, but Lill had been hoping to wake up next to Vanu as well. He felt cheated, but he reminded himself that there would be other opportunities. Many of them. He was not leaving again.

Vanu had carried him up to bed the night before, and they had both been asleep within moments of lying down. Lill had been trying to formulate something he wanted to say to Vanu, to tell him how magnificent he’d looked dancing in the hall, when he realized from Vanu’s breathing that he was asleep; and then he was back in Umtúshta, looking for a missing goat, and realized vaguely that he was probably asleep himself.

He must have drifted off again, because he started awake when the door opened. Vanu looked in.

“You’re not up,” Vanu observed, coming inside and shutting the door behind him.

“No, I’m afraid … ” Lill pushed himself up to sit, remembering to use his good arm. “I must still have been tired.”

“Don’t apologize,” Vanu signed. “Suits me well.”

He slid the latch home on the door and pulled off his boots. He was dressed in his flashy warlord gear again, all black and gold: the black vest with gold embroidery, open at the front, rings in his ears and bracelets on his wrists, his hair pulled back and tied in a high knot. Lill sank back down onto his pillow.

“You must have things to do,” he said doubtfully.

“All sorts of things,” Vanu agreed. “I wanted to see you.”

He knelt on the bed, straddling Lill’s thighs, and leaned down to kiss Lill, long and deeply. Lill felt his bones turning to water. He felt like a little ditch with a mighty river suddenly poured into it.

Vanu released his lips. “You’re tired. Just said so. I’ll stop.”

“No, I said I was tired. I slept well. I’m—very refreshed.” He felt his cheeks heating with shame; that must have sounded as if he was begging for Vanu to carry on kissing him, to do more with him than kissing … “I enjoyed watching you dance last night,” he said quickly, to cover his embarrassment.

Vanu settled his weight to one side, still touching Lill but not resting on him. “Yeah? I thought you were too busy doing politics with your da to watch.”

“Well, I didn’t get to watch as much as I’d have liked, that’s true. There were too many other people in the hall blocking my view. But I wasn’t doing politics with His Highness—I was just trying to help him make up his mind about … ”

“About taking a stab at the Zashian throne, from what I heard.”

Lill slapped his good hand over his mouth and shook his head.

“No?” said Vanu, looking surprised. “You don’t think he should?”

“I don’t—” Lill took his hand away from his mouth and gulped in a breath. “I don’t think you understand—which isn’t your fault.”

He paused for so long that he felt Vanu draw in a breath to say something. Lill stopped him by continuing:

“We were very secretive about it. In the Order, we’re not just sworn to defend the Great King—we do rites. Sacrifices. We worship him. Not metaphorically. It’s an ancient thing—centuries ago when Zash was just a little kingdom in the southeast, they worshipped their kings as gods, though probably not with the same kinds of sacrifices that we did at the Order, because those were all made up when …

“But anyway, then when the prophet Vaksha taught the people of Zash about God, you know, the one they worship today, they got rid of the veneration of the kings. The king himself decreed that no one was to do it anymore, because he’s just a man and everyone should worship the true God. But then King Xshamaya, who founded the Order, reintroduced the rites, and … ” Somehow this had turned into a historical lecture and not a proper explanation of why he was upset.

Vanu sat up so he could sign. “And you just helped your father make up his mind to dethrone the man you used to worship.”