As Lion lapsed into shocked silence I looked hurriedly around. “If he’s moving, we should be able to hear him!” I explained. “That’s if my master and Lily will be quiet … Will you be quiet?” My last words were shouted to be heard over the commotion on the bank.
There was a momentary pause before my master’s incredulous voice came back to me, reduced to little more than an outraged croak. “What did you say?”
“Listen!”
Everybody listened.
“What was that?” asked Handy.
Simultaneously he, Lion and I turned around.
“Splashing,” Lion suggested. “Is it someone swimming?”
Suddenly we were talking in whispers again. The three of us kept as still as we could with the canoe swaying beneath us, while we peered into the gloom around us, and even the voices from my master’s stranded canoe were stilled.
“I can’t see …” I began.
“What’s that?” Handy seized my forearm and tugged it toward where he wanted me to look. “Did you see?”
Lion joined in. “Yes! Yes! I see!”
Then I saw it too: a flash of white, like spray driven from the surface of the lake. I saw it again, but the second time there was something else with it: a pale flicker of movement, the sort a bare arm might make, frantically wielding a paddle.
Raising my eyes a little, I saw a dark mass lying in the water, just in front of us and not much more than a spear-cast away.
From behind me came the sound of maguey fiber ripping as Handy tore the breechcloth from the blade of his paddle.
“Come on, everybody paddle!” Lion had thrown himself into the bottom of the canoe and was striking the water urgently with his hands, and before I had time to reflect on how pointless this was I was doing it too, drenching myself in clouds of icy spray as I tried my pathetic best to add to our speed.
In no time my arms ached, and despite my exertions I was trembling with cold. My hands and feet were going numb and yet the strange, dark boat ahead of us seemed to get no nearer. My head began to spin and I closed my eyes for a moment to clear it.
When I opened them again, the boat was on top of us.
It was the largest craft I had seen. It must, as I had guessed, have been carved out of a whole tree, and a tall one at that. It had been decked over and a shelter the size of a small house stood on the deck, with a number of shapeless bundles scattered around it. I barely had the time to take all this in before we ran into it with a force that jammed my face into the bow of the canoe.
Out of the darkness, and over the ringing in my ears, I heard someone mumble thickly: “We’ve hit!”
All around me were noise and movement: angry male voices andrunning feet. The canoe seemed to be swaying, although as soon as I tried extracting myself from the narrow space I had been tossed into I realized it was because my head was spinning from the blow it had taken in the collision. The thick mumbling voice had been my own.
I got to my knees, bringing my head level with the side of the canoe just as a sandaled foot landed on it. A moment later the foot took off again, and the canoe gave a sickening lurch as my brother launched himself into the air, screaming like an injured jaguar. As I tried to stand, with Lion’s war cry echoing off the trees at the lake’s edge, Handy shoved me aside. I heard the slap of his bare foot as he planted it where my brother’s had been and then he too hurled himself across the gap between the boats.
“Wait!” It came out as an unintelligible gasp. What were they using for weapons?
Lion and Handy scrambled over the big boat’s side. They stood for a moment near one end of the vessel before running toward the shelter in its middle.
By the time I saw the danger it was too late to avert it.
He had been crouching at the far end of the boat, keeping low to avoid being knocked overboard in the collision. To get to him, Lion and Handy would have to dodge around the shelter. Their foe had plenty of time, and took it, unfolding himself from the deck and standing up in lazy slow motion. The blades of his sword glittered faintly in the starlight as he raised it above his head.
With a triumphant cry, Lion leaped toward him, outpacing Handy.
Then the boy struck.
Nimble had been lying by the shelter, indistinguishable from any of the shapeless objects lying around him. As Handy passed him he leaped to his feet, with his paddle in both hands, and swung it at the unsuspecting commoner’s head. I heard a soft thump and Handy toppled into the water with a loud splash.
My brother’s reaction was eerily fast. He seemed to spin in midair as he turned to face the new threat behind him. Nimble had the paddle raised again. Lion leaped high in the air as he went for the boy, hoping to avoid the improvised weapon, or catch it at the top of its arc before there was any force behind it.
Nimble took a step backward. He flipped the paddle over and thrust the end of its pole into my brother’s stomach.
Lion flew into the pole with his full weight behind him, folded up around it with a loud grunt, and collapsed.
A horrible silence followed.
I stood, leaning heavily on the side of the canoe as I moved cautiously forward. Luminous shapes danced before my eyes in time to the thumping pain in my head. I stared at the strange boat.
Our canoe and the big craft were not quite touching, although they were still close enough that I could have scrambled across the gap between them. There was a sluggish feel to the way the canoe was moving that puzzled me until I noticed that my toes were under water. The impact had split the canoe’s timber and it was slowly sinking.
The boy dropped his paddle with a clatter. The man at the other end of the boat lowered his sword and looked across the water at me. He was too far away in the darkness for me to see his face, but by now I did not need to.
I hailed him grimly.
“Shining Light!”
4
This time the merchant did not trouble to disguise his voice. I knew it at once, although it now bore little trace of the affable young man I had first met at the Festival of the Raising of Banners.
“Yaotl! Is that you?”
I did not know what to do. The urge to plunge into the lake was strong, even though I did not know how far away the shore was, but my brother was on the boat in front of me, at his enemy’s mercy, and I could not bring myself to abandon him.
“I think you’d better talk to me, Yaotl! I need someone to tell me who I’ve got here-before I start flaying him. He might have trouble telling me himself, after I’ve cut his face off!”
He was standing over Lion’s body. I did not know whether my brother was conscious or even alive. I was surprised to find that I cared. I might not have until a few days before, when I had learned that his shame at what happened at Coyoacan equaled mine at being expelled from the Priest House.
Besides, I told myself, if anything happened to him I would only have to explain it to my mother.
“All right!” I told myself the water was too cold to jump into anyway. “I wouldn’t touch him, if I were you. He’s not just some commoner who won’t be missed.”
“I thought so! The Guardian of the Waterfront!”
“The Guardian of the Waterfront?” Nimble’s voice was hushed with amazement. “You mean, Yaotl’s brother?”
“Who else? My mother told you they were at the banquet together!” My anger at the woman revived for telling him so much, for letting this go so far-and for letting herself be so cruelly duped. “I am having a good night, aren’t I? Fancy me bagging the Guardian of the Waterfront himself! The Emperor should give me jeweled sandals and a jade labret for this, don’t you think, Nimble?” He laughed, but there was no humor in it, and the boy did not join in.
“What do you want?” I demanded.
“Isn’t that obvious? What we want is you! Now get on this boat, before I start skinning your precious brother alive!”