“But I didn’t …”
He raised his voice to call out over his shoulder without taking his eyes off me. “Why don’t you tell Yaotl what happened when your mother died, Nimble?”
For a moment all I could here was the youth’s rapid, hoarse breathing. Then his voice came in gasps, as if each word was a struggle to utter. “It was … it was what Young Warrior told me-it was the last thing he told me.” He paused. “Maize Flower had a fever after I was born. She babbled, nonsense most of the time. But the name she kept saying, over and over again, was yours. Always ‘Yaotl.’ Never ‘Young Warrior.’ It was your name … always your name …”
As the boy dried up, the merchant carried on. “His mother saved her last breath for you, you see, Yaotl. For you, even though you’d abandoned her and left her and Nimble to their fate. And you’d forgotten all about them!”
“I’m sorry.” It was all I could think of.
“If you’d cared,” the boy said dully, “she might have lived, if she’d thought you cared. She might have fought for her life.”
I experimented with getting up, taking my weight on my palms, only to collapse again as the blades sliced into the back of my neck.
“And what do you want from me now, Nimble?” I asked as calmly as I could. “Revenge, is that it?”
This was so unfair, I thought. It was not as if I had forced them to leave the city. Would it really have helped if I had gone into exile in place of Young Warrior? How was I to know the silly girl had loved me?
Shining Light interrupted the boy’s reply. “Revenge? For what you did to his mother and to him-for being sold twice, and driven from city to city, and turned into a whore! Wouldn’t you want vengeance for that?”
He bent down so that his breath stirred my hair.
“Wouldn’t you want revenge?”
Did the youth really want me dead for the sake of what I had said to his mother all those years ago? I forced myself to remember what it had led to: Maize Flower, delirious and dying in a freezing cave, Young Warrior dead and barbarians chewing on his dismembered corpse, Nimble’s own squalid life. Had it turned him into a killer?
How many times over did I owe him my life?
“I might want revenge,” I gasped, “and so might you, but Nimble doesn’t! He just wants to talk to me, Shining Light! He wants to know who his father is-me or Young Warrior! That’s it, isn’t it, lad?”
I felt giddy. It may have been the blood I was losing from the cuts on my neck, or relief that the boy, at least, did not want me dead. Or it may have been the effort it took to voice the suspicion I had kept at bay for so many years: that Maize Flower’s child may have been mine after all.
As if from a long way off, I heard Nimble speak. “Father …”
Shining Light howled. “Don’t call him that!” Suddenly the blades stopped pricking my neck as he raised the sword. “You’re mine, don’t you get it? This piece of shit is nothing to us. Nothing! And now he’s dead!”
“But aren’t you listening?” I cried desperately. “Nimble doesn’t want you to do this!”
“Shining Light, please!” the boy pleaded.
“Nimble.” It came out as a long, regretful sigh. “You’re so young. You haven’t learned to hate yet, that’s all. But I have. You taught me!
“I’ve heard your tale so many times, and heard you weep as you told it, and listened to you still weeping long into the night afterward when you thought I was asleep. And I’ve burned with anger and wanted to flay your father alive for the pain he’s caused you. And all you wanted to do was talk to him! Even though I could see it wouldn’t do any good, I went along with it-I promised to help you find out the truth. I kept my promise, too-remember when I went to see Yaotl at my own house? But talking doesn’t lead anywhere, love. It just hurts and confuses.
“So don’t worry about Yaotl, Nimble. You’ll get over his death in no time-I’ll see to that!”
“Shining Light!”
In my brother’s mouth the name sounded like an obscenity.
Lion was on his feet, leaning against the shelter. He lurched forward, seemingly oblivious to the boy just a couple of paces from him as he gave all his attention to the merchant. His voice was thick with pain and contempt.
“They’ll burn you alive, you pervert. You’re disgusting. You’re like those little worms that fall out of our backsides. You make me puke. You can’t live cleanly and you can’t even make money honestly.” Lion was trying to goad Shining Light into making the first move. “Your sort don’t even fight like men!” My brother truly resented being hit with a paddle.
I could not move. I could not see the sword or tell whether it was still poised to lop off my head or anything else. I could see only my brother, still mouthing insults as he staggered toward us and sank to his knees.
“It’s no wonder you have to hide on the lake, surrounded by scum. You’d never be allowed in the city.” He was visibly weakening, toppling forward until his hands slapped the wood under him while his voice became a breathless croak. “The women would sweep a piece of filth like you off the streets before morning … Yaotl! Look out!”
Lion shouted the last words.
In an instant he was on one knee and then on his feet. He had slipped his cloak off and held it in both hands, and as he leaped forward he hurled it over Shining Light’s sword arm.
I threw myself to one side.
The cloak missed, but as he darted out of its way Shining Light slipped and toppled over me. Obsidian blades buried themselves in the deck beside me with a sound of splintering wood.
Roaring furiously, Shining Light tore the weapon free and jumped up to face my brother. Lion charged him with just his bare hands. The sword became a blur as it sliced the air between them. It carved flesh from both my brother’s arms, but the blow was mistimed: Lion was too low and too fast and his wounds were shallow. He did not groan or cry out, but as the sword reached the end of its arc, before Shining Light had time to react, he straightened up and delivered a kick to the other man’s stomach that sent him sprawling onto his back, gasping for breath.
“Got you!” Lion cried joyously as he threw himself on his foe, hands clutching at his hair and twisting it brutally. “You’re mine now! My beloved son!”
“Lion!” I hauled myself to my feet. “You’re not on a battlefield now! Just fucking kill the bastard!”
I was too late. Shining Light writhed, twisted, slithered like a live fish out of my brother’s grasp and jerked himself free to the sound of his own hair tearing. He ran toward the shelter, screaming for Nimble.
Shining Light still had the sword. As he scrambled away it flailed wildly behind him, missing Lion’s face by a finger’s breadth. My brother, thrown off balance, took a moment to get after him, and by the time he did, the merchant was on his feet again and facing us.
The boy stood by him, holding the paddle in both hands.
“What now?” I asked.
“The merchant’s mine,” said my brother. “You take the boy. When I say go-”
“Wait a moment! They’re still armed!”
“Come on, Yaotl! Do what he says!” roared Shining Light. “Let’s finish this now!”
“Stop this!”
Nimble’s cry was not loud. It was something between a sob and a muffled scream, a noise of distress and desperation that made the rest of us, all three, pause for an uncertain instant, staring at each other asthough we had all seen something so momentous it dwarfed our quarrels.
“I didn’t want this,” the boy gasped. “I didn’t ask you to kill those men. I only wanted to talk to Yaotl, to find out how it was.”
“I got you out of the marketplace,” said Shining Light.
“You didn’t get me out of the city! You made me run your errands for you, you made me stay on the boat, you wouldn’t let me go and see him, you wouldn’t-”