“May I?”
“No—and for the same reason.”
Nabir’s dark eyes were steady. “Student to shodo, I respectfully request—”
“No,” I said again, knowing I was trapped. “We’re not really student and shodo, so the forms don’t apply.”
His young features were almost harsh. There are tribes in the South very feral in nature, and it shows in the flesh. Bastard-born, maybe, but Nabir had more than a splash of Punja-bred fierceness. It altered him significantly.
“If the forms do not apply,” he said quietly, “I have no desire to dance with you.”
“No?”
“No. And you need me to dance with you.” Nabir smiled in beguiling innocence. “You aren’t helping me, Sandtiger. You’re helping yourself. You are slow and stiff and awkward from that wound, and you’re afraid you won’t get your fitness back so you can dance against men like Abbu Bensir. And if you can’t—”
“All right,” I said, “all right. Yes, I’m out of condition. I’m slow and stiff and awkward, and I hurt like hoolies. But I earned the pain, Nabir … I earned the slowness, the stiffness, the clumsiness. Yours may be inbred.”
It wasn’t nice. But he’d cut too close to the bone in shedding his awe of me.
“So,” he said softly, “you put the dull blade against the newborn whetstone and fashion an edge again.”
“Does it matter?” I asked. “You’ll be better for it yourself.”
Nabir nodded. “Yes. But you might have asked me.”
I sighed wearily. “I might have. But you’ll learn when you get to my age that pride can make you do and say strange things.”
“You are the Sandtiger.” He said it with an eloquent simplicity that made me ashamed.
“I was a slave,” I said flatly. “You heard the word when Abbu said it: chula. And I was very nearly your age before I gained my freedom. Believe me, Nabir, all those years of the past don’t make for an easy future, even when you’re free.”
“No,” he agreed, very softly.
I sighed heavily and scrubbed at my forehead beneath still-damp, itchy hair. “Look,” I said, “I can’t tell you his name. So you can’t touch him. I’m sorry, Nabir—but like I told Abbu, you’re better off not knowing.”
“That is the answer, then? His name?”
“Part of it,” I agreed. “The rest is better left unexplained.” I started to turn away. “Are you coming? I’m for a jug of aqivi.”
Solemnly, he came. And then, “Am I really slow and stiff and clumsy?”
I considered lying. Discarded the idea; he was worth the truth. “Yes. But that will change.” I grinned. “A few more circles with me, and you’ll be the Sandtiger’s heir-apparent.”
Nabir smile was slow, but warm. “Not so bad a thing.”
“Only sometimes.” I slapped him on his back. “How was the little cantina girl?”
Nabir forbore to answer. Which meant either he liked the girl too much to say, or he hadn’t had the courage.
Ah, well, give it time … young manhood can be awkward.
Nine
Across our wooden blades, Nabir’s face was stiff. “She won’t marry me.”
As interruptions go, it was terrific. I straightened out of my crouched stance and lowered my sword, frowning. “Who won’t—” I blinked. “The little cantina girl?”
Nabir, nodding, lowered his own blade-shaped piece of wood. His eyes were very fierce.
It was, I thought, an interesting time to bring it up. We were in the middle of a sparring session, having progressed from the practice circle after two days. “Why do you want her to?” I asked.
Nabir drew himself up. Sweat ran down his temples. “Because I love her.”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Thought over how best to discuss the situation with the boy, whose prickly tribal pride—bastard-born or not—sometimes required diplomacy. Not that he could have harmed me, if it went so far; but I had no desire to hurt his feelings.
I scrubbed a forearm across my brow, smearing hair out of my eyes. “Don’t take offense, Nabir—but is she your first girl?”
His entire body went stiff. “No,” he declared. “Of course not; I have been a man for many years.”
I waited patiently. Eventually his gaze shifted.
“Yes.” The word was muffled.
So. Now I understood.
“Water break,” I suggested.
He followed me out of the circle, took the bota as I slapped it into his hands, sucked down several swallows as I folded myself onto my gauze and silks, nestling buttocks into sand. I set aside the wooden blade and hooked elbows around crooked-up knees.