Authors: Elizabeth Wein
Telemakos knelt staring at his sister without seeing her. His treachery was real, even if his letters had not been sent. He had spoken aloud the information that damned him now, in the coded message to Goewin he had given his father.
Athena pulled herself to her feet, holding on to his shirt.
“The najashi did tell me what to say,” she pointed out.
“You did well, Tena,” Telemakos whispered.
“Not Tena.
Athena
.”
“Athena. You did well, Athena.”
He hugged her close against him and buried his face in her hair. The sandalwood scent was nearly gone; it had been her baby smell. She was different now, trying so hard to be grown up. She changed so quickly.
I will never see her walk, now, Telemakos thought; nor hear her say my name.
“Little Tena,” Telemakos whispered, spilling hot, silent tears into her neck. “I mean, Athena. Oh, my sister … ” He clutched her close against him, choking with grief: not because he faced losing his life, but because he faced losing her.
Will he make it a public execution, like the one we saw in al-Muza? Telemakos wondered. Will Athena have to
see
? What will they tell her has happened to me? What will they do with her after?
He thought, I must get her away from me before it happens. I have got to let her go.
“Athena,” he choked quietly, speaking into her neck. “I’m going to go away. You may not see me again after tonight …”
“Boy?” she said uncertainly.
He made her sit so that they were face-to-face in the dark, and tried to be as serious and as clear as he was able. “You won’t see me again. Just as you won’t see Menelik again. You must kiss me good-bye now, and after this you have got to learn to walk by yourself, and behave for Muna and the najashi and the others who will take care of you—not like last time, when you set fire to the trees and made messes everywhere.”
He could feel her shoulders fall. Her whole frame seemed to crumple, and she began to sob.
“I will try to send you home to our mother, Turunesh, and to Ras Meder. You remember Ras Meder, with the snake in his hand?”
She cried tragically. She stood against his shoulder with her smooth brown arms around his neck and wept. “I do not want Ras Meder! I want to be with you!”
He held her close, his eyes closed, unable to speak.
Then she sat down. She grabbed the parchment map at his side and beat it against the ground and tore at it with her teeth. She threw it across the room and screamed in fury, “I am
not
good! I
will
make a mess! I will bite them and hit them and throw the rice again, I do
not
want to see you
pinned up on a stick like the lion with blood on your feet
!
That
is what they did with the lion, I saw it, the najashi did
lie
to me when he told me it went away, and I will
not be good
!”
She threw herself at Telemakos again and clutched him around the neck frantically. “Stay with
Athena
, Boy,” she sobbed. “Stay with me.”
Telemakos whispered numbly, “I can’t.”
It was true; that was what had happened to Menelik’s skin, before it went to Goewin. Athena must have seen it and said nothing. What else did she know; what else did she see?
Telemakos sat in the dark, clinging to her while she heaved with angry sobs, and after a time, through the chill that seemed to have taken hold of his mind, an idea came to him.
“Listen, Athena,” Telemakos whispered. “If you promise to be good, and to eat your food nicely and let Muna get you dressed and washed, and try to walk instead of being carried all the time, I will give you my salukis.”
“I don’t want
dogs
. I want
you
.”
“I won’t be here. Listen, Athena, these are your choices. You can have the dogs and be good, or you can have no dogs and be wretched. Which do you choose?”
“
I don’t want dogs
!”
“You get to choose dogs or nothing.”
She burst into tears again. He held her on his lap, his own tears making her hair wet, but then she finally made up her mind, sobbing in the pitiful way she did when she felt sorry for herself. “I will have the dogs then, and walk by myself, and not bite Muna. Is it all right if I am crying, Boy? Will I have the dogs if I’m crying? I don’t know how to make my eyes stop.”
“It’s all right if you cry,” Telemakos said softly. “Muna does not mind children crying. She’ll understand. The Scions will understand, too.”
For though they did not often speak of their own lost parents, their dead sisters and brothers, grief was a crippling wound suffered by all Abreha’s foster children.
He let her curl against his side with one hand in his hair to go to sleep, as usual. Telemakos lay still and quiet until her small, smooth fingers fell away, relaxed, and she was unlikely to wake again soon.
“My lovely, bold Athena.” He kissed her on the forehead. “Sleep well, my sister, my goddess.”
She growled to herself in her sleep, dreaming about her salukis.
Telemakos stood up and stripped off his shirt. The noble chieftains of his homeland in Aksum would often come before their sovereign naked to the waist if they had a favor to beg; the gesture would not be lost on the najashi.
Telemakos left Athena sleeping under the false stars and lowered himself through the pulley hole.
He swung for a moment by his fingertips before dropping to the floor of the nursery with a thump and a jangle. Lu’lu sat up, looked at him, then lay back down and turned over to go back to sleep. Telemakos recovered himself and went through to the children’s room. The seven eldest of the Scions were sitting in a circle playing Honest Man, Thief.
“How did you get in here, Morningstar?” Malika said. “Come and join the game. We need a vizier; every roll of the bone turns up another soldier, and no one has had any tasks set them yet.”
“I can’t. I—”
They waited, all looking up at him expectantly.
“I am in disgrace again,” he said, his voice scarcely more than a whisper.
Their gasp of sorrow and disbelief came out in unison, and again Telemakos was so griefstruck that for one blind moment he could not breathe.
“What may we do?” Inas asked in a low voice. “We will do anything we can.”
“Thank you,” Telemakos said. “Don’t tell anyone you’ve seen me.”
They watched in silence as he crossed the room beneath the bone and silver birdcages.
“We are with you,” Shadi and Jibril said to his departing back.
“We are all with you,” Inas echoed.
Telemakos no longer needed to muffle the charms at his elbow if he wanted to move in silence. He made his way through Ghumdan’s marble corridors and no one heard him; no one saw him.
The najashi’s own guards, outside Abreha’s apartment, were chatting together in normal, relaxed voices. Telemakos came as close as he could without actually touching them and took bitter pleasure in surprising one of them into dropping his spear.
“The najashi said I can speak to him whenever I want,” Telemakos muttered petulantly, falling to his knees with a deliberate and satisfying commotion of tinsel. The soldier snatched up the spear and pressed it against Telemakos’s bare ribs, and the other held a long knife at his throat. Telemakos was determined to make them feel like a pair of idiots. He shrank from the steel and scrubbed at his nose as if he were trying not to cry. He let the bells at his elbow plink and prattle.
“How—”
The soldiers gave each other quick, accusatory glances.
“Didn’t you hear him?”
Telemakos bowed his head. “Please don’t hurt me. The najashi is expecting me.” He shook the charms again. “I startle people everywhere I go,” he sniffed. “I’m sorry.”
They lowered their weapons. Telemakos was sure he looked pathetically harmless, a frightened, one-armed boy wearing only a kilt. But all the palace knew he had slain two lions, unaided, in the past season. The guards glanced at each other uneasily.
“Stay with him,” said the spearman. “I’ll step within.”
He did, and after a few moments, beyond the door and the silken arras that covered it, Telemakos heard the murmur of voices. He waited, and soon Muna came into the hall. Her own bracelets chittered. She wore an astonishing surcoat figured with pomegranates, each fruit outlined with gold thread and seeded with what looked like real rubies. For a long moment she said nothing but stood quietly, gazing down at Telemakos kneeling there; then she knelt beside him with her palm laid gently on his good shoulder.
“Morningstar, it is late.”
“I seek a petition of the najashi,” Telemakos said.
“Does the Star Master know you’re here? Did he send you?”
She means, did he let me past the guards, Telemakos thought. So she knows I am in disgrace again.
Telemakos whispered, “
No one sent me
.”
Muna’s hand trembled against his cold skin like a leaf in the wind tugging at its stem. Telemakos glanced up at her through his lashes. She met his gaze for a moment, as she had done on his first night in San’a.
“I would speak with the najashi,” Telemakos repeated.
“Come in, then,” Muna said, raising him to his feet. Telemakos was taller than she was. “My husband is still at his desk.” She led Telemakos through her chambers without taking her hand from his shoulder, until she left him alone so that she might forewarn the najashi. After a short while she came back and wordlessly waved Telemakos within.
T
HERE WAS NO LIGHT
burning in the room. The najashi sat awake in a pool of moonlight, a cup of wine at his hand. Telemakos stood in the doorway.
“Young scorpion,” Abreha said coldly. “What more is there to be said between us?”
“I want to buy Athena’s passage back to Aksum.”
Abreha looked down at his hands. He twisted his signet ring from his finger.
“And what can you possibly offer me in payment?”
Telemakos stepped lightly and swiftly across the room. His footfalls made no sound. He knelt before the najashi and pressed his forehead against the floor. The chimes at his elbow were silent. He moved with the sure stealth of a leopard stalking its prey.
“My service,” Telemakos whispered. “I offer you my service.”
There was a faint click as Abreha dropped his ring against the marquetry of his writing table. Telemakos waited.
Abreha picked up a taper and reached over with it to flick through the bells of Telemakos’s bracelet. They rang and rattled.
“How do you do it? How do you move so silently?”
“I don’t know. I am a good tracker. I have always been quiet.”
Abreha lit the taper.
“As it happens,” he said slowly, “I have need of your service, and you may not guess how it gladdens me that you offer it freely.”
There was a small burner on the floor beside him. Abreha set about lighting it, and blew out the taper.
“All right, Morningstar. Get off your face. Come to your knees and listen to my proposal.”
Telemakos rose, obediently, and sat back on his heels with his head bowed. The charms glittered, winking gold as the light caught them, but they made no sound.
“I want you to map the Hanish Islands for me.”
Abreha placed a warming pan for mixing ink above the lighted burner.
“The skirmish in Adulis has not affected the negotiation over al-Kabir,” Abreha said. “I am to meet with a representative of my cousin’s there, to complete our transaction. I will travel in the flagship of my armada, as I did during Aksum’s plague quarantine, with an escort of small warships to ensure my own safety in Aksum’s waters.
“I’ll put you aboard one of the warships, and you and they will leave the rest and navigate the archipelago in secret. I want you to sail the waters and walk the perimeter of the islands yourself, out of sight of the exiles and without the knowledge of my cousin’s ships and servants, and draw me a true map of Gebre Meskal’s prison fortress and its attendant islets. I want you to list any cove where a boat may find harbor, small or large, and any cave or inlet where an ambush may be placed on the island itself.”
He paused. Telemakos was silent, thinking, I could do it. He knows what I did in Afar, now, and he knows I could do this, too. How long would it take—a month, two months? The najashi could kill me tomorrow, if I refuse.
“Is it true that Gebre Meskal means to forgive you for ignoring his quarantine?” Telemakos asked.
“I am building a church in his father’s name, in thanksgiving that he has done so.”
Gebre Meskal has got ships coming and going from Hanish, Telemakos thought, guarding the prison and negotiating with Abreha. Aksumite ships, bound for Aksum. Maybe when I have finished the mapping …
“I’ll do it,” Telemakos said. “If you swear by your dead children that you will send Athena home to our parents.”
Abreha picked up his ring and dropped it in the warming pan. “By God, you young fox, I don’t know where your loyalty lies, but you do not disappoint me.”
“I can’t decide which is the greater tyrant, you or Gebre Meskal,” Telemakos said. “In truth, aren’t you and your cousin cut from the same cloth? He condemned an entire city to death in the name of his nation’s good, and you spurned his sacrifice in the name of your own! My loyalty lies with Athena. I will not sacrifice my sister in my emperor’s defense.” He raised his head and added bitterly, “Nor any child.”
Abreha rebuked him in quiet: “You are no longer a child, Lij Bitwoded Telemakos Eosphorus.”
Now the najashi picked up a short penknife. He leaned forward and worked the blade’s edge firmly beneath Telemakos’s bracelet, and sawed through the thin silver strip. The chimes shook frantically for a moment, then the band fell away. Telemakos glanced down at the bracelet and spat on it. “Prove to me you’ll keep your word and send my sister home. Swear by your dead children.”
Abreha laid the knife down on his desk. He said gently, “Morningstar, I will not profane the souls of my dead children. But I’ll give you surer proof than my word alone. I’ll entrust you with my kingdom, if you dare to accept it.”
In contemptuous disbelief, dumbfounded beyond fear, Telemakos raised his eyes to meet Abreha’s, as one warrior might accept another’s challenge. The najashi held his gaze.