“You could hawk,” Shadi said tactfully. “The najashi doesn’t allow us weapons of any kind, but he has given me a sparrow-hawk.”
Telemakos recognized, suddenly, a difference between these children and those of al-Muza: even the smallest boys in al-Muza had worn their curved wooden knives with pride, but Abreha’s Royal Scions were daggerless.
“Why aren’t you allowed weapons?” he asked.
“We are noble.”
“Oh.” Telemakos considered the possible reasoning behind this, and his own guess as to why no one at home would teach him to throw a spear. “Are you hostages?”
Shadi gave him a pitying, astonished look, as though he could not believe that even a crippled foreigner could be so ignorant. “Whose good faith would my well-being buy? My father and brothers are dead.”
“That of your tribe, surely?”
“My clansmen, my limbs, shed blood in my name, not I in theirs. I am their head. A sovereign must learn to govern, to direct, not to wield arms.”
What about me? Telemakos wondered. Does Abreha consider me, as well, too noble to bear a weapon? I haven’t a kingdom to govern; I’m nothing to Himyar. I’m going to ask Abreha for a spear. The sling’s all right for birds, but I have got to find a way to hunt properly again.
Athena sat curled against her brother’s thigh, fitting lozenges of colored paint into a partitioned tray. She played nearly as often in the Globe Room as in the nursery, and as long as she was busy she did not try to destroy precious instruments or documents. Dawit Alta’ir was remarkably tolerant of her. He let Athena play with his hair and pick the leaves out of his beard and sort the semiprecious stones he used to make his globes.
The king had come up to see Telemakos at work, and watched from over his shoulder. “I do not remember a request that all our maps be illuminated, Dawit Cartographer,” Abreha said.
Telemakos had decorated the blank edges of the page he was working on. A line of pelicans flew across the top of the sheet; flamingoes stalked its lower corners.
“The Morningstar does that. It keeps the fuss to a minimum. Athena likes to watch her brother draw.”
“What is he working at?”
“Copying the plague tablets.”
“Does he know what they represent?”
“I have not told him.”
“I do not wish these plans to leave this library.”
“Send me another who can do the work adequately, and I will use him instead.”
Have they forgotten I am here? Telemakos wondered. He said lightly, “You are making me curious.”
“That is a fair warning,” Abreha acknowledged. He watched in silence for a time. Then he sat back on his heels and said at last, “Your master’s named you well, Athtar the Morningstar, the Bright One.”
Telemakos kept working, stiffly, and said nothing. Goewin’s twin brother, Lieu, the lost prince of Britain, had also been named “Bright One.” It made Telemakos feel ghost-touched to be compared to his dead uncle.
The paintbrush slipped from Telemakos’s fingers and spattered ink across the pelicans at the top of the page.
“Do not scold, Dawit,” the najashi said quickly, before the Star Master could open his mouth. “I am interfering with your student’s concentration.”
“Oh? Then it is something I can’t see. What has he done?”
“Spilt ink everywhere,” Telemakos said, blowing on the spots to dry them. Suddenly, with a purposeful change of direction, the najashi crouched low beside Athena. Crow’s feet creased the taut edges of his temples. Beneath his heavy brow, his rare smile was sweet and open.
“Little honey badger, do you remember me? You may come and play with the paints in my study anytime you like. I’ll have Muna bring you down, and your brother may be spared your attention now and again.”
Athena gave him a paint block.
“The king’s gratitude to you, my lovely.”
Athena pointed to his ring. She stared openly into his face with her wide gray eyes; no one had taught her that it was impolite to gaze directly at a king. Telemakos swallowed a sigh. That was probably his fault.
“See lion,” Athena said.
“Yes, that is my father’s ring,” Abreha said. He twisted the signet into his palm, to tease her. “Gone.”
“Lion?”
Abreha turned the ring back around his finger. “Here it is.”
“See Tena’s lion,” Athena explained more specifically, and gave the najashi’s ancient family crest a derisive smack. “Baby lion.” She turned the tray of ink blocks upside down. They clattered over Telemakos’s work in a cloud of color and dust, and the baby crawled into Abreha’s lap. “See Tena’s lion, najashi!” she said.
Telemakos felt his heart turn over with a thump of astonishment and envy. She can say najashi! It’s almost as long as Telemakos, and it isn’t even her first language! Why am I still Boy?
“That was her first full sentence,” Telemakos said. “You had better indulge her.”
Abreha laughed with ringing joy. “Now we know the way to your heart, little honey badger! Well, that is what I in truth have come for, to request the boy’s assistance with my lion, and if you will let me carry you, you may come, too. I want to take your apprentice away early today, Dawit. Menelik behaves much better for Telemakos than for me.”
“Take care with his one arm, playing with lions,” Dawit said grudgingly, “or you will never get your maps copied.”
Menelik was proving to be considerably more difficult to train than a dog. Telemakos secretly thought the lion more intelligent than the gazelle hounds, because, like most cats, it refused to perform without good reason. Telemakos never spoke this suspicion aloud. The salukis were nearly sacred: owned strictly by nobility, so prized and honored they could never be sold, only given as gifts. Telemakos longed for one of his own.
On this afternoon, Menelik performed with typical disobedience. He would not retrieve a dead pigeon; he guarded it selfishly in a corner of the yard until Telemakos had to go and wrestle it away from him. He came when Telemakos called him, but not when anybody else did. Athena could get him to run in the right direction if she scampered ahead of him on all fours, growling and chirping in lion language. They tussled over the pigeon, which Athena was intrigued by; she could not understand a bird that did not move. The animal keepers loved the way she fooled with the lion, but Telemakos did not. Athena might think she was a lion cub, but what did Menelik think she was?
“He will only be a nuisance to your gazelle hounds in the chase,” Telemakos told Abreha, who watched his experiment unfold with great interest. “Menelik will never be as fast as they are, and I don’t think he can sight as well.”
“He is ready to learn to hunt,” said Abreha. “He has the strength. He has the instinct.”
“His mother is supposed to teach him. And then he is supposed to let his wife do most of the work.”
Abreha laughed. “He thinks you are his mother. You will have to come along and show him what to do.”
After an hour of this hard play, the najashi held Athena up so they could watch Telemakos and the keepers drilling some small sense of discipline into Menelik, who had at least learned to stop and wait when told. When Telemakos next looked over, Athena had fallen asleep in Abreha’s arms, her head on his shoulder and the side of her face pressed against the beadwork of his robe.
The najashi was scowling, but it was the curse of his heavy brow that he always seemed unhappy. He held the baby so easily, so gently. Oh, Telemakos thought with a surge of sadness, how I wish, how I wish my father had held her like that.
Abreha carried Athena back up through the staircases. Telemakos followed, watching his sister’s head bobbing over the najashi’s shoulder. She slept, oblivious to her changing surroundings. It was a relief to Telemakos, for once, not to have to carry her up the stairs himself. I suppose she won’t be able to come along when we take Menelik out in the wild, he thought. You can’t take your baby sister hunting with you. Ras Meder might argue I shouldn’t go, either, if he knew.
Telemakos remembered the question he wanted to put to Abreha.
“Will you teach me to throw a spear?”
Abreha continued up the stairs and did not answer immediately, but at the next landing, without turning around, he asked, “Why?”
“You said I might hunt with you. I cannot use a bow.”
“Come hunting with the salukis before you prepare for war,” Abreha said. “Perhaps you’ll find you do not need a spear. A sunbird has no sting, but it may hang its nest near a hive and let the hornets protect its young.”
Telemakos missed the next step and fell halfway back down the flight.
“Mother of God, boy! Are you hurt?”
“I am not—” Telemakos coughed, and with all the terror and falseness of Peter denying his condemned teacher, cried out, “I am not a sunbird!”
He thought he was going to fall farther, and scrabbled at the steps with heels and knees, half expecting the worn marble floors of the Ghumdan palaces to turn to salt and sand beneath him.
“Are you trying to fly? I did not mean it literally!” The najashi made his way carefully down to Telemakos, still cradling Athena over his left shoulder, his right hand held out in an offer of concern. He crouched against the stair wall and pulled Telemakos’s shamma aside, searching him for injury. His touch was gentle and careful. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m all right,” Telemakos said, subduing himself.
“Thank heaven you were not carrying the baby!”
Telemakos rubbed his shins. “I lose my balance easily. I have not got used to being lopsided.”
“Your father made note of that in the instruction he sent concerning your wounds, and I have noticed it myself, watching you play with the lion. You used to move like a fox, quick and quiet. You are more cautious now.”
Athena stirred, muttering about the poor bird. She meant Menelik’s pigeon.
Abreha let go of Telemakos so that he could settle the baby more comfortably. He backed down the stairs, holding Athena firm in one arm, and helped Telemakos to his feet with the other. “Perhaps you do need a soldier’s training. We might be able to drill your poise back into you. Well, a light javelin would suit you, Telemakos Morningstar. We will fit you with a dart of some kind. As you say, you are not a sunbird.”
Telemakos touched the whitewashed wall to steady himself. He managed to speak with level gratitude. “Thank you, my najashi. I would pledge such a weapon to your service.”
“Withhold your pledge awhile,” Abreha said. “When you’ve learned to use such a weapon, I’ll remind you of your offer.
“And,” the najashi added thoughtfully, “Tharan will train you to ride like a desert soldier. All the best spearmen ride. You may find it difficult at first. Tharan always makes the cadets start off blindfolded.”
XIII
TAMING THE LION
TELEMAKOS STARED AT THE abacus before him. He covered his eyes, held them closed, and uncovered them. He could do it himself without shuddering. He covered them again. When he looked at the abacus, he could not remember what he had been figuring.
