“Lij Bitwoded Telemakos Eosphorus.”
Telemakos glanced up, startled.
“How do you know me?”
“How should I not know you? Have I not sat all this week in negotiation with a collection of nobles from three empires, arguing over your fate?”
Telemakos narrowed his eyes, random scraps of knowledge locking into place like fragments of a puzzle. All the commotion over Anako’s release had been part of Abreha’s design, a smokescreen to keep Telemakos unaware that he himself was the real object of everyone’s attention.
“Lij Telemakos, you look cold,” the warden said. He unwrapped his own shamma shawl and threw it over Telemakos’s maimed shoulder. He raised Telemakos to his feet. “Please, your highness, do not kneel to me.”
The sentries bowed their heads, and Telemakos’s heart swooped nearly into his throat at being addressed so formally. Prince of Britain. He tucked the ends of the shamma in place, embarrassed at his sudden elevation from runaway bondservant to the dramatic focus of conflicting nations. “God reward you, sir,” he said quietly.
“Get me a hawri,” the warden told the sentries. “We’ll take him across to the general.”
Telemakos was escorted, now, rather than driven. They took him back to the water’s edge and helped him into a canoe. His deliverers carried no light and crossed quietly to the Aksumite ships. In the dark, men whispering hoarsely to one another in Ethiopic fixed him in a rope sling and lifted him on board.
In the lantern light on this new deck Telemakos saw the face of the man who met him there: a familiar, heavy, disapproving brow and high, narrow cheekbones. There was no ring decorating the dark, fine hands that held the ends of the rope that was fixed around Telemakos’s waist; the ring that should rest there was on Telemakos’s finger now, clutched tight in his palm, damning him. Telemakos gave a wordless cry of despair, sure that Abreha had second-guessed him yet again. He tried to throw himself backward into the sea.
“Telemakos!” The voice he knew so well rapped out his name in a soft, sharp, commanding bark. “Telemakos, I am not Abreha!”
Telemakos turned his head. He had lived with Abreha so long that it had slipped his mind how similar the najashi was to his own younger brother.
“Ras Priamos?” Telemakos guessed.
“Peace to you, Telemakos Meder,” said Priamos Anbessa. “You’ve been lost.”
On hearing his own name Telemakos was so awash with relief that he stumbled, and found himself sitting on the deck. By force of habit he climbed to his knees and tried to make a formal bow, but Priamos gently pushed him back down.
“Sit. Rest. Why have you been released? Are you a messenger?” Priamos quickly untied the supporting rope. “Abreha had not yet agreed to our contract!”
“I ran away.” Telemakos let the corner of his mouth quirk into its crooked smile. “I put the najashi and his men all to sleep with opium, and left them.”
Priamos laughed. His delight broke up the angry look of his heavy brow, just as it did Abreha’s. “Ah, heroic!” He was still laughing as he looked Telemakos over in the moonlight. “Never in my life have I had the upper hand over my brother! You’re not hurt, are you?”
“Just wet. The prison warden gave me his shamma, but my kilt is soaking through it.”
“Have mine. Take off your kilt so it can dry out. You’ll have to do without shoes till we reach Adulis, I fear.” He took Telemakos by the wrist to help him unwrap his shamma; the heavy nickel ring blinked silver against Telemakos’s dark knuckles.
Priamos stared in stunned silence. At last he breathed a long, shaking sigh. When he brought himself to speak, it was in a whisper. “That is my father’s crest. That ring belonged to my father, Ras Anbessa, the Lion of Wedem.”
“So it did,” Telemakos answered in a low voice. He had not thought of that, when he took it.
“I last saw it on the hand of my elder brother, Hector, before he went to battle against Abreha in the past conflict with Himyar,” Priamos said quietly. “A dozen years ago now. Abreha’s men must have delivered it to him when Hector was killed. How have you come by it?”
“I took it from the najashi, just now, as he slept. I took it because—I don’t know why I took it. Petty vengeance, I suppose. He had—he used it to brand me. He burned the mark into the skin at the back of my neck.”
Priamos reached out a hand to tilt Telemakos’s head aside, moving so suddenly that Telemakos nearly lost the ring.
“Shine a lantern here, someone!”
Telemakos bent his head beneath the light while Priamos pushed back the wild hair.
“Mother of God. I did not believe him—Not you, boy, I did not believe Abreha. He says he does not want to release you because he has made you his heir. How should any of us believe such a fantastic tale, when all we know is that he has held you imprisoned and helpless in a tower of Solomon’s palace for two years?”
Telemakos shook his head, understanding none of this.
“Telemakos Meder, if Abreha has put this mark on you, it means he counts you as his own son.”
Telemakos jerked his head from Priamos’s grip and said sharply, “Do not mock me!”
“I don’t. Look.”
Priamos bent his own head to the light.
“Look well,” he said, and pulled his shirt away from his neck. His hair was cropped close to his skull, and the lines of the scar shone clean against his dark skin, the familiar lion’s head within the five-rayed star.
“But—” Still it meant nothing to Telemakos. “But you aren’t Abreha’s son!”
“I am Priamos Anbessa,” Priamos said quietly. “I am called lion, Anbessa, after my father, as is Abreha Anbessa. I am marked with the lion seal of Solomon as are all Ras Anbessa’s sons. The man who branded you bears the mark himself.”
“So he does.” Telemakos blinked, then nodded, falling back into Aksumite ways. “I know. But I thought…” He felt suddenly idiotic that he had not realized his full worth to Abreha. “The najashi isn’t allowed to appoint an heir without his council’s approval, and they have not tested me … Oh, but they have! That was my interrogation … And he led me to believe I was on trial for treachery!”
Telemakos stared out over the dark harbor, sending winged thoughts toward Abreha’s ship.