“You are to act as that Roman’s cupbearer at the Assembly feast, are you not?”
“Surely that’s only because I speak Latin.”
“The najashi dressed you in his own clothes and told a lie on your behalf to spare you a well-deserved humiliation, and then he forced all his guests to bow to you. What do you make of that, Beloved Young Prince?”
Dawit’s robe rustled as he fished for his tired kat leaves. “Abreha has not appointed a cupbearer himself since Asad died. His eldest son.” Telemakos heard the Star Master tear off a leaf and begin to chew. Dawit spoke indistinctly around the great wad that was already in his mouth. “You can’t pour your own drink from a waterskin. You had better practice.”
Telemakos did not mind waiting on people. His grandfather Kidane had long ago taught him to use humility as an indication of good breeding. Telemakos had attended Kidane’s special guests as far back as he could remember, and before his accident he had even been called on to serve in the New palace in Aksum; once, to his delight, he had gone as a page on a royal elephant hunt, though it had not been long after his imprisonment in Afar, and they had not let him join in the stalking because he had been so thin.
The feast of Abreha’s Great Assembly was held outdoors in one of the stepped gardens. There were canopies over all the braziers and carpets, in case of rain, for it was the time of the summer monsoon. But it was another fine night. San’a’s terraces and rocky ledges were at the height of their greenery, with rose of Sharon blooming everywhere and the perfume of jasmine nearly overwhelming. The garden was lit by hundreds of round glass lamps set in crevices up and down the stone sills. Other lights were set on standards in and out among the canopies, and the men of the Great Assembly sat on the carpeted flagstones beneath.
All those burning lamps were fueled by the oil of Gedar’s olive groves. When Telemakos came into the garden, he had to close his eyes for one blinding second in a private, hateful sneer. He despised the wasteful light, despised Himyar’s prosperity in the wake of plague and war that left Aksum’s cities shabby and depleted. And he hated Gedar with a black and bitter hatred: Gedar who had profited by it, Gedar who three years past had taken charity from the house of Nebir while Telemakos, enslaved in Afar, silently endured having his fingernails pried off to soothe the suspicions of Anako the corrupt governor of Deire.
Arrest Gedar. Telemakos had not heard anything from Aksum for over a month. He could not risk sending this message again. He was torn with guilt for not having tackled a new message about the Hanish Islands.
The men of the Great Assembly sat on the carpeted flagstones beneath the lovely, indifferent lights. Julian, the Roman legate Telemakos had been set to wait upon, was friendly and garrulous. He spoke not a word of South Arabian, but he wanted to know the names of all the men he sat with, and where they came from and the pedigrees of their saluki hounds, how one managed to scratch a living in the desert, and how one might make bitter water drinkable by adding camel’s milk to it. He could understand his companions’ Greek easily enough, but when he spoke himself it was incomprehensible, so he stuck doggedly to asking his questions in Latin and letting Telemakos translate everything he said.
“I shouldn’t be learning half as much without you at my side,” the legate confessed to Telemakos as the evening wore on. “What did the Federator Abreha tell us your full name is—Morningstar? Bright Shiner? He honors you near as much as he did Asad, his own son, but you put me in mind of Lleu, Artos’s heir, more than you do Asad. Asad was biddable. Lleu had a backbone of steel beneath his winning charm.”
“Lleu!” Telemakos exclaimed in surprise, astonished to hear a foreign stranger speak aloud the name of the dead British prince who haunted his dreams. “How do you know of Lleu?”
“The prince was about your age when I was in Britain. I remember him helping the villagers with the harvest, until they sent him home because he had such trouble breathing. He came back a quarter of an hour later with a cloth tied over his nose to keep out the dust.
“I never met anyone who did not love him,” Julian finished warmly. “They called him Leo, the young lion, in Latin. But in their own language he was Lleu, the Bright One, the light-bringer. You see, you even share his name, Beloved Young Prince Lucifer.”
Telemakos laughed uneasily. He did not like being held up to his dead uncle for comparison. “They don’t call me Lucifer. No one speaks Latin here, as you’ve heard! It’s Athtar, their ancient sky god. Or Eosphorus, in Greek. It’s not my real name, only a nickname, because of my light hair. My name is Telemakos, or young prince, Lij Telemakos, if we must speak formally. Truly, Telemakos is enough.”
“And Greek as well, to match Eosphorus! But your Latin is very good.”
“The emperor of Aksum was allowed to approve or appoint my tutors,” Telemakos said. “He didn’t always bother, but it made my mother choose carefully before she employed anyone. My British relatives think I sound like a Byzantine.”
“You do,” Julian agreed. “There is some Aksumite in your accent, as well, though; you don’t sound very British, grandson to Artos and like your uncle though you may be. Well, well. To think that Artos the Dragon has a grandson. Does Constantine the high king of Britain know that Artos has a grandson?”
“Oh, of a surety. He’s known me since I was a child. Constantine was ambassador and viceroy in Aksum when my father and my aunt came to stay there.”
When Telemakos was six, and his aunt Goewin had first arrived in Aksum, she had threatened to take Telemakos to Britain and set him up as king-in-waiting to rival Constantine. His most vivid memory of Constantine was of a strong hand dragging him mercilessly by the hair through the corridors of the New palace, and then the viceroy’s cold voice informing Goewin that he had the right to cut off Telemakos’s head. There was no doubt Constantine knew who he was.
“Constantine is my cousin,” Telemakos added.
“Close?”
“Once removed.” Closer than Queen Muna, he thought; closer than the najashi’s children by her would have been. Poor, doomed, biddable Asad wasn’t even my blood kin. “Inas of Ma’in says I am related to everybody. I’m also cousin to Gwalchmei of the Orcades, who used to be Constantine’s ambassador to the najashi. But I never met Gwalchmei, and a new British emissary has not yet been appointed, so I am all alone here.”