Muna and Rasha were setting out a porridge of beans and sesame oil for the children, who were mostly still asleep. Athena, too, was sleeping. She was held in place on her mattress by a pale blue scarf bound around her upper body, but she had managed to twist herself onto her front and slept like a dog, with her knees curled under her stomach and her bottom in the air. One arm had worked free of the swaddling, and she had got her fingers tangled in her hair.
Telemakos laid his cheek against her warm body and closed his eyes, taking in a deep breath of sandalwood and worn cotton and yesterday’s yogurt. With trembling fingers he smoothed Athena’s hair. It seemed longer, and less metallic, than he remembered. In three months Athena’s childish face had thinned, her legs and arms grown longer. She looked older.
“You have grown, owlet,” Telemakos said softly.
“So have you,” Muna told him, coming up behind him suddenly.
It was true. The hanging stars in the Great Globe Room brushed the top of his head now, and the smooth skin stretched across the stump of his shoulder itched constantly, in the same way the skin itched beneath the tight silver bracelet. He could get at his shoulder, but not at the bracelet. He had been reduced to worrying it against the door frame, like a bushpig scratching its back on a tree. But Athena would be able to reach it now.
Close by his sister for the first time in weeks, Telemakos could scarcely believe her radiance. Her smooth skin and wild hair were both exactly the color of old honey. Her lashes were as pale as his own, nearly white against her brown skin, and curled like feathers. The features of her pointed face were delicate and narrow, and Telemakos could see his father and mother perfectly balanced there.
“She is very like you,” said Muna.
“So my mother said, as well.”
Athena began to stir, coughing and yawning and hiccupping and growling as she came awake and got ready to start screaming. With tooth and nail, as quickly as he could, Telemakos attacked the scarf that held her down. He tore the scarf in freeing her.
“Hello, little owlet.”
She swarmed into his embrace, shrieking with delight. Lu’lu, who was scarcely three years older than Athena, sat up in the other small bed. She glanced dismissively at Athena as if no performance could surprise her anymore, then got up, took up her dress where it lay folded neatly on the clothesbox, and with sugary docility held it up to Rasha to help her put it on. Lu’lu did not look at Telemakos. He thought she must have forgotten who he was, until he remembered that Abreha’s Royal Scions had all vowed not to get him in trouble by trying to talk to him. Lu’lu was carefully keeping to her vow.
“Let me go for just a moment, Tena—”
Athena held on to his hair with her fists and rubbed her nose against his, and tried to explain the whole of the last three months in one great burst of babbling speech. “Athena’s boy, you see my lion, see my baby lion, big lion, see my birds,” she said. “Lu’lu can eat the rice not Athena, Tena rice big mess. Muna does not like to carry me. Shadi’s big bird gone now, Shadi crying. Open najashi’s box, Athena see boy’s animals. You see my big lion?”
“Ah, little Athena—” He was astounded at how articulate she had become. It made him want to weep, all he had missed.
“See my window broken, boy see,” Athena said, with undue pride. She pulled at his shamma shawl. “You come see it—”
“All right, which way is it?”
“You carry me.” She stood on his legs and put her arms around his neck.
“I can’t carry you, you’re a big girl!” He could no longer lift her with one arm, or not for long, anyway. “Aren’t you a walking girl?” She seemed so grown up.
“She doesn’t walk,” Muna said quietly.
“You carry me, boy. Carry Tena’s belt.” Athena scurried on hands and feet, agile and lionlike, to one of the cedarwood chests. She banged on it with her fists. “Fetch Athena’s belt, Rasha,” she commanded imperiously.
Muna’s haughty attendant obeyed this command in silence. She opened the chest and took out the child’s harness that Medraut had made for Telemakos so that he could carry Athena on his hip without having to get help from anyone. Rasha crossed the room and gave the saddle to Telemakos. No one had oiled it, or even touched it, in all the months of Telemakos’s confinement. Telemakos kneaded the stiff leather, stretching out the seams and pockets. When he checked between the folds of the pouch within the seat, the one Athena could not get at herself, his fingers touched paper and silver. There were half a dozen vials and sachets of opium still hidden there.
I must get rid of this, Telemakos thought. She will soon be clever enough to pull things out of here.
“It is he!” Malika cried. The queen of Sheba was standing in the door to the nursery, her gown back-to-front. She must have put it on herself, a wonder indeed, in her hurry to be first with the news.
She called delightedly over her shoulder to the other Scions, “It is, it is the Aksumite prince, the Morningstar is back among us!” Then she threw herself down on the carpet at his side and rattled her fingers through the silver charms he wore.
“Peace to you, Morningstar, peace and greetings and hurrah! I heard your little bells and I knew you were in here—it sounded so much closer than when you pass in the corridor. Pretty, aren’t these? Look, little Tena, you can make these bells ring.”
Malika held him still with one friendly hand on his shoulder. She rubbed noses with him as she rattled the silver charms.
“This is so lovely! You lucky thing. The najashi has never given me such a pretty bauble.”
Inas and Shadi came in now, laughing and exclaiming in outrage. “Liar! What about your onyx box of facepaints—”
“—Your cameos, your carnelian earrings? Good morning and good fortune to you, Morningstar!”
Telemakos knelt, hugging Athena against him, rather stunned, as the nursery filled with Abreha’s fourteen foster children, all clamoring around him in high-spirited welcome. He almost thought they must be teasing him.
“Look at your brother’s bracelet, Athena bird girl, it’s like yours! You can match now. Rasha, where’s the baby’s silver bracelet? Let her wear it so they can both have one.”
“Have you heard all your sister’s exploits, how she poured a jar of indigo dye all over the cushions by the window—”