“He’s a good lion,” Athena said approvingly.
Telemakos stared. The heavy young king Wajih whistled through his teeth.
“I shouldn’t want to turn my back on him!”
“Indeed not,” Telemakos agreed, breathless with astonishment. “That’s how I lost my arm, to his father. Give, Menelik, give me the bones.”
Telemakos threw them again, and again the white sticks stormed through the air, and again Menelik brought them back without a sound.
Telemakos watched the lion run, his own heart racing with discovery.
He moves with it, Telemakos thought. He moves with it! Look at him! I can’t pick that thing up without a riot, but when the lion wants to muffle it, there’s not a sound. Yes, I see, he doesn’t let it fall still, he lets the bones shake from side to side, but as long as he keeps moving, they don’t knock against each other.
“Again again again!” Athena crowed.
Telemakos shook his bracelet tentatively. He reached toward the lion, thinking only of silencing the bells at his elbow.
Yes, I can do it. Not well, not yet. But if I practice, if I practice!
Telemakos collared the lion affectionately by the scruff of its neck. Menelik pushed up his heavy head for kisses, as he had done since he was a starving kit fed on milk from a goatskin.
“Oh, you baby!” Telemakos exclaimed. He leaned over the gate and gave the required kiss. The young lion smelled warm and familiar, of straw and sun and honey. “Ah, thank you for this instruction,” Telemakos whispered in the lion’s ear.
“What is a mother?” Athena asked, sitting wide awake in the darkness of the Great Globe Room long after the rest of the palace was asleep.
“Why, a mother …”
Telemakos found himself at a loss. Athena did not remember her own mother. He did not want her to think Muna was her mother.
“A mother makes children,” Telemakos said. “A mother and father together make a child.”
It made no sense. None of the Scions had a mother or father; they were all dead of plague.
“Sometimes after the child is made, the mother and father are not able to take care of it. So they have to get help from someone else. Queen Muna takes care of children who have no mother. You have got a mother, but she lives too far away to take care of you, so Muna helps. You have got a father, too.”
“Are you my father?”
Telemakos laughed. “I am your brother.”
“What is a brother?”
“Oh, save me, Tena, it is time to sleep!”
She bounced in the cushions and repeated patiently, “What is a brother?”
“Your brother has the same mother and father as you. They look after you together. Or you and your brother look after each other. Inas has got a little brother, Amir. You know Amir.”
“Is Menelik my brother?”
“Of course he is not, you silly thing. Menelik is a lion!”
They both laughed.
“You are full of difficult questions tonight, little Tena,” Telemakos said.
“Menelik is like my brother,” she said.
“I know,” Telemakos whispered, thinking of the silent bones. “He is like my brother, too.”
Athena slept pressed tight against his side that night, and every night after that. A semblance of peace fell on the Ghumdan palaces.
VI
ALLIANCES
NOW TELEMAKOS HAD A secret that he took delight in. He was learning to move without making any noise. He practiced when he was alone or when he was working with the lion; nobody ever noticed whether his charm bracelet was ringing, if the lion was there to hold everyone’s attention. He could not throw a spear without rattling the charms, but before long he could walk and run in silence. He could move as quietly as Menelik if he wanted to. And this challenge, more than anything else, finally restored his sense of balance.
He could not get enough of being outside. He knew he was watched like a goat; he was always minded at a distance by a herdsman, or two or three. He did not pass the city gates without an escort of the najashi’s soldiers. They kept their distance, and if any of the Scions were with him, Telemakos did not see his more formal escort at all, but Telemakos knew he was watched carefully, all the time. People knew who he was. In San’a’s suq markets he once let Athena choose a set of ivory hairpins for their mother, and experimentally tried to send them off with a note dictated through an itinerant letter writer. The old man would not take his message.
“The Ghumdan palace children should use the Ghumdan palace servants,” the scribe grumbled. “You can have no need of a street writer.”
“I bought this gift in the street,” Telemakos said. “Why can’t I also send it in the street?”
“No paid scribe will risk his hands and livelihood in forwarding unapproved messages for foreign princes.”
“Your pardon, sir,” Telemakos apologized. “I would not compromise anyone’s livelihood.”
“You may send the gift without a message,” said the writer.
Telemakos did not care that he was watched. He could go where he liked. The semblance of freedom was even better than his other recent joy: that of running or riding in the chase with the royal saluki hounds, gripping one spear for balance and with two more strapped to his back should he spend the first, and the najashi allowing him to lead the hunt with Menelik at his side.
Street children and beggars still stared and cringed at his white hair and strange eyes, but the Scions rallied to his defense.
“Your majesty of Qataban!” the almond pickers called out in greeting to Shadi as they passed through the groves beyond the city gates when Telemakos went hawking with the more senior of Abreha’s collection of royal orphans. “What are you doing in the company of that half-breed Aksumite? Don’t you know those blue eyes can curse you?”
Another boy in the same tree added, “Aye, and are the najashi’s Royal Scions now set to playing nursemaid, that the Aksumite comes hunting with a baby tied to his back like a woman?”
Shadi, who was slight of build and cautious of temper, raised the sparrowhawk on his wrist a fraction and stood gazing up at the boys in the tree.
“I had not judged you such fools, Hujir and Yazid,” he said at last. There was rustling among the leaves as the young workers within earshot stopped to listen. One dropped out of the branches so he could better see the confrontation.