Medraut answered with deliberate care. “I took him hunting in the Great Valley of Aksum, two years before he came here, and one day when we had gone separate ways, he was captured by salt traders and taken as a slave to the emperor’s salt mines. He was evilly mistreated there, blindfolded and bound, starved, lashed if he stumbled in his work. It was two months before we found him. He still dreams of it. He does not complain of it, though; perhaps he finds it shameful to speak of.”
Medraut made it sound so simple: an accident, a mistake, while they should have been hunting together. There was no secret mission, no secret name, no need to hide as Gebre Meskal’s sunbird.
“Ai.” The najashi gave a sudden sigh, as though surprised by a sharp pain. “I understand now. Beloved Morningstar, I am sorry. I might have spared you a deal of suffering this year, had I known that.”
“I’m all right,” Telemakos said, embarrassed.
Medraut swallowed again. Telemakos thought he looked tired. He had absorbed the information that could have forfeited both their lives, and turned everyone’s attention away from it, and given Telemakos an alibi for his service to the emperor in Afar. And every word he had spoken had been true. It all appeared effortless, but everything he said was calculated to avoid being cut off by the choking chain, and he must surely guess what a razor’s edge Telemakos walked himself. When Medraut spoke again, his deep, smooth voice rang with challenge.
“I want assurance—” he spoke hesitantly, like a man trying to find his way by throwing his voice in a cavern. “My lord Abreha Anbessa the Lion Hunter, najashi and mukarrib, king of Himyar and federator of South Arabia. Telemakos Meder will not remain in Himyar forever, though you give him another name and raise him in privilege as you would your own children. Give me assurance that he will leave your palace fit for anything his destiny will require of him.”
Abreha got up and crossed the room with his purposeful, loping stride. He stopped at the door. “Give me a minute,” he said. “I’ll make your son a gift, Ras Meder. Wait for me.” Then he addressed his soldiers. “I am going to the kennels. It will take me some little time to descend the stairs and come back. Keep the prince silent while I’m gone.”
Medraut sat taut and motionless, an alabaster statue, with his hands on his knees. After a few moments, when no one moved or said anything, Athena got to her hands and feet and crawled over to the cup where Medraut had thrown his dragon brooch. She pulled herself up to stand at the table and, with a glance over her shoulder to make sure she was not doing anything wrong, tipped up the cup and fished out the pin. She scrambled back to Telemakos on three feet—or anyway on her feet and one hand—holding the dragon carefully in her other hand. Then she sat contentedly to examine it.
Dawit spoke suddenly again. “Before Medraut courted your mother, boy, he courted my daughter Muna.”
“Sir!” Queen Muna cried out.
Dawit sniffed. “It was not secret then. Why should it be secret now you are both married, and not to each other?”
Whatever Telemakos had expected the najashi to be hiding from him, it was not this. He felt as though he had been standing by a dark window, and now a curtain was pulled back so that he could see through to another world, full of a new kind of intrigue that it never occurred to him to watch for.
Medraut’s eyes seethed. He did not move or make a sound.
“There is your reason the najashi did not want Gwalchmei as his ambassador, Morningstar,” Dawit added. “He looks too much like his cousin, your father, and lacked your father’s temperance. Gwalchmei was a captivating libertine.”
“Do not shame me,” Muna said quietly.
“Hah!” Dawit grunted. “The boy is the image of his father. Do you think the najashi will allow him to stay in this palace after his voice breaks?”
When the najashi returned to the room, there were two young salukis pressed close against his legs. Medraut smacked his thigh hard with his fist as a wordless exclamation and broke into a real smile of surprise and delight. Again Athena scrambled to the door on all fours, lionlike. She pulled herself up against the belly of a saluki. The dog turned its head nervously and sniffed at her. “Mine,” Athena said. “Athena’s dog, thank you, najashi.”
That made even the guards’ mouths twitch. Medraut laughed aloud.
“I am sorry, my honey badger,” the najashi apologized, getting down on her level as he always did to talk to children. “But these dogs are for your brother. I am sure he will share them.”
Now Telemakos was completely mystified. He stared at his guardian in frozen disbelief.
“For me?” He was sure the najashi meant some mockery or jest.
“Aye, for you, Morningstar. Your father bids me give him assurance of my good intent toward you, and we all know you could use assistance in the hunt. These will be easier for you to manage than a falcon.”
Telemakos’s mind raced. A pair of hunting dogs? A pair! Two of the najashi’s gazelle hounds for my own? The last one he gave away was a gift for the emperor of Aksum. What is going on?
They were a matched pair, an identical hound and bitch, not a year old and not quite full grown. Their legs and bodies were the pearly golden white of old ivory, or new cream, or Telemakos’s own pale hair. Their long, silken ears and feathery tails were red as copper.
“You cannot possibly …” Telemakos moved to kneel formally before Abreha, with his head turned aside in disbelief as much as humility, and muttered, “My lord najashi, this is a gift for a king. I do not deserve this.” He drew a shaking breath, burning with shame at having to accept such a gift bare minutes after attempting something close to treason. “Never in a thousand years would I deserve such dogs.”
“I do not doubt that you are right on both counts,” Abreha replied dryly. “But they are yours. My gift to you is my pledge to your father.”
Medraut answered him with real warmth and fervor. “Truly, my najashi, you do my son a great honor to gift him so generously. You do us both a great honor. I accept this pledge.”
The najashi strode across the room to join Medraut where he sat. The dogs followed loyally at his heels.
“Touch them, Morningstar. Let them smell you. You are their master now.”
Telemakos had always known he would sell his soul to call one of these dogs his own. He could not restrain himself for one second longer, and his lips were against their feathery copper ears while his roughened fingertips snagged the white silk of their coats. They warmed to the game joyfully, sniffing and butting their heads against him, so that for a moment he forgot everything else.