“Good girl,” the king murmured at Athena’s ear. “The boy knows as much and more about Gebre Meskal’s kingdom as he does about mine. I’ll wager he knows secrets I have spent years in trying to discover. He does not want to tell me, my honey badger, but I think he will tell you. Ask him …” He whispered at her ear again. Now the najashi’s strong, narrow fingers were locked around her throat.
She said, “Who is the sunbird?”
The words took Telemakos like a blow to the stomach, knocking the breath from his chest.
“Who is the sunbird?”
And with the iron hands poised ready to snap his sister’s neck, all Telemakos’s resolution evaporated. He was damned now.
“Who is the sunbird?”
“I am,” he whispered.
The najashi breathed out a sudden, shaking sigh, like a soft explosion. He said, as though it were absurd, “The informer that stopped all Aksum’s exports of salt during the plague quarantine? The sunbird? The sunbird?”
“You have said so,” Telemakos whispered.
“You were no more than a child during Gebre Meskal’s quarantine!”
“I have no authority,” Telemakos acknowledged, speaking through his teeth. “But I hear everything. What do you imagine I was doing, hunting on my own in the Salt Desert, four years ago? My father made it sound like an accident when he told you. But I did it knowingly, I did it on purpose, I thought out the plan myself! I crossed Afar on foot, and then sold myself into servitude so that I might find out the identity of your captain there—” It was wonderful to be damned. You did not have to guard yourself at all. “—Anako archon of Deire, who held me captive and gave the order that my fingernails be torn out and salt splinters be rubbed into my eyes, not knowing who I was! I owed you no loyalty whatever in Afar!”
“You owe it to me now,” the najashi said simply. He whispered again in Athena’s ear. She parroted his words calmly.
“The najashi reminds you of—what is the word, najashi?”
She waited, listening attentively. Then she spoke again, pleased to be doing this challenging work so well.
“The najashi reminds you of your covenant with him.”
Abreha the Lion Hunter raised his head, let go of Athena’s throat, and reached toward Telemakos. Telemakos pulled away from him. The silver bracelet crashed and clattered. Telemakos began, “I swear, I swear by my life—”
The Lion Hunter interrupted contemptuously, “What is your life worth?”
Telemakos swallowed. “By my sister’s life, then. My grandfather thought the threats Gedar delivered to our house, the murdered sunbirds, were meant for me. We didn’t know you suspected my father, or my grandfather, or whomever body it was you were trying to flush out for getting in the way of your cursed salt smuggling! I was sent here for my own protection, and not to cast abroad the secrets of your kingdom!”
“Then deny that you have done so.”
Telemakos knelt bent double with his face hidden in the crook of his arm, and could not answer. The silver charms scratched his cheek.
“Deny that you have done so, knowing full well what the consequence would be should I discover you.”
Telemakos thought he heard the najashi set Athena on the floor, but he could not summon the strength to raise his head and look.
“‘Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat,’” the najashi said, “‘for in the day you eat of it you shall die.’” His voice was not so steady as it had been. “I want to treat you justly, Morningstar. And, God help me, I want desperately to forgive you. But it is not me alone you have betrayed: it is my kingdom, my nation, my people.”
Telemakos raised his head at last, his eyes burning, unable to endure such hypocrisy.
“You are Aksumite,” he said, “and these are not your people.”
Abreha spoke to Telemakos in deadly quiet, his upper lip curled in scorn.
“Mother of God, you shame yourself.”
The baby was still sitting on his lap, but now the najashi did lift her to the floor. She stayed leaning quietly against his knee, sensing that she had not entirely been dismissed.
“I never thought to hear such narrow, blind intolerance from you, you of all, you, who have your mother’s African skin and your father’s North Sea eyes. You are blood kin to my dead children. Do you deny your great-uncle the Star Master? Do you wash yourself of Sheba and Qataban, whose future sovereigns adore you? You call yourself Aksumite; do you bear no allegiance to Goewin of Britain? Who are your people, Athtar, Lij Bitwoded Telemakos Eosphorus?”
The najashi picked up his lamp and stood up. “You shame yourself,” he repeated quietly. “You are justly condemned. I shall leave my guard outside your door, as befits an arrested traitor awaiting sentence. But they will not disturb you. Put your sister to bed now.”
He turned back at the top of the steps.
“I never sent a single one of your letters home,” he told Telemakos. “I could not see your hidden treachery, but you are trickier than a hunted lizard, and I knew it must be lurking there somewhere. I thought to spare you the fault of sending them, so I burned each one as soon as you left my study. Gebre Meskal discovered my plans on his own.”
The najashi took a deep breath, and added bitterly, “Nor would I ever harm that child beside you, though you knew all the secrets of Rome and Persia, and I thought I could get it out of you by plucking one hair from her head. You are thwarted by your own guilty conscience.”
He closed the door heavily behind him.
Telemakos knelt staring at his sister without seeing her. His treachery was real, even if his letters had not been sent. He had spoken aloud the information that damned him now, in the coded message to Goewin he had given his father.
Athena pulled herself to her feet, holding on to his shirt.
“The najashi did tell me what to say,” she pointed out.
“You did well, Tena,” Telemakos whispered.
“Not Tena. Athena.”
“Athena. You did well, Athena.”
He hugged her close against him and buried his face in her hair. The sandalwood scent was nearly gone; it had been her baby smell. She was different now, trying so hard to be grown up. She changed so quickly.
I will never see her walk, now, Telemakos thought; nor hear her say my name.