“How—”
The soldiers gave each other quick, accusatory glances.
“Didn’t you hear him?”
Telemakos bowed his head. “Please don’t hurt me. The najashi is expecting me.” He shook the charms again. “I startle people everywhere I go,” he sniffed. “I’m sorry.”
They lowered their weapons. Telemakos was sure he looked pathetically harmless, a frightened, one-armed boy wearing only a kilt. But all the palace knew he had slain two lions, unaided, in the past season. The guards glanced at each other uneasily.
“Stay with him,” said the spearman. “I’ll step within.”
He did, and after a few moments, beyond the door and the silken arras that covered it, Telemakos heard the murmur of voices. He waited, and soon Muna came into the hall. Her own bracelets chittered. She wore an astonishing surcoat figured with pomegranates, each fruit outlined with gold thread and seeded with what looked like real rubies. For a long moment she said nothing but stood quietly, gazing down at Telemakos kneeling there; then she knelt beside him with her palm laid gently on his good shoulder.
“Morningstar, it is late.”
“I seek a petition of the najashi,” Telemakos said.
“Does the Star Master know you’re here? Did he send you?”
She means, did he let me past the guards, Telemakos thought. So she knows I am in disgrace again.
Telemakos whispered, “No one sent me.”
Muna’s hand trembled against his cold skin like a leaf in the wind tugging at its stem. Telemakos glanced up at her through his lashes. She met his gaze for a moment, as she had done on his first night in San’a.
“I would speak with the najashi,” Telemakos repeated.
“Come in, then,” Muna said, raising him to his feet. Telemakos was taller than she was. “My husband is still at his desk.” She led Telemakos through her chambers without taking her hand from his shoulder, until she left him alone so that she might forewarn the najashi. After a short while she came back and wordlessly waved Telemakos within.
XI
THE SEALED AGREEMENT
THERE WAS NO LIGHT burning in the room. The najashi sat awake in a pool of moonlight, a cup of wine at his hand. Telemakos stood in the doorway.
“Young scorpion,” Abreha said coldly. “What more is there to be said between us?”
“I want to buy Athena’s passage back to Aksum.”
Abreha looked down at his hands. He twisted his signet ring from his finger.
“And what can you possibly offer me in payment?”
Telemakos stepped lightly and swiftly across the room. His footfalls made no sound. He knelt before the najashi and pressed his forehead against the floor. The chimes at his elbow were silent. He moved with the sure stealth of a leopard stalking its prey.
“My service,” Telemakos whispered. “I offer you my service.”
There was a faint click as Abreha dropped his ring against the marquetry of his writing table. Telemakos waited.
Abreha picked up a taper and reached over with it to flick through the bells of Telemakos’s bracelet. They rang and rattled.
“How do you do it? How do you move so silently?”
“I don’t know. I am a good tracker. I have always been quiet.”
Abreha lit the taper.
“As it happens,” he said slowly, “I have need of your service, and you may not guess how it gladdens me that you offer it freely.”
There was a small burner on the floor beside him. Abreha set about lighting it, and blew out the taper.
“All right, Morningstar. Get off your face. Come to your knees and listen to my proposal.”
Telemakos rose, obediently, and sat back on his heels with his head bowed. The charms glittered, winking gold as the light caught them, but they made no sound.
“I want you to map the Hanish Islands for me.”
Abreha placed a warming pan for mixing ink above the lighted burner.
“The skirmish in Adulis has not affected the negotiation over al-Kabir,” Abreha said. “I am to meet with a representative of my cousin’s there, to complete our transaction. I will travel in the flagship of my armada, as I did during Aksum’s plague quarantine, with an escort of small warships to ensure my own safety in Aksum’s waters.
“I’ll put you aboard one of the warships, and you and they will leave the rest and navigate the archipelago in secret. I want you to sail the waters and walk the perimeter of the islands yourself, out of sight of the exiles and without the knowledge of my cousin’s ships and servants, and draw me a true map of Gebre Meskal’s prison fortress and its attendant islets. I want you to list any cove where a boat may find harbor, small or large, and any cave or inlet where an ambush may be placed on the island itself.”
He paused. Telemakos was silent, thinking, I could do it. He knows what I did in Afar, now, and he knows I could do this, too. How long would it take—a month, two months? The najashi could kill me tomorrow, if I refuse.
“Is it true that Gebre Meskal means to forgive you for ignoring his quarantine?” Telemakos asked.
“I am building a church in his father’s name, in thanksgiving that he has done so.”
Gebre Meskal has got ships coming and going from Hanish, Telemakos thought, guarding the prison and negotiating with Abreha. Aksumite ships, bound for Aksum. Maybe when I have finished the mapping …
“I’ll do it,” Telemakos said. “If you swear by your dead children that you will send Athena home to our parents.”
Abreha picked up his ring and dropped it in the warming pan. “By God, you young fox, I don’t know where your loyalty lies, but you do not disappoint me.”
“I can’t decide which is the greater tyrant, you or Gebre Meskal,” Telemakos said. “In truth, aren’t you and your cousin cut from the same cloth? He condemned an entire city to death in the name of his nation’s good, and you spurned his sacrifice in the name of your own! My loyalty lies with Athena. I will not sacrifice my sister in my emperor’s defense.” He raised his head and added bitterly, “Nor any child.”
Abreha rebuked him in quiet: “You are no longer a child, Lij Bitwoded Telemakos Eosphorus.”
Now the najashi picked up a short penknife. He leaned forward and worked the blade’s edge firmly beneath Telemakos’s bracelet, and sawed through the thin silver strip. The chimes shook frantically for a moment, then the band fell away. Telemakos glanced down at the bracelet and spat on it. “Prove to me you’ll keep your word and send my sister home. Swear by your dead children.”